Greatings from Doryman

The voyage ethereal continues apace...

 When this weblog was introduced, I didn’t really know where to take it. Then, I found the beautifully functional designs of Iain Oughtred! Web searches turned up little, so I decided to profile some of his work here. Those who have been around for a while may remember what blossomed into profiles of small boats of all kinds, with emphasis on home-builders and their creations. Today, the Internet is awash with gunkholing vessels of many types and documentation of their creation. The community I once envisioned has arrived and I am so happy to be part of it. After forty years as a wood boat builder and builder’s advocate in the workspace, I’ve passed on the baton.

 Make no mistake, I continue to sail and have a few projects languishing here and there, as health allows. For now, I have exciting news. From the days when I first learned to sail, my experience was with small wooden keel boats. Then came the Gougeon Brothers with their plywood and glue methods, revolutionizing home boatbuilding forever.

 While I’ve embraced new materials and methods, my heart still lies with hand-built vessels made of living trees. To be sure, although some are still being built, the planked wooden boats of yore are an anachronism today. I’ve lived and breathed this transition, so in some ways, I suppose that makes me anachronistic, too. So be it.

 Enter Etta May, a Friendship sloop built in 1960. Carvel planked cedar on oak frames, it doesn’t get much more traditional than that. She’s 27 feet LOD (on-deck) with a 6 foot extreme beam and 32 feet over-all She has a short spruce mast, supporting a gaff rigged mainsail, running backstays and all. I could be twenty years old again! Various sized jibs (hanked-on) and spinnakers complete the rig.

 

Auxilary power is a small diesel motor, but you know how Doryman feels about motors of all kinds.

Please note the mount for a sculling oar.

A realistic survey of this 63 year old shows her age. We may be on our last dance, who knows? All I can tell you is, I’m happy to be here.

 A new/old chapter in the Voyage Ethereal.

New Skipper.

The only gaff rig in the bunch.

Isn't she beautiful?

Jack O'Lantern

I recently had the pleasure of sailing the double-ended, gaff-rigged schooner, Jack O'Lantern, owned by Bruce Barnes, of Taos New Mexico. Bruce acquired this boat from builder Charlie Taylor, in a partially complete state and spent the last few years in Port Townsend, Washington, fitting the boat out. The day I crewed on Jack O'Lantern was the first time she had been under sail since her build began, back in 1975.

Jack O'Lantern is a fifty foot Tancook Whaler, so called, though they did no whaling, a fishing boat hailing from Tancook Island, Nova Scotia. She is an adaptation of a fine design, more than a little out of the ordinary, which evolved to its peak, in the mouth of Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia, around the middle of the 19th century.






The whalers probably rose from a long-standing double-ender tradition traceable to European craft including the Dutch pinques, the French chaloupes and the shallops of the English and the Basques. Translated to the New World, these ancestors evolved into the Chebacco boats, Cowhorns, and later Nomans Land boats, Isle au Shoals, Hampton whalers, pinkys, Quoddy boats, and the Gaspe (Canada) boats or pinques.

The small open boats of the North American fisheries evolved from the laws of usage and adapted to the regional demands and the type of fishery. Since whaling was an early fishery and continued well into the 19th century on that coast, it seems likely that whaleboats of varying designs had their part in the development of the Tancook.

"Shortly, through the fog, appeared brown sails (their sails were nearly always tanned) and a white hull, between 40 and 50 feet long. The boat seemed to approach slowly, to hesitate a moment, and then to leap past in the manner of boats passing at sea... But there was time to observe two or three men in yellow oilskins, the helmsman standing with the end of the great ten-foot tiller behind his back, lifted slightly form the comb, and the load of barrels and boxes partly covered by a tarpaulin or, more likely, by the brown staysail (it was not set) in her waist… They were then close aboard. The tiller was swung a trifle to weather; the loose-footed overlapping foresail filled with an audible snap, and away she went, at eight or nine knots, her lee rail occasionally awash, and with a smoothness and lack of fuss in that broken water which, somehow, no other boat has ever seemed to me quite able to obtain – and I have known some good ones! … My friend remarked … “Damn good boats, them Tancook Whalers!”" ( Ernest Bell, Yachting, February, 1933)

Obviously Charlie Taylor has taken liberties in adapting the open Tancook Whaler into a closed cabin yacht. Jack O'Lantern, though she has a deep ballasted keel, coupled with a heavy plate centerboard, has a good bit of top-hamper and could use more ballast. In the accompanying photos, taken during the Port Townsend Wooden Boat Festival, she has taken down her foresail and may still be over-canvased.

And here's the clincher: Jack O'Lantern is for sale. You all know how much Doryman loves a project...
LOA:  60 feet
LOD:  50 feet
Beam: 12 feet