All youngsters might begin their waterborne adventures in flat-bottomed rowing/sailing skiffs. Easy to build, but difficult to design properly, these honest little boats teach lessons in seamanship and self-reliance. At the other end of life’s voyage, a good skiff will take gentle care of old folks as they sail comfortable miles to nowhere in particular.Here’s a flat-bottomed 15'4" sailing skiff from Karl Stambaugh, and it looks just right. The talented young designer drew this boat for his dad to build in retirement. Carlton Stambaugh made a fine job of putting it together with plywood, epoxy, and paint.On a pleasant, slightly hazy, day in late spring, I drove through the rural Maryland countryside to meet the Stambaugh family at the Bellevue ferry pier on the Eastern Shore of Chesapeake Bay. Freshly planted corn and beans, big-wheeled tractors scurrying from one field to another along too-narrow blacktop roads...the scenery hasn’t much changed in the past three decades. In this place of easy living, the scourge of “land development” seems to have been slowed.
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This boat is very similar to one built by the Cohasset Shipyard (? proper name could be Hagerty Boatyard) in Cohasset, Massachusetts, in the 1950s. Flat bottom, cross planked, with a small deck forward of the mast, a centerboard and outboard rudder. I think she was Marconi rig. As a 10-year-old living down the street, I would hang out all day and watch them build and the smell of cedar is with me today.
Does anyone else recall them?
The Stambaughs definitely know how to achieve that nifty je-ne-sais-quoi Mid-Atlantic aesthetic in their boats. I love the look of the sheer against the raked mast. Jim Luton in Brooklyn built a Windward 15 and stretched it to 16 and called it CRICKET. It’s worth a few minutes to search for it online, there’s a nice build page. That boat is certainly a looker as she exudes timeless romanticism.