Ali Goodwin
The Amesbury Skiff is a classic outboard-powered workboat derived from the dories of the Massachusetts North Shore. It is also an ideal recreational boat great for exploring, fishing, and family outings.
Over the course of 80 years, the Amesbury Skiff from Lowell's Boat Shop in Amesbury, Massachusetts, earned a reputation for being exceptionally stable, seaworthy, and rugged. These boats and their ancestors were used commercially for livery, fishing, and rescue work. In more recent years the Amesbury Skiff has proven to be an ideal and extremely versatile family boat. With two side seats in the stern and two thwarts near amidships, these skiffs are comfortable and capacious. The one we'll build on the following pages is a basic tiller steered outboard version, but a control console could be added for wheel steer-ing. Lockers could also be added under the stern seats. Amesbury Skiffs are technically and historically "dory skiffs" that is, they're lapstrake planked flat bottomed boats with bottom planking running fore-and-aft.
The Amesbury Skiff as it is known today evolved from round sided, narrow sterned forebears. Around the turn of the 20th century, builders began fitting dories with newfangled one cylinder make-and-break engines. The resultant power dories were great for their times, but the heavy engines caused their fine sterns to squat. The cure was a wider bottom at the transom a solution that gave rise to the boat type we'll build here. Today at Lowell's Boat Shop, we build Amesbury Skiffs with stem and frame patterns labeled "O.B. Skiff." These patterns are nearly identical to those for our round sided Surf Dory.