Chris ReardonWILD ROOSTER is a recently launched copy of ANKLE DEEP, a 25′ open powerboat designed by Uffa Fox and launched in 1970. She was built and launched in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, and now hails from Portland, Maine. The original boat is on display in Cowes, England, at the Classic Boat Museum.
It was a beautiful spring day as I strode down Montague Street in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia. My wife, Melissa, and I had recently moved here and gotten off to a promising beginning with a fine cast of friends and acquaintances. It was thus with high spirits that I set off on my walk through town with a set of boat plans under one arm and a book under the other.
I was on my way to meet with Paul Baskett, a local boatbuilder. A graduate of the boatbuilding program at The Landing School in Arundel, Maine, Paul had worked with the acclaimed boatbuilders at Spirit Yachts in Ipswich, England (see WB Nos. 284 and 135) for five years before opening his own shop, Old Town Boatworks, in Lunenburg. He’d recently moved to a space that was bigger and better than his previous one, and I needed to talk to him about my urge to have a boat built.
I don’t say this easily: to have a boat built requires much more money, mystery, and stress than buying an existing one. But the boat I wanted wasn’t easily approximated by anything on the market. Inexplicably, I really wanted this boat. I’ve been fairly profligate in my boat-ownership history—a history I don’t quite understand. But maybe this boat would be my last.
The boat, a 25′ open launch named ANKLE DEEP, was designed and built in England by the legendary Uffa Fox in 1969–70. She was the last of Fox’s designs and is the only powerboat in his ample design catalog. (His primary focus, and greatest success, was with fast and lightweight planing sailing dinghies; see WB Nos. 221–224.) The original ANKLE DEEP has been restored and is on display in England at the Classic Boat Museum in Cowes, Isle of Wight.
I’ve been a sailor all my life. Why, now, did I want a powerboat? The simple answer is, adventure. A more complex answer lies in a quote in Fox’s book More Joys of Living. He wrote, “The seas divide the world for a landsman, but for a seaman, they unite it.” And then he introduces us to ANKLE DEEP: “I built this fine-lined launch, which I had specially designed to cut her way easily and cleanly, without waste of energy, through and over waves. She is the largest launch that can be handled easily by one [person] in all conditions of wind and sea….” She is a very pretty boat, and I found her design to be just what I wanted. Her lines are easy and clean, and she is simple, lightweight, and strong. Uffa wrote of her lines: “…I designed ANKLE DEEP with a lovely set of fine-angled sections which combined the ease and graceful entrance of rowing boats, a very fine entrance, with dead-straight waterlines. The bow lines, with a 3 degree angle of attack forward, flow into dead stright [sic] buttock lines as they sweep aft to the stern, a set of lines combining straight waterlines in a fine wedge from the stem with dead straight buttocks (over the aftermost three-fifths of their length) which causes the boat to run level and steady at all speeds.”
I liked how Fox had kept her beam all the way aft, and I was drawn in by that tremendous flare at the bow—not to mention the quote about the seas uniting the land and ANKLE DEEP’s seakeeping ability.
More Joys of Living, by Uffa FoxUffa Fox described the “fine lined” ANKLE DEEP as being able to “cut her way easily and cleanly, without waste of energy, through and over waves. She is the largest launch that can be handled easily by one [person] in all conditions of wind and sea….”
Reimagining Uffa Fox’s ANKLE DEEP Design
I’d already asked Paul to build the boat, and my purpose in going to his shop with the book and the plans was to iron out the details of the construction. Epoxy wasn’t readily available when Uffa designed and built ANKLE DEEP in 1970. So, she was built with ½″ × 2″ double-diagonal mahogany, glued and screwed, which is relatively heavy. My iteration of the boat would be cold-molded in two layers of 1⁄8″ western red cedar glued with epoxy for a significant weight saving.
In Paul’s office on a dock in Lunenburg Harbour, we unrolled the lines and construction plans and weighed them down at the corners, and I presented Paul with his own copy of More Joys of Living. We agreed that a foredeck was necessary. Uffa had used two 9.9-hp Evinrude outboards. We’d use a 20-hp Honda.
Next came the seating. Uffa chose thwarts; I preferred fore-and-aft seating as a more sociable arrangement, because people sit facing each other. The construction drawings show large areas for flotation foam near the bow and stern. They are blank spaces on the drawing, and they take up a lot of room. I have an old, poor-quality photo of ANKLE DEEP tied up to a dock, and there doesn’t appear to be any flotation foam in the boat. Perhaps Uffa, characteristically, ran out of time or money, or just didn’t want to give up the valuable space. One of the drawbacks of the design is that there’s very little storage space—none in the plans for an anchor, life jackets, a bucket, or even lunch. She’s a quintessential day boat, with no frills, meant for day-cruising in good weather. We would add some storage, but Paul and I agreed there would be no electronics—only paper charts and a VHF.
The workday ended, and we closed up the shop and adjourned to one of Lunenburg’s award-winning pubs. This part of the agenda was where I would explain to Paul what I wanted out of our version of ANKLE DEEP, which was to be named WILD ROOSTER.
The name had originated in Amsterdam. I had worked for WoodenBoat Publications for many years, and in that capacity attended a marine trade show in The Netherlands annually. After the show one year, we visited a spectacular collection of Van Gogh paintings in the east of the country, at the Kröller-Müller Museum. The trip leaves Amsterdam by train, then a bus, and then a short bicycle ride. Just as we approached the museum, there was a sign warning of a slippery cattle grate. It showed a car skidding, and the word wildrooster—Dutch for “cattle grate.” One of us forgot that the brakes weren’t on the handles but on the pedals. A humorous accident ensued, with no injuries reported. The word lived on.
I lived in Brooklin, Maine, in those days and, after retirement, we sold our house there and bought the one in Lunenburg. But I am not Canadian and neither is Melissa, so we couldn’t stay longer than six months per year. We had thus also bought a small, non-luxury condo in Portland, Maine, which was perfect: Lunenburg in the summer and fall, Portland in the winter and spring. WILD ROOSTER, it seemed, would be ideal for exploring the nooks and crannies of great Lunenburg. We committed to building her during our fourth year there.
The Covid-19 pandemic arrived a few months later, and Canada and the United States agreed to close the border. While we were forced to rethink our future in Lunenburg, Paul and his crew began building WILD ROOSTER. Emma May, Paul’s partner and primary finisher, bookkeeper, and doer-of-everything, would send me photos every week. It was beyond exciting. But the border showed no signs of reopening, the pandemic was raging, and life in a small condo was stifling. We made some hard decisions: we sold the house in Lunenburg and bought one in South Portland. WILD ROOSTER was to become a Maine boat.
Portland is on Casco Bay, which is characterized by long peninsulas joined (not divided!) by rivers and long inlets. To a kid of 15 with an inflatable and 5-hp outboard, or a geriatric sailor with a big, open powerboat, they represent the same thing: adventure! I imagine cruising these rivers in WILD ROOSTER, maybe spending the night at an inn or motel for a hot shower and dinner, and then being on my way again the next day. The boat can cruise easily at 20 knots, but I’m more a 7.5- to 10-knot person.
Chris ReardonWILD ROOSTER was sea-trialed in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, in autumn 2023.
The pandemic had ended by launching day, but we couldn’t be there due to a scheduling problem. Emma kept me fully apprised with photos, as did the photographer Chris Reardon. WILD ROOSTER had some propeller ventilation problems, meaning the propeller was too close to the surface and sucking air, resulting in a loss of power. There was no time to remedy this; that would have to be done in Maine, after the boat’s delivery. The problem was caused by a mismeasurement of mine that resulted in a short-shaft engine rather than a long one, and it has now been remedied by some delicate transom surgery by Maine Yacht Center in Portland.
Due to the late-season launching and the surgery to WILD ROOSTER’s transom, I’ve only been out on her twice, but they were two very informative outings. The first was in flat seas in protected waters, with overcast skies and no wind. She was a rocket until the ventilation kicked in when we turned to either port or starboard.
The second time, post–transom surgery, was perfect: We had good friends aboard, it was windy, and we ran between the islands, venturing seaward into unprotected waters for a brief spell. She took the 4′ seas in stride, whether they were coming straight ahead, abeam, or a bit astern. She performed flawlessly.
When I set off on a career as a young journalist more than four decades ago—a career that lasted one article until this one—an old professional, George Putz, advised me: “Whatever you do, don’t fall in love with your subject.” As I write this, WILD ROOSTER is on the hard, looking pent-up but gorgeous under her shrink-wrapping. I can tell she’s storing up energy, raring to get in the water, growing her inner beast. I can’t wait. You can see why I failed as a journalist.
Carl Cramer was publisher of WoodenBoat and Professional BoatBuilder magazines from 1989 to 2014.