Building Uncle Gabe’s Flattie Skiff

Remember the Uncle Gabe Skiff being built as a demonstration at the Depoe Bay Wooden Boat Show and Crab Feed, back in April? Boat Guy and Doryman chose this 16-foot skiff for its simplicity and traditional lines. The hull was roughed out over the two-day show, under a display tent in weather, typical of spring on the Oregon coast, from sun to rain, to hail and snow.
Work is proceeding this winter on this simple, easy to build skiff, so read on...

Building Uncle Gabe’s Flattie Skiff

The Uncle Gabe Flattie Skiff is taken from plans by Sam Rabl in his book “Boatbuilding in Your Own Back Yard” and is described as an old fashioned boat 14 or 15 feet long. We have used all of two sheets of eight-foot plywood, so our boat is just less than 16 feet long.
The boat now in Rick’s shop is progressing nicely. The frames have been installed, which in this design add stiffness to the hull. The flat bottom of the skiff is constructed of ½ inch plywood and requires no frames for stiffness, thus providing free and easy access fore and aft. The frames, inwales, shear guards and seat risers are Douglas fir. The thwarts will be made of pine. See the next post:

Building Uncle Gabe’s Flattie Skiff

We have designed a small forward deck to provide stowage for gear and a short after deck as well. Though intended for rowing, there is a good possibility that this skiff will be converted to sail someday and the decks will add required strength to support the mast and sail, as well as rigidity to the hull structure. Once the thwarts are installed, the spreaders you can see in the forward half of the boat will be removed, with the thwarts maintaining the hull’s shape.
The original skiff design called for sides made of a single cypress board each, which would have required boards 16 inches wide per side. Boards of that dimension would be very hard to come by today. A builder who wanted a boat of solid lumber could piece together smaller boards, but for the sake of simplicity and economy (this boat is to be donated to a rowing club for kids) we used plywood. The substitution of material has not degraded the simple elegant lines of this classic craft. Stay tuned for further developments!