Take a shapely traditional boat, add an artist’s eye and a practical touch, update it for the way we live now, and you may have found tomorrow’s classic. This is the case for Iain Oughtred’s Acorn skiff. More than that, the design worked so well that it became a turning point for the creator’s career. Now in its seventh refinement, the Acorn, in its various sizes, remains one of Oughtred’s most popular designs. Acorns can be found from Oughtred’s native Australia to his adopted Britain, and from the West Coast of the United States to the East Coast, where its workboat roots are found. It will, no doubt, continue to be built for years to come.Back when Oughtred first designed the boat in the early 1980s, he also compiled an annotated directory of wooden boat builders in Britain, finding some 300 around the country struggling with precious little encouragement. The directory and the boat helped raise awareness of wooden boats there. Maynard Bray, writing in WB No. 56, described the Acorn as an ideal lapstrake plywood boat for an amateur to build, “a sweet-lined, slippery little jewel.” The magazine also described her construction and has sold her plans ever since. “It gave me the funds and encouragement to continue [designing] when I might have stopped,” Oughtred reminisced.The traditional type on which the Acorn is based is the Whitehall, which takes its name from Whitehall Street in New York City, where former Navy apprentices started building the type in the 1820s in the same general shape as pulling gigs or wherries. These boats had long, sharp bows, plank keels, rising floors, slack bilges, and flaring sides. “The after sections were slightly hollow at the garboards, and the transom was heart shaped,” historian Howard Chapelle wrote. Soon, they were built as stock boats and used by many people needing to move about America’s harbors, including ships’ chandlers, insurance adjusters, and pilots—and also for sailors going ashore to boarding houses and brothels. They rowed well and were sometimes sailed.
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Looking for plans for a future build. Will definitely download study plans!
Is the Acorn available in a kit?
Dave Eckrich
Dave, you might have a look here – http://straydogboatworks.com/oughtred/mainpages/rowingskiffs.html
Hi,
I recently acquired a lovely Acorn 12 build by the Landing School in 2014. A lake and inshore sailer now and would like to modify the rudder from fixed to a folding one so not to damage it in shallow water, trailering, etc. Could build a new one, I guess, but would like to keep the original with just a folding mod. Guess I could cut the original, add 4mm cheeks, and a pivot point, but wondering if there are other mods that have been tried successfully.
Nice to see her Scottish roots as I served there in the late ’80s. Luv’er.
Rick