Wooden Boat Show!
by Michael Connelly

The annual Wooden Boat Show is always a pleasure, and this year was no
exception. In Rockport for the last time (for the foreseeable future), we had a sunny Maine weekend, the temperature warm without getting too hot, a modest crowd, and all the things that we gather to see The boats, the suppliers, the rope sellers, the sail makers, the marine designers, the tool fanciers, the displays and demonstrations and lectures, the festival food and drink, strolling singers singing, and the smell of the ocean wafting over all...

Peter Hunt & Dubber (click to enlarge

This year, a particular highlight for your reporter was the return of Peter Hunt and his Little Dubbers. Peter is a marine surveyor from Norton, Massachusetts who came up with a design for a diminutive kayak made of doorskin luan. We built a couple of the smaller version last year and had been thinking of building one of the larger versions; then we came upon his display of Dubbers including his newer, bigger boat, the Oober Dubber.

As the name suggests, it's a bigger boat (bigger than the Bigger Dubber, but smaller than the possibly forthcoming Super Duper Oober Dubber) than the original two, and suitable he says for a 300 pound person. Not only that, but with a flop-out leeboard and closet-pole mast, she is rigged for sail! We immediately bought the plans for the O.D. ($5, a companion to the original plans, which are needed to build any of the three boats) and have been studying them intently... Peter says he designed the boat because he had so many requests from people who needed the greater capacity. For those interested, check out his website.

For those who would consider the boat but who want a kit, it is, amazingly, available from The Newfound Woodworks in Bristol, New Hampshire. They offer quite a range of more traditional boat kits, both strippers and stitch-n-glue, as well as some sort of hybrid construction. Boat kits and plans include a whole slew of kayaks, about a dozen different canoes, and a few pretty rowing boats. Their website, includes pictures from their Rendevous in mid-September. One doesn't know how easily the boats go together, but I heard considerable praise for them from other vendors, and the boats they brought to the show were certainly inspiring....

Part of the enormous CLC display

Another vendor with tons of boats on hand was Chesapeake Light Craft, with more than a dozen of their kayaks and sliding seat pulling boats. Like Newfound, they sell complete pre-cut kits (which earned praise from one very hard-to-impress former furniture maker I know and from several other boat building pros at the show). They were swamped at the show by the interested and curious.

A slightly oddball outfit, American Traders, had a large booth at the show, and we succumbed to the siren song of some of their boat show specials, oars and paddles and a considerable discount... We had quite a long talk with one of the company's owners, an ex-Brit who seems to have settled happily into a whole new rainbow (new industry, new country).

Again this year there were two purveyors of front-facing rowing gizmos, EZ-Row, which sells a drop in unit for canoes and a new model for rowing boats, both at around $400. The devices are well designed, and perform their function nicely. The machines are well thought-out, well made, and for those who really want to row forward, just the ticket.

The other was Aquamotion systems, showing the Frontrower, a fairly complicatedand fairly pricey gizmo that allows the propulsion system (that would be you) to drive the boat while facing forward using both arms and legs. It's admittedly clever, very pretty and solidly built. It's also around $1500. Their website includes a passage concerning why rowing is usually done facing backwards. I imagine one can get used to anything, but I would want someone to lend me one of these for a season before I decided to pony up and buy one. I tried the EZ-Row device, which is much simpler, one third the price and which performs a similar function; while I liked it, I decided that I didn't really mind rowing backwards.

Rowing our 14 foot St. Brendan the other day, I thought back to the rowing-forward experience and realized that while moving along, I was mostly just looking around. Seeing where I was, and where I had just been seemed about as good as seeing where I was and where I'd be shortly. Still, for those that feel differently, either of these devices would be in order.

I loved the Kirby's Paint display and their 28 stock paint colors, some of which are slightly unusual. They sell mostly through mail order, and the color samples on the web site don't do them justice. If you have a special project in mind, it might be worth a shot. Certainly they seem to have some very happy customers.

Pert Lowell was on hand with a beautiful new Townie, which reminded me that I needed to reread Tom McGrath's fun book, Damn Foole again.

I could go on, but I had best perhaps stop here, whilst the stopping is good. I've only hit upon a handful and a half of the roughly 140 exhibitors, and so I could rewrite this piece about 15 times more without having any duplicates. I didn't tell you about the Family Boatbuilding going on at the top of the hill, a slew of newbies building Bevin's Skiffs, the sail makers, the knot tying people, the schools, the museums, the magazines, the t-shirt sellers, the rope guys and on and on... I was there two days and managed to miss quite a bit, but I'm going to try to hit next year's show, which I've heard will be at Newport, Rhode Island. Hope to see you there.

Additional Photos
(Click pictures to enlarge)

	Peter Hunt looking at some singers in the background, with his Oober Dubber showing the mast and leeboard
	Epifanes display, nice random boats showing off their high gloss varnish
	I don't know, a pretty boat being examined by a pirate?
	more from the Epifanes display
	ditto
	My son Louis looks with favor on a pair of Fiddlehead double-paddled decked canoes from Bryan Boatbuilding in New Brunswick. One of these boats went home at the end of the day with a *very happy buyer...
	this is Harry Bryan himself
	name and maker and every other interesting detail unknown
	This is Peter Hunt's Basic Boat: The Little Dubber. You may never have seen a couple of sheets of Luan doorskin plywood look this good before.
	This earlier version includes blocks of pink strofoam for floatation port and starboard, while newer boats use the same space to create dual use flotation chambers and dry storage, by simply adding thin-skinned bulkheads and some plastic deckplates to provide access. One key to the boat's manuverability and its tracking ability is the drop-in, kick-up rudder seen here. Also visible in this photo are a couple of paddle holders, a nice touch.
	Here you see the red boat cushion which serves as a seat bottom. The adjustable seat back is held in place by a length of string run between the upper corners of the aft frame members. Total time for construction of a Little Dubber, once materials are gathered, is probably well under a week of part-time dubbering for the impatient and experienced. For the Absolute Novice, not much longer, as the comprehensive assembly manual leaves no process unexplained...
	I think this is from Newfoundland Boat Works
	Newfound Woodworks Rangely Lake Trout Boat (std length 17', also available 15', not sure which this is) $1600 for the 17' version kit, $100 less for the 15 foot kit
	Sigh. Wish I knew... The quality of reporters these days...
	Just a handful (maybe eight or so) of Chesapeake Light Craft's *enormous* display. Their kits are justifiably praised for their precision and quality, the boats are beautiful, and according to several customers, go together fairly easily...
	Four of Chesapeake's finest, a perfect July afternoon in the background...
	Kid Boatbuilders. Starting early, learning the Wooden Boat Way...
	Clearly these boats were all of the same class, but different colors of sail were permitted.
	A beautiful New Haven Sharpie. This is a class boat indigenous to Maine I believe, dunno number of boats in the fleet or any such. Pretty, pretty though....
	a tender of a larger, unphotographable boat. The tender caught my eye though, and we saw her under sail later in the day..
	...A boat either to love or hate I should imagine, and I have to confess that I liked her quite a bit...
	The tender next door to that one. More traditional colors, but very nice, yes?
	This is from 2 Daughters Boatworks. It's a Caledonia Yawl, a 19'6" dbl-ender designed by Iain Oughtred, based on Shetland Island boats. She's glued lap plywood, Balanced lug main, sprit-boom mizzen, sails by Douglas Fowler
	...just thought she was pretty under sail....
	...a nice little catboat...
	Paddler at play
	That funky tender again....
	Heading out into Rockland Harbor
	The usual suspects in the background in their thousands, and a renegade from Lowell's Boat Shop charging off to the left...
	Essence of Wooden Boat
	Gigs! Now look at these two-- Vixen outboard, composite oars, cutting edge stuff, and cheek by jowl with this massive wooden tub, I think any one of those oars outweighed all of Vixen's! Wish I had the name of the boat... In my defense, there wasn't a sheet on the dock, nor anyone handy to ask.
	Tholepins on the left, nylon and brass square section locks to the right!
	And a closeup of those very locks... I've used both sorts, and have to admit that while the plastic jobbies help keep the oars in place, they lack in the auditory dept. There is a certain swsshhh, clunk, chunk; swsshh, clunk, chunk that you get when using the tholepins that you don't with the newfangled rigs...
	A contrast in oars-- Graphite, plastic, lightness, vs wood and leather and weight. Fool that I am, I prefer the latter....
	Tents B and C in the background, Vixen's bow and a couple of nice other gigs waiting their crews...
	Pretty...
	(Above and left) Fathom This-- an Old Town Sailing Canoe-- outfitted with a sliding seat rig (shoes mounted to stretchers), outrigger oarlocks, very cool leeboards, paddle holders, set up for sail, beautiful flip up rudder, the outriggers were laminated oak or ash, that went through the deck and bent around the hull under the foot stretchers--very sturdy! This is a 40-year-old boat, in great shape, rigged to be used, cleats stuck in where needed, extra bits of line here and there... Would love to have tried her out! Didn't see her owner though....
	A nice gaff-rigged cat-something under sail...
	Two sail boats sailing