The Point Comfort 18

Robert W. Stephens

Doug Hylan’s Point Comfort 18 offers the seaworthiness and lineage of a Chesapeake deadrise skiff, with the light weight and ease of construction a plywood hull provides.

One of the enduring pleasures of traditional wooden boats is how each boat conveys a sense of place. Every region has its distinct type, evolved to best suit that locale’s topography, weather, water conditions, and the use to which the boat is put. Available building materials can play a large role in shaping the boat, as can the need for economy in construction and in use. The interaction of cultures often has a powerful effect, as indigenous peoples pass on their building techniques to a newly arrived group who come with their own technologies. By studying the shape and construction of a traditional boat, we can peer back through the years for a snapshot of what the world was like for those who developed the type, and by looking at the evolution of the style we can follow broader trends in society. Who knew wooden boats were a solid form of anthropology?Doug Hylan has given us plenty to study with his Point Comfort 18. At first glance, we see a simple, basic skiff—prettier than most, but a plain open skiff, nonetheless. But as we begin to take stock, we realize she is a modern distillation of the fine qualities of a Chesapeake deadrise skiff, one of the most distinctive of traditional American workboat types. Developed to take advantage of local materials and to handle the particular challenges of the shallow waters of Chesapeake Bay, the deadrise skiff is seen in all sizes up to the sail-­powered skipjack sloops, as large as some 60' overall and still dragging for oysters today (see WoodenBoat No. 233).