Beach Pea

Benjamin Mendlowitz

Beach Pea is based on the well-known peapod type that evolved on Maine’s Penobscot Bay in the 1870s, but built of lightweight plywood. It retains the earlier type’s oar steering and simple sprit rig.

In the course of a decade, my appreciation for the Doug Hylan–designed Beach Pea has grown from a casual admiration to an abiding need. I first encountered the boat in 1997, when Hylan published in WoodenBoat a series of articles on how to build this glued-lapstrake plywood interpretation of the classic Maine peapod. In crisply drawn plans and clear words and photographs, he walked the reader through the steps of building the boat, and in the final installment included details on rigging and sailing.Howard Chapelle, the great American boat historian, recorded the details of the peapod’s origins and use in his book American Small Sailing Craft. They were double-ended inshore lobstering boats that first appeared on the Maine island of North Haven around 1870 and quickly spread to other parts of the coast. The boats were symmetrical fore and aft, and sometimes carried small spritsails; they were typically steered with an oar when under sail. Original peapods were planked both both carvel (smooth-skinned) and lapstrake, and averaged about 15' in length—though some were bigger and some smaller.