Peter Murray
Reuel Parker designed and built a lightweight plywood-epoxy 13' Sea Bright Skiff that could be hoisted in davits yet would be a versatile tender for his 53' cruising sailboat, a capable rowing boat, and a good sailer.
History of the Sea Bright Skiff
Sea Bright Skiffs evolved on the beaches of northern New Jersey during the 19th century. Originally conceived as beach-launched fishing boats, they were first recorded around 1845 at Nauvoo, near today’s Sea Bright, just south of Sandy Hook on the state’s northern shore. Their lapstrake-planked hulls were light, strong, and ideally suited to their purpose. The builders used air-dried local woods, usually northern white cedar planking over steam-bent white-oak frames, though some small boats were known to have been framed with sawn cedar roots.
The skiffs had an unusual design feature: rockered, hollow-box keels, which allowed the hulls to be easily turned around on the beach during launching and retrieval. The wide, flat keel planks assured that the skiffs would remain upright and that bilgewater would drain to a low point just forward of the sternsheets, where it could be bailed easily.
Because the boats were launched and retrieved through breaking surf, they had to have hull forms that would make them light, buoyant, and stable in rough water. With the sail and sprit bundled and overhanging the transom, one man at the oars rowed out beyond the surf, where the mast was stepped and the sail unfurled. They had small centerboards but were originally steered with an oar set in a notch in the transom that was also used for sculling.
They soon became famous for their seaworthiness, especially after being adopted by beach-based lifeboat stations along the New Jersey shores, where they were lauded as the most seaworthy of all small craft. The boats were later adapted for use by pound-net fishermen, Prohibition-era rumrunners, and finally sport-fishermen.
The largest types gradually disappeared around the 1950s. The last builder of the original lapstrake surf boats was Charles Hankins & Sons in Lavallette, about 30 miles south of Sea Bright. On some East Coast beaches, Sea Bright Skiffs and South Jersey Beach Skiffs, albeit fiberglass versions, are still in use by lifeguards today.
I have been fascinated by these excellent small craft for many years and have designed nearly two dozen boats inspired by them ranging from 10' to 50' LOA for sail and power alike. For design research, my principal sources have been Howard I. Chapelle’s American Small Sailing Craft, Peter J. Guthorn’s The Sea Bright Skiff and other Shore Boats, a few contemporary photographs, and the archives of Mystic Seaport Museum.
The Chapelle book includes the lines of a 23' 8" model from New York, and Guthorn shows no lines of any skiffs until well into the 20th century. Mystic Seaport has a large Sea Bright Skiff in its collections, a boat used for lifesaving in Lavallette that was built and donated by Charles Hankins. However, her lines have never been taken off. Chapelle also included lines of a 16' 7" South Jersey Beach Skiff, which is a very close cousin to the Sea Bright model. According to Guthorn, the original Sea Bright Skiffs were about 15' long, with 5' beams.
Building the Sea Bright Skiff
I had designed, built, and sailed two Sea Bright models for myself: a 14-footer (see WoodenBoat No. 230), and my 50' cruising ketch T’IEN HOU. In 2020, I wanted a smaller boat—13' overall—as a seaworthy tender and lifeboat for my 53' deadrise cruising motorsailer, PEREGRINE. A boat of that length would be the largest I could practically carry in PEREGRINE’s side davits, and the size was not much smaller than some of the original Sea Bright Skiffs. I built the boat over two summers at my shop in Brooklin, Maine, after returning from my winter harbor in Florida.