Going Big in Small Boats

For the small-craft designer Clint Chase, talking about boat excursions in Maine often leads to accounts of treks to coves and inlets of Casco Bay off Portland, Merrymeeting Bay near Bath, or any number of other islands and shores tucked away along the state’s coastline. He is an inveterate explorer, and his idea of sailing usually involves camping and some element of adventure—a wind that tests a boat’s limits, shifting tides, threatening weather. Experiences along the coast have given him a keen appreciation for the elements that go into boats of the type he has always preferred to use: light, trailerable craft that are safe and responsive under sail or oars.

His company, Chase Small Craft, located in Saco, southwest of Portland, is devoted to distinctive boats of that type. He has designed 17 of them, all under 20′  long. For each of them, he has developed thorough CNC-cut kits to hasten the construction and bring it within range of amateur builders’ skills. His understanding of the needs of new boatbuilders is informed by his own experience as an educator: he was the head builder and program manager at the nonprofit Compass Project in Portland, which helped at-risk kids by getting them involved in boatbuilding, the primary teaching tool being the 10′ Compass Skiff that he designed with the program in mind. After the Compass Project closed in the recession of 2008, he worked as a boatbuilder. In 2013, he resumed teaching, this time in small boat construction at The Landing School. The school’s program, which he had completed in 2006, teaches a wide range of boatbuilding skills, including design, in Saco’s neighboring town of Arundel.

A one-week class at WoodenBoat School in Brooklin, Maine, changed Clint’s own direction. It was a design class taught by the prolific boat designer Paul Gartside, then of Sidney, British Columbia, but now of Long Island, New York, who encouraged Clint’s design work. “I started designing and building boats. I took the leap,” Clint said. “Paul was a mentor; I would call him from time to time.”

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