2018 MASCF

I've mentioned this several times before; this blog is not about timeliness. Here are some photos from the 2018 MASCF (Mid-Atlantic Small Craft Festival) held six months ago, October, 2018. MASCF is hosted by the CBMM (Cheasapeake Bay Maritime Museum) and is a good event to see what the non-racing boffins are coming up with, particularly the plywood DIY crowd. On the Saturday, when I made it over, there was little wind, but the on-shore kibbitzing was good.

There are a lot of riffs on the design of the basic Bolger Brick. There is the Puddle Duck Racer. Maybe the most popular is Michael Storer's OZ Goose. There was a larger, 3.6 meter, version at MASCF, promoting the formation of a racing league for these types.



You can't complain about the cockpit space on this small boat!

Definitely a paddle and oar day.

Another simple flat bottom design is the DC Dinghy. Posts on the DC Dinghy, here and here.

David Gentry does skin on frame boats. He designed this very pretty Chautauqu sailing canoe

David writes that he raced Chautauqu in the 300 mile Everglades Challenge. No way the blogmeister would even consider doing such a long trip in such a small boat.

John Harris, the ever prolific and out-of-the-box thinker, owner, and head designer of CLC boats, had this interesting craft, Pingu on the lawn of CBMM. From his writeup on CLC' website:

"Thus the subject design, the Nesting Expedition Dinghy. At 10'6" x 42", it's designed to be the smallest possible boat that will sail and row well, sleep a single person, and carry a week's worth of supplies. The bow and stern are removable, and stow in the 6-1/2-foot middle section. At worst, I can stash it in my little garden shed. At best, I can ship the thing to Europe to cruise the French canals."

For a more complete description of Pingu Click here.

Two leeboards, and a narrow, deep hull. Looks to me as definitely a flat water cruiser.

A mostly traditional, lashed up, proa, shared the lawn with Pingu.

Jim Thayer designed a commodious dink, the Wee Punkin, back in the 1990's. He did an improved version, the Punkin Eater, which showed up at the 2018 MASCF. Build is lapstrake sides married to a smooth bottom.

A really odd, but cool in its own way, circular cockpit.

A flattish hull shape.

Catboats at the 2017 MASCF

In keeping this catboat thread going just a post or two more, here are two photos from the 2017 Mid-Atlantic Small Craft Festival.

A catboat out romping on Saturday afternoon.

Two catboats amongst the scrum before the start of Saturday's race.

A Cricket Dinghy Uncovered!

I have written about the Cricket dinghy, one of North America's first dinghy classes. I had despaired of ever seeing one in the flesh but, in wandering the docks this weekend at the Mid-Atlantic Small Craft Festival, my mouth dropped open; there she was, floating peacefully tied up to the dock, an old timey Cricket! Turns out that Richard Scofield, assistant curator at the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum, had found one "upriver" as he said (I assume he meant the Miles River). It had been in one family for years and was outfitted with an outboard motor with which they puttered about the river. The bow had been bashed in. Richard purchased her because he found her a pretty dinghy and being, at one time, head of the boat shop, did a top-notch restoration. He also did some research which will allow me to update what is known about the Cricket.

The Cricket tied up at the dock. Not much is known about her origin. The name on the transom is Jiminy Cricket.

This Cricket is planked which does indicate a pre WWII build time.

Underway. A sprit rig with a club at the clew. A large, low aspect ratio cat-rig with no battens. This one looks to have a lower freeboard than some of the later Miami Yacht Club Crickets.

A very sharp bow. I can see how the Cricket could have influenced the Classic Moth Cates design which also has a very sharp bow.

The Cricket led the Saturday sailboat race at MASCF for a long time, finally finishing third to a C. Lowndes Johnson 18 footer and a Thistle.

I've had this file photo from the Baltimore Sun sitting on my computer for a while now, classified "mysterious dinghy." After looking at Scofield's Cricket at MASCF I can now positively identify the photo as another Cricket. Most likely the photo was taken in the 1950's.

MASCF 2016 - A Franken International Canoe

I was set to drive over to St. Michaels for the Mid-Atlantic Small Craft Festival, that first Saturday in October, to view the hodge-podge of small craft, most home-built, but it was a weekend of torrential downpours. Just before I was to get into my car for the one-hour trek to the Eastern Shore, I checked the weather radar and there was a blob of precipitation camped over St. Michaels. (The precipitation was caused by an offshore low which also has a tendency to flood the Festival site - boots required.) I cancelled my plans and stayed around the house, puttering on various projects.

In checking through the photos of the event it looks like:

1. The rain was not as bad as it looked on the radar. It actually appears to have stopped for the sailing race.
2. There was a very interesting Frankenboat - a modified Nethercott International Canoe hull.

This Nethercott looks suspiciously like one that was put together by my friend George Saunders - at least the color on the hull matches. In viewing the two photos I could find online, the new owner has converted this tricky, all-out racing, sliding seat singlehander to a multi-use recreational craft. The modifications I could spot were:

1. The sliding seat has gone away, replaced by amas for stabiltiy.
2. He has set up this craft for rowing. To do this he had to get rid of the daggerboard trunk and set it up with a leeboard.
3. The jib on the IC has gone away. The rig is an unstayed, carbon, cat-rig with the option for an assymetric (note the fixed sprit).
4. To fit the unstayed rig he needed to extensively modify the bow so we see a new cedar-strip foredeck with a large storage hatch. 

Unfortunately there are no photos I could find of this Franken-Nether-IC sailing which may indicate an engineering failure in one of the systems (for one, the beam with the amas and the height of the amas looks to be inadequate for a powerful sailing rig). An interesting concept though and hopefully I'll bump into this craft in the future.

"My love of Frankenboats can never be requited" - RLM

2015 Fall Season: A List of Free-for-all's

Over the years this blog has featured some of the oddball regattas/sailing races where you take your oddball small sailboat and compete against a bunch of other oddball small sailboats. During the fall season there is enough of these events you could, if so inclined, hop-scotch up and down the East Coast of the United States.

They are (in roughly chronological order):

Sebago Cup - mid-September at the Sebago Canoe Club, Brooklyn N.Y.

A one race jaunt around Jamaica Bay. I'm sure they would be delighted to see some out-of-town visitors and been told, even though this is Brooklyn, there is plenty of parking around the club. See comments for more info from SCC members.

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SEBAGO CUP ----- September 19, 2015
Our annual cruising race!
This is an open class cruising race open to non-members. Fleets will be created upon the participation of at least two boats of the same class. Contact sailing@sebagocanoeclub.org for more information.
Skippers meeting - 11:30 am
Starting gun - 12:30 pm
Notice of Race
Sailing Instructions 

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NSHOF Classic Wooden Sailboat Rendezvous- mid-September, Annapolis Maryland.

A one-or-two lap race around the Annapolis Harbor. The majority of entrants are classic cruising keelboats but there is always a smattering of small boats. This year John Z is entering his Classic Moth.

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CLASSIC WOODEN SAILBOAT RACE, Sunday ---- September 27, 2015
NOR

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MASCF (Mid-Atlantic Small Craft Festival) - First weekend in October, St. Michaels Maryland.

This is more of an event than sailing race but there is, on Saturday, a one-lap sailing race in the river starting around noon that is quite a hoot. I have done it twice in my Classic Moth Tweezer where I was racing in a division featuring a motley assortment of larger craft including Thistles, Core Sound 17's, Blue Jays, Celebritys, log canoes.

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MASCF ---- October, 2, 3, 4, 2015

Registration

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Tweezer trying to stay ahead of a log canoe - MASCF sailing race

Polly's Folly - mid-October, Megunticook Lake, Camden, Maine.

Hosted by John and Polly Hanson. This is a small affair, hosted out of their lake-front cabin around the time of Maine's fall foilage.

Archipelago Rally - early-November - Somewhere in the state of Rhode Island.

In a twist on normal advanced scheduling, the organizers wait until about two weeks before the event before announcing the location. A one lap race, usually going around something.

2014 MASCF - The Rescue

After watching the start to the sailboat race for the Mid-Atlantic Small Craft Festival sailboat race I had the option of being dropped off with the race committee at the corner of the Chesapeake Maritime Museum harbor to watch the finish or, stay with the CBMM workboat, Volunteer, and motor through the fleet as it beat toward the finish. I chose the latter but as soon as we poked our nose out of the harbor there was, dead ahead, a sail with no hull, a sight that brokered further investigation.

It turned out it was one of the racers that needed assistance and it was also someone I knew. Larry Haff, a canoe sailor, was racing his homebuilt Polynesian outrigger canoe and as we drew near, we could see his main hull awash, Larry sitting forlornly in what was now a bathtub with the outrigger bobbing alongside, completely detached. The outrigger attachment point had failed when Larry had hardened up to go upwind and he was now discovering that he didn't have enough buoyancy in the main hull to support his weight and the sloshing water. I wondered how difficult this rescue would be as we would have to maneuver this longish workboat alongside but Lad Mills did a great job. Thankfully, the aft freeboard on Volunteer is low, the aft deck wide so we were able to work efficiently to get the rig out of the canoe and onto Volunteer, the outrigger stowed onboard and then, with some tugging and grunting, roll Larry up onto Volunteer's deck.

On our initial approach, the crew on Volunteer viewing the half sunken canoe. From left to right, Tweezerman, Rick Scofield, Lad Mills with Larry Haff in the water. Photo lifted from the CBMM Facebook page.

Rig and outrigger secured on Volunteer, Rick watches closely that the canoe main hull, still with very little freeboard, doesn't veer off or dive under the water as we slowly tow her in.

Lad Mills at the helm. Larry Haff  adding another pair of eyes astern. Other than the outrigger attachment failure there didn't seem to be any other major damage.

Larry Haff's outrigger canoe, back on shore, loaded up for the journey back to Massachusetts and some engineering modifications over the winter.

2014 MASCF - The Sailboat Race

The sailboat race at the Mid-Atlantic Small Craft Festival starts around 1 p.m.on Saturday and is a quick, short jaunt, usually two legs, around the Miles River with the finish off the Museum docks. This year the fleet launched in sunshine which quickly clouded over, the sun peeking through occasionally for the race and then reappearing after the boats had finished. Luckily, the wind which had been blowing hard out of the northwest in the morning had moderated. About forty of the Festival sailboats, sailed out, turning the corner just outside of St. Michaels harbor to make the start.

I was able to again wrangle a ride on the Race Committee boat, the Volunteer, a thirty foot open workboat built by Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum staff, ably handled by Asst. Curator Rick Scofield and Boat Donations Manager, Lad Mills. Although I have a reasonable knack for identifying sailing dinghies, I have difficulty in identifying the subset of designs by traditionalists such as Ian Oughtred and John Welsford. For the following photos taken before the start, readers may want to chime in with the boat types and I will add them later to this post.

Smiles! This is one thing that strikes a competitive racer, such as I, when viewing the fleet before the start. There were so many beaming smiles! This may be a Welsford Pathfinder yawl.

Smiles from a San Francisco Bay Pelican, a flat bottomed, dory sided centerboarder, known for their yacht-like stability.

A traditional gaff-rigged catboat.

A green catboat with a balanced lug and lapstrake topsides. According to the Woodenboat Forum, this is a Tom Hill Modified River Skiff. 

Spirit is a design by West River, Maryland icon, Capt. Dick Hartge. Capt. Dick Hartge built Spirit in his retirement in Florida. It is a stretched Chesapeake 20, adding 2 feet to the length, finishing in a pretty canoe stern. Restored by a group in Calvert County, Spirit, under one reef, easily won the sailboat race.

A regular attendee to MASCF, Bonito, a DC-10 dinghy.

The C. Lowndes Johnson Eighteen Footer number 1. Pete Lesher with a crowd of family and friends. The Eighteen Footer's would finish 2nd and 3rd in the race.

Eighteen Footer number 2.

The start. In the foreground may be blogger Eddie Breeden and son. See his 2014 MASCF photos over here at Lingering Lunacy. We can see a 13' Blue Jay starting in the background.

Another photo right before the starting gun. The Classic Moth is just left of center, to leeward of an ACA sailing canoe.

2014 MASCF - From the Docks

It seems I've settled into a two year rotation in making it over to St. Michaels, Maryland for the Mid-Atlantic Small Boat Festival (MASCF hosted by the Chesapeake Maritime Museum, on their grounds). This year saw me once again go for a Saturday to wander around a crowd I normally don't hang out with, the ones with mostly home-built boats, kayaks, canoes, pulling boats, traditional reproductions, CLC kit boats, Bolger boxes, restored dinghies, and other oddball designs. Strange as strange as it could be, as soon as I arrived at the Festival, I ran into two ex-bosses. Walking across the parking lot to get a ticket I ran into an old engineering manager. He and I were the only two sailors at this former company, but he had a J-27 racing keelboat, so it was somewhat of a surprise to see him going into a show featuring this polyglot mix of mostly wooden boats. It turns out he was making a day-trip of it with his wife and another couple. For him, the feature event was to be later on, dining out in the delightful waterside town of St. Michaels. We caught up on some long-ago names - you know, what is so-and-so doing now? Is he retired? Where is he living? We split up after getting into the show.

I ran into an old sailmaking boss once inside the show. Again, an odd meeting since he is a racing Star and Log Canoe sailor and not known to take much interest in these small boats. And again I was updated on old co-workers.

Then it was my turn to wander the docks. I did wander into someone from the Kirby Paint Co,, New Bedford MA.. I have used their marine enamels and have found them easy to use and even I am able to get a reasonable finish with them, despite my impatience with painting boats.

Some boats at the docks, at least the ones I took photos of:

Pete Lesher, the chief curator at the Chesapeake Maritime Museum has collected the only two known C. Lowndes Johnson Eighteen-Footers, a design precursor, by ten years (1922), of his most famous dinghy, the Comet (1932). I had a very interesting conversation with Pete on where American dinghy design originated in the early years of the twentieth century.

The cat-ketch Graham Byrne's design Core Sound 17. The larger Core Sound 20 is the go-to design for those looking to do the Everglades Challenge. Two mainsails with wishbone booms make for simple day sailing on this easy-to-build shallow V-shaped hull.

This Force 5 had a purple hull and this puke-lime-yellow deck. Bravo to the old production builders from the 1980's! How I wish more fiberglass dinghies built today would add a splash of adventurous color. White on white on white gets boring, boring. (You also got to love the wood touches in this Force 5 - the centerboard cap and the front cockpit coaming. Does anyone know if this was original on the production boats?)

The always gorgeous Lavertue restored 1880's sailing canoe, a constant fixture, from year to year, at MASCF.

There is this Classic Moth, a Shelley design, that only shows up for MASCF, but has never attended any of our Classic Moth events, This Shelley sports mini-wings that are illegal under the Classic Moth rules. This could be easily fixed to comply with our rules but so far the owner has shown no inclination to race with us.

Micro Dinghy: Bolger "Queen Mab" Catboat

Several years back, at the Mid-Atlantic Small Craft Festival, a builder of the beautiful micro-dinghy, the Bolger designed Queen Mab catboat, was offering a spin. No one else was taking her up on the offer, so I eased myself into this 7 1/2 foot craft and aimed her out of the harbor. You sail reclined, using your feet to steer, `a la the Hobie kayak/trimarans. After some trepidation with how this tiny craft would handle the motor boat chop out on the Miles River, I had an enjoyable sail. There were some equipment sore-spots. The steering cable, similar to a bicycle brake cable, was very sticky. The sail was very overbuilt and had trouble setting in the lightish breezes. The offset centerboard (offset close to the gunwhale so as to give the skipper legroom on the centerline) had a tendency to float up. But overall, the Queen Mab sailed, slowly but smartly, bobbing over the wakes. Besides the cuteness of the catboat's classical lines in a very small size, I could see this design offering up some memorable cruises on a small pond. The blogger over at 70.8 percent has a much more detailed look at the Queen Mab and her first-time builder, the post probably coming from the same MASCF I sailed her.

Queen Mab sitting on the lawn in all her regal glory.

You intrepid blogmeister, game for a go in any small craft, showing his legs.

Sunfish Frankenboat; The Solar Fish

Drawn to all things just different, I couldn't pass up taking photos of this modified Sunfish, the Solar Fish, that showed up at the 2012 Mid-Atlantic Small Craft Festival. Very ingenious. It was designed to be a sit-in, non-hiking day sailor with a small cabin. I took a quick once-over on shore but didn't have a chance to talk to the owner/builder. Some features that were apparent in my quick glance over were;

• Furling sail.
• Solar panel that fed a small trolling motor (the motor seemed to double as a rudder as well.)
• A very nautical looking cabin.
• What looked to be a wooden anchor bowsprit fitting (but I didn't see an anchor).

The Sunfish sported Ohio registration numbers. There seems to be a large number of retired machinists from the now-gone heavy industry factories of Ohio that seem to love hacking into various projects.


The Solar Fish made it out for a sail-about before the sailing race but didn't participate, instead smartly returning to shore under power, ignoring the contrary wind blowing off the Museum shores.

A side on view of the Solar Fish under sail..

Two photos on the trailer.