New intro coming from Matt….
EMMA
Photos by Liesel Briggs
When Ken Briggs was 10, he was fascinated by boats. His grandfather, seeing an opportunity to share skills that would serve Ken for a lifetime, guided him through building a small boat. Two generations later, Ken’s grandson, Kippen, had taken an early interest in sailing; when he was 11, he asked Ken if they could build a boat together. With his grandfather on board, Kippen read Jim Michalak’s Boatbuilding for Beginners and Beyond and decided to build the Mayfly, a flat-bottomed skiff detailed in the book. Starting during the winter of 2023–24, grandfather and grandson worked together in Ken’s home workshop in the woods outside of Whitehorse in Yukon Territory, Canada. On Father’s Day in June of 2024, they launched EMMA. Kippen had learned valuable lessons about patience and perseverance, and the two had learned a lot about each other.
GET ABOUT
Photo by Nate Rooks/Off Center Harbor
Gary Brown is a lifelong boater, and over the past 20 years he has owned several boats and built two of them. Sailing has been his passion, but he began to think that a powerboat would offer a better way to explore the Columbia and Willamette rivers near his home in Aloha, Oregon, and to venture north to Washington’s Puget Sound cruising grounds. He settled on building a Sam Devlin–designed Surf Runner 25. He first had Sam draw a transom to accommodate a 200-hp outboard in lieu of a stern drive and later, during the construction, Gary added chine flats and a bow-thruster tunnel to the hull and raised the cuddy cabin roof for more headroom. After 2,300 hours of working on the boat over two and three-quarter years, he launched GET ABOUT on the Columbia River in May 2024.
Montana Pram
Photos by Ken Elowe
Grandkids are good reasons to build a boat. The boat may be a gift for the child, but building it has just as much benefit for the grandparent by filling the free time of retirement and creating a long-lasting legacy. Ken Elowe of West Brookfield, Massachusetts, has two granddaughters, ages 7 and 2, and for them he built a Montana Pram designed by Paul Butler. Ken stretched the 9-footer to 11′ to make room for a parent or grandparent to accompany the girls. As one of the purposes for the pram, Butler envisioned “meandering across a backyard pond with the grandkids.” For Ken’s granddaughters, that’s right on target: the girls have a shallow pond adjoining the back yard of their home in eastern Massachusetts. The as-yet-nameless pram was launched in July 2024 on the birthday of Ken’s eldest granddaughter.
WOY
Photos by Nico Krauss
Jan Brügge put the crew of his boatyard in Königstein, Germany, to work building WOY, a 26′ daysailer. He paired the innovative design by Martin Menzer of Berckemeyer Yacht Design (www.berckemeyer-yacht.de) with an equally forward-thinking insistence on using locally harvested woods and bio-based products. The spruce and silver-fir veneers are laminated using a vacuum-infusion process, developed in collaboration with the Eberswalde University for Sustainable Development, that minimizes the builders’ exposure to the epoxy. The decks are made from Douglas-fir, which is not a local wood but avoids using unsustainable tropical woods. WOY is both a demonstration of environmentally responsible high-tech boatbuilding as well as Jan’s personal boat. He’ll be sailing her in weekly races on the Schlei, the 20-mile-long inlet that connects Königstein to the Baltic Sea.
Nymph
Photos by Charlie Flanagan
After a lifetime of boating and more than four decades working in the marine supply industry, Bill Griffin of Annapolis, Maryland, set his sights on building a boat, but he lacked woodworking experience, tools, and a workshop large enough for the project. What he did have was a good neighbor, Charlie Flanagan. Charlie had space, tools, experience, and a willingness to help. Bill ordered a Chesapeake Light Craft kit for the Nymph, a strip-built double-paddle canoe designed by Nick Schade. Bill and Charlie went to work and spent four months applying walnut and red- and yellow-cedar strips. They finished the canoe in December 2023 but didn’t launch it until April 2024—so beautiful was the work that the canoe spent the winter in an art gallery. Bill now paddles the Nymph in the creeks that flow into the South River.
VICTORIA
Photos by Ben Fundis (above); Ben Fundis (below)
When Steve Denette of Granby, Massachusetts, needed a tender for ARABELLA, the Atkin-designed ketch he built and made famous on his Acorn to ARABELLA YouTube channel, he asked Bob Emser to build it. Emser, who has his own YouTube channel, The Art of Boat Building, took inspiration from two Atkin dinghies to design a 9′ sailing tender that would fit on the ketch’s housetop. The lumber for the tender was salvaged from the remains of VICTORIA, an Atkin ketch built in the 1920s. Bob strip-built the tender to keep it light and easy to maintain. For sailing, he designed a sprit rig and an ingenious rudder that kicks up with a pull of the tiller. The tender was launched at Mattapoisett, Massachusetts, in June 2023 and christened VICTORIA after her namesake, which provided not only her lumber but also the brass letters that spell out the name on the tender’s freshly varnished transom.
RUBY LEE
Photos by Steve Wenger (above); Jeanne Wenger (below)
Steve Wenger lives landlocked in Glade Park, Colorado, where the nearest water is at the bottom of local household wells, some 500′ deep. It’s a 70-mile drive to Vega Reservoir, the nearest surface water wide enough—barely—for sailing. That hasn’t stopped Steve from building boats, five of them. His latest is built to Tracy O’Brien’s Nemah design. The 15′ sharpie for sail and oar is built in stitch-and-glue plywood and trimmed with mahogany. Christened RUBY LEE, she was launched in May 2024 at Vega. Her maiden sail was cut short by gusty winds, a common occurrence for the reservoir nestled between mountains at an elevation of 8,000′. The sharpie performs well with oars and with an electric trolling motor, and Steve anticipates RUBY LEE will become his favorite fishing boat. He’ll try his luck at Trout Lake, a 150-mile drive from home and at a breathless elevation of 9,700′.
AKIMBO
Photos by Lesley Tulloch
When Iain Tulloch decided to build a new boat for himself, he put his skills as a naval architect and marine engineer to good use. He also drew upon a lifetime of sailing and his earlier experience of designing and building several wooden boats, ranging from kayaks, rowboats, and sailing dinghies to a 43′ keel boat. For his latest boat, he had in mind a 22′6″ plywood schooner with a beam of 8′6″. To prevent excessive heeling when the wind pipes up, the boat has water-ballast tanks equipped with a pump to transfer weight to the windward side. The center cockpit can comfortably accommodate four for daysailing, and the cabin space has a head, a galley, and two full-sized bunks for cruising. Launched in May 2023, AKIMBO sails the Canadian waters surrounding Iain’s home on Nova Scotia’s Fox Point.
MELI-HA-HA
Photos by Paul O’Halloran
If, like David O’Halloran, you lived next door to a community boat ramp on the shore of Lake Mohawk in northern New Jersey, you’d eventually build a boat. David’s only background in such a project was a woodworking class in high school, so he did several years of research before calling Chase Small Craft to order a kit for the François Vivier–designed Morbic 11. David went to work on the strip-built hull in his tiny garage and found the project, which lasted two years, “complicated, frustrating at times, but well worth the effort.” He launched the boat, christened MELI-HA-HA in August 2023, and since then the bright-finished boat’s patterns of western red and Alaska yellow cedar have never failed to draw admiring looks and appreciative comments wherever and whenever David takes her out.
ECHO
Photos by Michael Jones (above); Judith Powers (below)
When Michael Jones, the president of the Florida Gulf Coast chapter of the Traditional Small Craft Association, learned that there was a dory built by John Gardner in need of a new home, he wasted no time in making the one-hour drive to see it in St. Petersburg. The Chamberlain gunning dory had an engraved bronze plate that read: “Built in 1966 at Saugus, Mass by John Gardner for Thomas A Howell of Califon, NJ.” Gardner had written about the gunning dory in two of his books and had drawn plans for a version of the boat in batten-seamed plywood, the method used in the boat he built for Howell. The dory was in surprisingly good condition and needed only minor repairs. While the mast and boom matched the Beachcomber-Alpha rig Gardner had drawn for the gunning dory, Michael made the switch to a balance lug. The newly christened ECHO was relaunched in May 2024 at Cedar Key.
Gloucester Light Dory
Photo by Debra Feinman
In 1987, David Bush built a 15′6″ Gloucester Light Dory, a Phil Bolger design. David was then living in Reno, Nevada, and rowed on Lake Tahoe. He had indoor storage for the boat for five years, but when he moved to the Pacific Northwest the best he could do to keep the boat out of the rain and snow was to cover it with a tarp. The plywood swelled to the point of tearing the fiberglass at the chines. After that first winter, he found indoor storage for the dory and sanded the paint off to let the plywood dry. Then the boat lay dormant for 30 years. David resheathed the hull in ’glass cloth and epoxy, repainted it, and relaunched it at Port Townsend, Washington, in April 2024. Since then, he has explored Puget Sound and Lake Sammamish under oars and is planning to row Lake Chelan in Central Washington.
KIBBY
Photos by Jeremy Roht (above); Alan Heisey (below)
Alan Heisey’s uncle, Karl Heisey, bought a Handy Boy, a lightly built 14′ runabout, from Ontario’s Peterborough Canoe Company in 1954. Karl was in his 20s then and used the boat to get to the family cottage in Georgian Bay. In 1963, Alan’s parents bought a quarter-acre island with a one-room cabin in the same area. They bought the Handy Boy from Karl, who had moved on to a larger boat. When Karl died at a young age, the boat took on his childhood name, Kibby. Alan was given KIBBY when his father was in his 80s, and from 2005 on, Alan and his wife and four kids used the boat to get to the family cabin. In 2020, KIBBY began taking on water and was kept ashore until Alan arranged with Baron’s Boat Repair to rebuild her in the winter of 2023. KIBBY was returned to the Heisey family in July 2023, ready to serve their next generations.
These pages, along with the Boat Launchings section of www.woodenboat.com, are dedicated to sharing recently launched wooden boats built or restored by our readers. If you’ve launched a boat within the past year, please email us at launchings@woodenboat.com, or write us at Launchings, WoodenBoat, P.O. Box 78, Brooklin, ME 04616.
Please include the following information:
- The boat’s length and beam;
- The name of its design class or type;
- The names of the designer, builder, owner, and photographer;
- Your mailing address along with an email address or phone number;
- The port or place of intended use;
- Date of launching; and
- A few sentences describing the construction or restoration. Send no more than five photographs (jpg images at 300 dpi) and enclose a SASE if you want anything returned.
Hints for taking good photos of your boat
- Set your camera for high-resolution images. We prefer jpg format, at 300 dpi minimum.
- Stow fenders and extraneous gear out of the camera’s view. Ensure the deck is clean and uncluttered.
- Take your photographs in mid-angle sunlight for best results. Mid-morning or mid-afternoon usually work well.
- Keep the horizon level and the background simple and scenic so your boat stands out from its surroundings.
- Take some pictures of the boat underway and some at rest. Often a vertical format works well for sailboats. Shoot a lot of images, then send us your five favorites.
We enjoy learning of your work—it affirms the vitality of the wooden boat community. We receive so many submissions that there is not room in the magazine for all of them to be published. Launchings not printed in the magazine can be seen at www.woodenboat.com/boat-launchings. 