Fifty Wooden Boats (Woodenboat Publications)
Winthrop Warner gave his Little Gull design a simple sloop rig, with a jib that can easily be fitted with a boom to make it self-tending. Her small cabin accommodates two for cruising.
Forty years have passed since I wrote about the Little Gull design for WoodenBoat’s first design catalog, Fifty Wooden Boats, but the words are as valid now as they were back then, in 1996: “So well proportioned is this salty little cruiser that she looks like a boat half again larger than her 20′3″ hull length. And so wholesome is her design that she should be able to face up to about any sea or wind one is apt to find; with competent handling, she’d even do well in offshore sailing. An outside ballast keel of cast lead makes her self-righting, and a small-volume, self-bailing cockpit keeps her from taking on much water in the unlikely event of a knockdown.”