Dutch Skûtsje in a Bit of a Pickle

I came across this photo on the InterWebs of a Dutch working scow, a Skûtsje, doing what sailboats without keels are wont to do every once in a while; reward in-attention by coming close to capsizing. From the Earwigoagin archives, I've written before about the Dutch Skûtsje, here, and here.

All of my posts on Dutch sailboats.

Man Overboard: Bermuda Fitted Dinghy

The previous header photo was of a sailor who became partially disconnected from his Bermuda Fitted Dinghy and is desperately trying to maintain his grip (as they say). This was a set of early season photos posted on Facebook. The always photogenic Bermuda Fitted Dinghy has been featured three previous times in the header photo of Earwigoagin.

View all articles on the Bermuda Fitted Dinghy.

A sampling of photos of the Bermuda Fitted Dinghy from the same FB batch.

The start in the Bermuda Fitted Dinghy class is casting off from both sides a stake boat, in this case a working craft (tugboat maybe?). No idea how they determine the order or the side you will start from.

Lots of crew for a 14 footer, hence not much freeboard.

Three Rivers Race: I can't get enough of Dylan Winter!

If I had a bucket list (which I don't; I am more of the type to play it by ear, see what life offers up, and see what falls out), racing in the U.K Three Rivers Race on the Norfolk Broads would be at top. I have written several posts over the years about the Three Rivers Race, most of the posts featured the superb Dylan Winters videos which have since disappeared. However, this Dylan Winter video on the Three Rivers Race has resurfaced and is a perfect summery antidote for a Mid-Atlantic evening where we are bundled up in an early December cold-snap and the temperatures at night have been dipping well below zero.



Dylan Winter is asking those who enjoy his videos to consider contributing some cash. His website is over here.

Don Betts - Providence River Boat - "Pickle"

Don Betts, designer of the the micro Pea Cat, contacted Tweezerman back in March about his latest project, a traditional Providence River Boat. His story:

"The boat was built to display decorated crocks for an art installation. I wouldn’t build anything just for the exhibit, it had to be a usable boat. The design is from a mix of different boats There are two surviving 19th century Providence River Boats. One was too big ("Peggoty" over in Little Compton) and one was too small ("Button Swan" from Narragansett Bay now over in Mystic). Mystic also now has a newer version of "Peggoty", on shore behind a shed. My version of the boat is 14’ , the surviving originals are about 12’ and 18’. The jib helps with reliable tacking and gives the crew something to do. The boat will make most tacks without the jib if the crew moves aft. Chapelle’s American Small Sailing Craft page 243 has a drawing and description of the Providence River Boat, built in Newport Bristol Warren and Providence. After these pictures were taken the aft end of the keel and rudder depth was increased by about 4”.

The Providence River Boat lacks a centerboard or daggerboard and, Tweezerman, being of a mentality that a centerboard is one piece of sailing hardware you do need if you want to go upwind, I asked Don how the Providence River Boat performed upwind. (The micro Pipsqueak is another craft that depended on a full length skeg/keel for lateral resistance.)

"Almost the same as most other centerboard catboats. The full length keel, three inch at the bow sweeping to 16” at the stern does the trick. We keep the boat on a mooring but pick up and discharge on the beach. The boat is round enough that the aft end of the keel and rudder will lift free of the bottom by crew weight forward. Phil Bolger designed a little boat called Lady Slipper, an 8’ round bottom no centerboard with a similar deep aft end skeg-keel. I had sailed one at a boat show about 40 years ago and remembered the uncluttered cockpit feeling and lateral resistance balanced way aft so eventually made the connection between that and the Providence River catboats.

The photos show a roomy daysailor that seems to take to ground well when the tide has gone out.

Plans for the Providence River Boat from the Smithsonian

The Providence River Boat with the original crockery art display.

The jib bowsprit looks to be readily detachable.

Plans for the Providence River Boat available from the Smithsonian.

Catboats from Readers

My catboat posts elicited more email and comment than usual. Two of my readers pointed out their favorite catboats (which happen to be from English designers).

Max from the Bursledon Blog owns a Cornish Cormorant, a smallish non-traditional catboat from the designer Roger Dongrey. The Cornish Cormorant is one of his favorites and he has written a loving post about the Cormorant over here. The high freeboard and a smallish rig of the Cormorant seems to be just the ticket to handle lots of wind and waves in a 3.73 meter length dinghy.

Kiwi Neil Kennedy likes this traditional catboat from English designer, Andrew Wolstenholme. I'm not sure what the design name is for this catboat (that is, if you were searching within Andrew's design portfolio for plans), but this design just oozes classic beauty. Below is an example on display at the London Beale Park Wooden Boat Festival.

Describing a sailboat as a catboat can cover a huge spectrum of design shapes and rig choices and evokes a passionate attachment to this type, or to that type. It is a catboat, where many of us focus so keenly in putting our study and experience and joy with the beauty of sailboats and in how a boat moves us when we are on the water.

Australian 12-Foot Cadet Junior Trainer

Nope, I'm not posting about the Jack Holt designed, 3.2 meter, 10.5 foot junior dinghy, popular internationally. This is the Australian 12-foot Cadet, a lapstrake open dinghy, designed in the 1920's and still used as a junior trainer by the Royal Brighton Yacht Club in Melbourne, Australia. The 12-foot Cadet, definitely an anachronism in this modern age, is still used by the RBYC and seems very much at home in the big wind and big water of Port Phillip Bay.

A vintage restored Cadet Dinghy. Sporting a skeg and gently swooping sheer, you couldn't get any more classic lines for an old traditional dinghy, .

Big winds, big waves, spinnaker pulling. The juniors sail them three up and the modern ones are fiberglass with aluminum masts. These dinghies do sport big rigs and a jib that hangs off a bowsprit, both are hallmarks of vintage Australian dinghies.

2016 Downrigging Weekend: Chestertown Maryland

Chestertown Maryland is where our local Classic Moth fleet has home-base. It is also where the assorted tall-ships and traditional schooners of the Mid-Atlantic Region gather on the last weekend in October for a festival called Downrigging Weekend. John Z. was taking his now-surplussed Mistral over to Chestertown that weekend for a demo sail (and possible sale) and I tagged along with my old digital camera to hopefully get some photos of these traditional ships. The Chester River is narrow up near the town so my feeble zoom lens would not be at such a disadvantage in getting reasonable photos.

The Kalmar Nyckel is a reproduction of a 17th-century Dutch pinnace based on a design of 1625. This tall ship, under the command of Peter Minuit and financed by the New Sweden company, brought Swedish immigrants over to settle New Sweden (now the state of Delaware). The Kalmar Nyckel entered Delaware Bay in March of 1638. The modern reproduction was launched on the Christina River in 1998 and is the official tall ship of Delaware.

When I think of pirate ships, I think of a stern like this  (well maybe not the RIB).

The Sultana is an 18th century Royal Navy coastal patrol schooner used to collect duties and pursue smugglers. The original was built in Boston in 1767, made its way to England where she was purchased by the Royal Navy and sent back to patrol the East Coast. The reproduction was built in Chestertown in 2001 and is also based out of there.

The Pride of Baltimore is Maryland's official tall ship. This is a reproduction of a Baltimore clipper, a top-sail schooner best known as a privateer. Long, lean, fast, the most famous Baltimore clipper, Chasseur, gained fame (or infamy) when it raided English merchant fleet off the British Isles coastal waters during the 1812 war.

Lady Maryland is a reproduction of a pungy schooner designed for fast transport of perishable goods from the farms of the Eastern shore and lower Neck to the city of Baltimore. The heyday of this type was short, being built from the 1840's to about the 1880's. Lady Maryland is one of the older reproductions, being built in 1985.

The stern on Lady Maryland is very pretty; upswept lines meeting a transom with curved topside. The boat on the davits looked to be a traditional Chesapeake Bay small working skiff.

The A.J. Meerwald is a New Jersey oystering schooner. She is the original, built in 1928 and has been New Jersey's official tall ship since 1998.

The Chesapeake Bay's own oystering work boat, the skipjack.

Back to the Classic Moths, John Z was able to complete the sale of his Mistral, Y2KBug. Here is the new owner getting sorted out.

From the Earwigoagin archives, the Classic Moth fleet racing with Chestertown in the background.

Header Photo: 1880's Small Cruising Cutter

The previous header photo was a side view of small cruising cutter of the early 1880's, designed by C.P. Kunhardt, then sailing editor of Forest and Stream magazine. By the Civil War, Americans had begun to cruise their native catboats along the East Coast. By the late 1870's, the importation of these English style cutters into New York City and, American designers following up with their own cutter designs, marked the acceleration of the proliferation of the pocket cruiser and the democratization of, what had been, a sport of the mega-rich with their massive yachts. The appearance of these narrow beam, deep draft cutters, both small and large, also ignited a firestorm in the American yachting press, as nativists, in letter after letter to the editor, extolled the better cruising qualities of the beamier American shoal draft, centerboard designs, the catboat and the sharpie. As the sport entered the 1880's, three camps, the cutter and the two types of American shoal draft sailing craft, were building small cruisers of three widely disparate shapes to match the increasing demand of the well-to-do middle class.

The lines to C.P. Kunhardt's pocket cutter cruiser.

Traditions and Memories of American Yachting

C.P. Kurnhardt, an early and vociferous proponent of the English cutter, later relented and tacitly admitted the abilities of the American craft when, in 1886, he designed a small centerboard catboat (shown below) which he took on a long cruise down the Eastern Seaboard.

Traditions and Memories of American Yachting

A photo taken from an W.P Stephens' history of the New York Canoe Club shows one of the early English pocket cruisers hauled out next to the clubhouse. W.P Stephens' caption:

"The yacht Coquette beside the house was at one time owned by Mr. Whitlock; she was brought to New York in 1879 by Mr. Henry W. Eaton, a member of the Rowing Cub... Coquette was built at Southampton, England, in 1874 and was modeled closely after the single-handed yawl Rob Roy in which Capt. MacGregor cruised in 1867; she was 24 ft. over-all, 21 ft. waterline, 7 ft. breadth and 4 ft. draft.

W.P. Stephens, who succeeded C.P. Kunhardt as sailing editor at Forest and Stream magazine, was also predisposed to the English type. In 1898 when he designed and built his own pocket cruiser he went in a different direction, using the Humber canoe yawl as the basis for his canoe yawl, Snickersnee. This was not surprising given W.P. Stephens background as a designer and builder of canoes.

Traditions and Memories of American Yachting

A sketch of Snickersnee by George F. Holmes.

Traditions and Memories of American Yachting

Haul Away! Let's Hoist the Ballooner!

A spinnaker hoist on a Fife cutter as seen from the vantage point of a jumper strut high up on the wood mainmast. A lot of canvas flying!


Mariquita spinnaker hoist, "Poetry in motion". from Richard Sawle on Vimeo.

This blog is mostly about small boat sailing but I have covered keelboats occasionally. For those in the depths of Northern Hemisphere winter, inside the house, with time on their hands, you can watch my previous keeler posts on Earwigoagin here.

Header Photo: Shannon One-Design Start

The previous photo is a start of the Shannon One Design, an Irish, 18 foot, clinker, cat-rigged traditional dinghy that is raced primarily out of Lough Derg on the River Shannon. The class came about when, in 1920, sailors on the River Shannon decided to ditch their motley assortment of 18 foot sailing/rowing open boats and settle on a design by Morgan Giles.

These Shannon One Design's are very quick in a breeze.

Photo from Technology and Culture - Boats

In looking up the Shannon One Design, I came across the BBC show, "Three Men in a Boat", which seems to be a watery takeoff of the hit BBC car show, "Top Gear"; both shows featuring three guys swimming in back-and-forth witty banter . "Three Men in a Boat" did a show on cruising the Shannon and featured the Shannon One Design (seen at about 19 minutes in on the following YouTube).

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The Wikipedia page for the Shannon One Design can be found here.

George Steer's 1856 design "Laura"

In 1856, the last year of his life, George Steers, the designer of America, designed a small 24' racer for Harry Latrobe Roosevelt of Skaneateles N.Y. Named Laura, this Steer's racer would spend her entire career on Skaneateles Lake. On Christmas Day, 1936, after being hauled for the last time, Osgood R. Smith, John Barnes, and Art Emerick would measure Laura on the beach. Eight years later, Osgood R. Smith wrote an article on Laura in the August 1944 issue of Yachting magazine and included the lines they had assembled.

Laura provides a glimpse of how the New York designers were moving the lines of the New York oystering workboat into a recreational racer. (See also Chris Thompson's article on the 1853 Una design by Bob Fish). We see the basis of form that would be tweaked, some fifteen years later, into the all-out Sandbaggers of the 1870's. Compared to Sandbaggers,  the George Steer's Laura is a wholesome hull of moderate proportions though we can see the fine bow and the tucked-up aft rocker of the Sandbaggers. There is no record of Laura needing sandbags to be raced.

Laura's sections show a fair bit of tumblehome.

The beam is not excessive.

This side view has the stern lopped off because the copier distorted the stern as the page made it's way down into the binding of the book.

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My night of Sandbagger sailing.

Falmouth Working Boats

Sometimes all it takes to brighten the mood is a video of a class of topsail cutters, crews working hard, these powerful sailing craft cutting deep furrows, their jaunty bowsprits leading the way as they bash upwind, .

A video of Falmouth Working Boats racing with their big rigs combined with insightful interviews of those involved with the class:

Falmouth Week 2014 - Falmouth Working Boats - The Highlights from Liz George on Vimeo.

A drawing of the Falmouth Working Boat shows a full keel, broad shoulders, narrowish stern and cutter sections of the traditional English fishing boats

The St. Mawes Sailing Club has this warning to spectators, particularly those who are watching the Falmouth Working Boat racing from a boat:

"A final cautionary note to add is that most Working Boats carry no engine and under full racing sail they are a handful for even the most experienced sailor. A long keel and limited visibility to leeward for the helmsman means that manoeuvrability is limited especially on crowded start lines or amongst moorings. I would recommend viewing from a distance and marvel at the skill of the top skippers as they navigate their way through the obstacle course that is the Carrick Roads on a summer's day.

This post treads on territory much better covered by English blogger, Max, over at Busledon Blog. (See his post on the Falmouth Working Boats and Oyster Festival.)

Header Photo: Yoles Rondes de la Martinique

The previous header photo is of the Yoles Rondes de la Martinique, a sailing canoe, a wild and wacky, far-removed cousin of our Chesapeake Bay Log Canoe. There are various classes; the large Yoles can have two sails (two sails for offwind courses?), the one in the photo just one, and they sport low slung. very square, boom-less sprit sails. Their hiking aids can't technically be called planks, since they aren't shaped, just round poles. They are steered with a long oar, leveraged off the stern.

I've mentioned the premier event of the Yoles Rondes season before in Earwigoagin, a round-the-island tour which takes place in late summer and is the sporting event of the year for the island of Martinique.

The Yoles de la Martinique belong to that genre of large crewed, over-rigged, unballasted sailing beasts, along with the Australian Classic skiff (here and here), the Bermuda Fitted Dinghy, the Bahamian workboats, the Log Canoes, the Coco Island Canoe, and the Hawaiian Sailing Canoe.

A photo, gleaned from the Internet, of a Yole Ronde struggling under full press:

A drone video set to a soothing score which belies the chaos below:



A series of on-board videos put together by "Yoles Martinique", with much shouting onboard (in French). Some things to note:

• It takes two strong men on the oar to steer when the wind comes up.
• Offwind, they will put some of the crew on their poles to leeward to reduce roll momentum (where they seem to spend most of the time underwater).
• Every once in a while, a crew is jettisoned into the briny deep, the assumption being to reduce weight for offwind legs.
• The crews are all smartly kitted out in matching team gear.

My2Fish has done a better job in researching the Yoles and wrote this informative post over on his blog.

What a glorious, photogenic sailing class!

Bahamian C-Class Catboat Racing as Seen from a Drone

I've posted before on the Bahamian C-Class catboats; the ones that have two crews on pries and a sail with an enormous foot length. Now we can finally add a well done drone video to the conversation.



I put this post up and then came across another video of the C-Class Catboats from the same videographer, Dallas Knowles. Here he has a GoPro on the end of the long boom in what seems to be a one-legged race, a beat to windward. Our intrepid C-Class catboat crew first bangs the right side of the weather leg and then half-way up the beat decides to bang the left side. You'll have to watch most of this 14 minute video to see if these not-so-conservative tactics work out.

Sketch of a Sandbagger

This is a sketch of one of the large sandbaggers, used in an ad for Geo. W. Carpenter, Sailmaker, appearing in an 1894 issue of Forest and Stream.

From the Earwigoagin archives; my experience with sandbagger sailing.

Bit of Snow

We had a bit of snow and wind over the weekend here in the Mid Atlantic. Damned inconvenient in the modern world... waiting, ... waiting...  house-bound, but the snow plow did finally come through today to free us up. To overcome the ennui of isolation what better than to view a video where life is balmy, even tropical. Ah! shorts, bare feet!

A video of a twilight sail in a traditional day charter boat our of St. John, U.S. Virgin Islands.



Sailing in St. John, US Virgin Islands from angelo on Vimeo.

L'Hermione Visits Annapolis

It will be good to wrap up 2015 on Earwigoagin with a much delayed post about the French tall-ship, L'Hermione, the ship that brought Lafayette to America to fight in the American Revolution. The recently completed replica of L'Hermione visited Annapolis this past June and, as with anything nautical, vast crowds descended on City Dock to take a tour. I was one of the throng and even though I got there early enough, it took me close to an hour of snaking back and forth before I could climb the gang plank to board her.

L'Hermione was a middling warship for that era but, up close, she remains today an impressive working monument of the late 18th century. I can't help to imagine what it would have been like to row around a busy anchorage of the 1780's, surrounded by dozens and dozens of tall ships; merchantmen , privateers, warships, and coastal traders. To me, that would be just as stunning a visage as any large cathedral.

Bonnie of Frogma reported on L'Hermione's visit to New York City (unlike me, she wrote it about it when it happened). Her report can be found here.

The official website.

Some of my photos:

The line on the home-stretch, within minutes of finally going on board. There was a fellow singing sea-shanties to keep those in line entertained.

Humanity packed on deck.

Given my small boat bent, I was interested in this pair of nesting launches. The mast indicated that at least one had a sailing rig.

The figure-head.

There were plenty of Revolutionary re-enactors milling about including these three in the French army uniform.

I hadn't realized until reading the local newspaper coverage of L'Hermione's visit that Annapolis has a memorial to the French soldiers and sailors who had died fighting in the American Revolution. It was tucked in the corner of St. John's college, in a copse of pine trees overlooking College Creek, just behind the boat house. After touring the L'Hermione, I took the fifteen minute stroll in the hot June sun, up Pinkney Street, over to Prince George Street, past the Paca House and across the campus, to visit the memorial. The flowers were from a commemoration service that had taken place the previous day, but on this day, I was the only one there.

The Other International 12

I mentioned in my post about the American International 12 that there is also what is referred to as the European International 12, the George Cockshott lapstrake, 1912 design, lug-rigged dinghy which is particularly popular in both Italy and the Netherlands. The Italians refer to the class simply as the Dinghy 12 and they race both a fiberglass and a classic wood version. Here is another well done video on the Italian Dinghy 12.

One Project of the Super-Rich

This is one project of the super-rich where the beauty just radiates outward into one colossal superlative and, even if you are to the left of the political spectrum, all you can say is, "Well done, well done!"



LES VOILES DE SAINT-TROPEZ 2015 - DAY 3 : C'est bon ! from GMR+G1 on Vimeo.


My post on the resurgence of the J-class can be found here.

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An aside

Is it me, but doesn't one of the professional sailors look a lot like Otto (Kevin Kline) from a "Fish called Wanda"

Header Photo: Monotype du Bassin d'Arcachon

The Bursledon Blogger got this right. The previous header photo was of a beach gathering of the traditional lug-rigged dinghies from France's Arcachon Bay. You can read more about the traditional sailboats of the Arcachon Bay over here.