Almost two years ago, at the 2024 biannual gathering of the Teaching with Small Boats Alliance (TWBSA), Joe Youcha showed me some drawings of a small skiff designed by Joel White in the early 1990s. The concept had been developed for a Maine-based minister who wanted to start a youth boatbuilding program. The boat was simple but jaunty. It was meant to be built from just two sheets of plywood, and to go together relatively quickly. It had never been built. The drawings seem to have not advanced beyond the concept stage, and Joe had misplaced his copy for many years.
The re-emergence of the design in 2024 sparked a project for us: Joe built a model to work out the construction details. He then built a prototype with a high-school class and photographed the process (page 38). After that, he gathered five families at WoodenBoat School to each build one of the boats for themselves, and photographed that class, too. During that week, my daughter, Louise, a budding sailor, shook-down the prototype for the image that appears on this issue’s cover. By the end of the week, there were six Church Mouse Skiffs (as the design had been named) in the world. Louise is eager to build one of her own, and there are at least five more on the way this summer.