Under oars or sail, the Heritage 23 is a bewitching sight. The ketch-rigged double-ender, 23' LOA, is English designer Richard Pierce’s contemporary interpretation of a classic Great Lakes Mackinaw boat, with a sweeping sheer, plumb stem, and raked sternpost. She is the prototype for a comely new one-design class intended to promote rowing and sailing along Michigan’s Sunrise Coast, bordering Lake Huron.The idea for the Heritage 23 was conceived at East Tawas, Michigan, in 2011. A small cadre led by David Wentworth founded Heritage Coast Rowing and Sailing, Inc., a nonprofit organization. The group’s mission, inspired by the success of the St. Ayles skiff program in Scotland (see Small Boats 2012), is to encourage community boatbuilding, preserve classic regional boat designs, and encourage rowing and sailing. The group commissioned Pierce to adapt a traditional 19th-century Great Lakes boat design to a kit-buildable craft, using marine plywood and epoxy resins. Several boats were considered—among them the Collingwood, Huron, Tawas Bay One-Design, and Bateau—but in the end, the Mackinaw was selected.Mackinaw boats originated on the Upper Great Lakes sometime in the 1800s, but exactly when has been in dispute for decades. The American Fur Company used Mackinaws on Lake Superior as early as the 1830s. Fishermen on Isle Royale near the lake’s North Shore worked aboard 20' to 30' versions of the boat from the 1850s to early 1900s. These Mackinaws were robustly built and heavily ballasted for operating in open waters. Early models, which primarily featured pointed bows and sterns, varied greatly in style, depending on the builder.
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I notice that this article was written in 2013. Any update on how many boats have been built in the past 10 years would be appreciated.
I grew up in Suttons Bay, Michigan, a nice little harbor off Lake Michigan. A boyhood friend of mine’s grandfather was a full-time builder of Mackinaws (in the early ’60s). He worked by himself. He worked fast. I was pretty young to remember the details but I do remember he fastened the strakes using clinched nails, rather than copper rivets or maybe even screws. I also remember people saying that he was the last of his kind, the last builder of Mackinaws.