Building Classic Small Craft Complete Plans and Instructions for 47 Boats

"Gardners work has engaged and inspired more individuals connected with traditional small craft than will ever be counted." - WoodenBoat

"Ought to be considered the Bible on the subject." - Cruising World

As Associate Curator of Small Craft at Mystic Seaport Museum from 1969 to 1995, John Gardner sought out the best examples of classic wooden boats and then measured them, drew them, and researched their histories. Building Classic Small Craft offers his meticulous plans and clear and complete instructions for building 47 beautiful, functional wooden boats for oar, motor, and sail, including dories, peapods, Sea Bright skiffs, wherries, Rangeley boats, and many others a lifetimes worth of admirable projects that any amateur builder can tackle successfully.

John Gardner was the acknowledged "dean of small craft, " and Building Classic Small Craft is an enduring expression of his philosophy, his knowledge, and his work. All the information you need to build these boats is here; no other plans are necessary.

"Worth your attention whether you seriously fancy to build boats yourself or just enjoy reading about them." - Sailing

"Another must for the boatbuilders library from John Gardner, the authority on traditional small craft in America." - Down East

"Required reading for anyone who thinks of building a small boat." - National Fisherman

John Gardner began his boatbuilding career in 1940 at Graves Boatyard in Marblehead, Massachusetts. He became a leading advocate and teacher of building small wooden boats and wrote more than 850 articles on small boats that appeared in National Fisherman, WoodenBoat, Boating, and Yachting, among others. He died in 1995.

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February 15 17 Marathon to Rodriquez Key to Hurricane Harbor on Key Biscayne and Lay DayThere 46 4 and 47 4 Miles

Well the good news is that I did not screw up the screw -- i.e., the transmission still turns the propeller. But the bad news is that the rattle is still there. I guess its time to have a professional take a look. And with all the contortionism required to muscle bolts with wrenches in a terribly cramped space, I got a back pain though it was a little better the second day and gone the third. Its just that so many tasks require throwing your weight into it or reaching or bending -- everything except typing a blog -- that one notices such pains. But ibuprofen helps.

And I started the first day with a mistake, though not a harmful one. I recalled that some of the three passage days from Biscayne Bay to Key West were 20-25 mile days and others were 40-50 mile days, but I guessed wrong on the trip to Rodriguez and we lallygaged about and made a late start at 8:45 for what was a longer day, arriving after five. Some of the trip was good sailing, some motor sailing and during the last hour and a half the wind was directly in our faces and rather than tack back and forth we furled all sails and just motored slowly. We were passed by a boat. I could not read the boat name because it is in a fancy script- more later.

We anchored on the west side of Rodriguez Key; we stayed on the other side when going south;  it appeared to provide some shelter from the wind, which was quite strong.

But the oblong island is aligned from north to south and so neither side gives much protection from a wind that was mostly from the south. But we put out 110 feet of snubbed chain in ten feet of water, with plenty of room behind us. Our nearest neighbor, 100 yards away, was the unnamed boat that had passed us. I awoke from the wind at 2 a.m. and sat up worried the rest of the night in fear of dragging. The anchor alarm suggested that we had slowly dragged but in the morning light

it appears that we did not. Not a good nights sleep.

Next day after a great french toast breakfast, thanks Lene, we set off at 8 am. We gradually caught up with that boat that had passed us the day before, who had left before us. They passed us the day before because I did not want to push the engine with its rattle. But now, I saw, via the binoculars, that she was a Catalina 34 with hailing port Oriental NC. I called them on low power on channel 16, and we switched to 17 to not impede the Coast Guard: "Catalina 34 hailing from Oriental; this is the sailboat ILENE on your port quarter." I learned that their boats name was "RagTop" and they were making the same two passages as we were and planned to stay in No Name Harbor on Key Biscayne as we were. ILENE is longer and hence faster under sail. When we passed them we wished each other a good passage and said we would try to meet up in No Name. I still did not know the peoples names.

The wind was in the low 20s and on our starboard bow. It was on shore yet the waves were not large. The Keys, heading for Key Biscaye through Hawk Channel are arrayed in a curve and as we got closer we were able to gradually steer a bit more north and a bit less east so the wind came from near close hauled to near our beam. We had full main and small jib and were heeled quite a bit,

though Witty wasnt upset by it.  We were doing near seven knots on average the whole way up Hawk passage and hit eight for a few minutes. We could probably have gone faster with less heeling if we had reefed the main but the forecast called for 10 to 20, not 20 to 25.

 We accomplished  in one day the mileage that  took us two days on the way south, going directly between Rodriquez Key and Biscayne Bay without the stop at Pumpkin Key. This was in part due to the free open speedy passage in Hawk Channel and was necessitated by the fact that we passed the entrance to Angelfish Creek way before high tide and waves were pushing on shore there. We entered through Biscayne Channel which is wide, deep and well marked.

Still with the wind and waves and tide all pushing us in, and never having been there before, and with the course involving some jibes, and channels always looking narrower on the charts than in real life, we dropped the main before entering and used the small jib, the tide and the engine at low rpms to make 5 to six knots on the way in. The channel is marked by 20 day marks and several fishing camps, houses built on stilts, on its sides. You can occasionally see shoals that line the sides, but mostly they are under water so you cant see them; it was like Boca Grande. Once through the channel into Biscayne Bay, we turned to starboard for No Name Harbor, which the book says is horribly overcrowded on weekends. This was Presidents Day and it was quite overcrowded, so we went to Hurricane Harbor, where the entrance was shallow, 62" at mid tide, but it quite deep enough at fifteen feet once inside.
And there was plenty of room for ten boats with only three present. I called RagTop and told them we were in Hurricane and they were anchoring outside of No Name due to the crowd so I suggested that they come over. There are NO waves in Huricane Harbor and precious little wind. The advantage of No Name is that though they charge you $20, they have a dinghy dock, restaurants and access to beaches etc. This harbor is completely surrounded by private homes.

and there is no shore access at their private docks, but we do not need shore access every day. In the second photo, on the right, through the harbor entrance, you can see the skyline of Coconut Grove, about four miles across Biscayne Bay.

Our neighbors here have left us alone, which is better than some of Floridas wealthy waterfront land owners have behaved. We exercise our legal right to anchor, for free, in the navigable waters of the USA and do no harm. And ILENE is a pretty boat, at least in our opinion and enhances their view. But some have tried to use legal means and sheer harassment to exclude boats from the waters near them. They dont own the water but they like to think they do. One guy moored a fleet of his own small faux miniboats in front of his house to "use up" all the available space. The idiot spoiled his own view with those ugly things.

When they had anchored we invited  Rag Top for wine and thereby finally learned their names: Don and Trish. They live four hours inland by car from Oriental, and this is their first extended cruise. They were part of a rally of new cruisers who went from Hampton VA to Florida, sort of like the Caribbean 1500, but via the ICW, so they partied most nights.  They are pretty good sailors in that they only gave a few tenths of a knot to ILENE. We enjoyed talking with them about cruising and boats in general.

The lay day was devoted to cleaning, -- the spots that we dont get to very often. Benny of s/v ""Rhianna", who we met in Beaufort SC, alerted to our nearness by Dean, of s/v Autumn Born, called and we might meet up with them soon. Three of four boats came into this harbor during the day but left within hours. We were also very close to Bob and Brenda of s/v "Pandora", which I helped sail from Essex CT to Annapolis in September. Our last night in Hurricane they were in No Name, only a mile away. Now back to Miami Beach where we have guests coming from NYC.

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October 22 26 Sailing Pandora an Aerodyne 47 From North of Essex CT to Hampton VA

This was the third time I have crewed on passages for Bob, the first aboard his new love, Pandora. Before we get to the passage, let me describe her, by reference to his old one, which was a Saga 43, like ILENE.
                        Pandora              ILENE
Length                  47                      43
Beam                    14                      12
Draft                      66"                    58"
Mast Height          64                      63.5
Displacement         11.5 tons           10 tons
So Pandora is the big sister, with a lot more room inside, but not much heavier; due to both longer waterline length and lighter weight she is faster.

Many similarities: Both have the Solent rig for the two headsails, though Pandoras jibs foot is secured to a Hoyt boom, A nice feature is two amidships cleats so that each spring line has its own cleat. She has a solid glassed in hard dodger which is perhaps five feet long, so there is plenty of shelter under the dodger against waves and wind. Unfortunately, that dodger is less than 63" above the deck, resulting in some close encounters with my clumsy noggin. And Pandora has the larger more sophisticated and newer Raymarine instruments with four displays of the chart plotter: (1) at the helm, (2) on the starboard coach roof at the forward end of the cockpit, (3) at the nav station and (4) in the port side pullman berth so the captain can check up on things from his bed! And, like ILENE, she had a head forward of the pullman berth but aft of the chain locker. She has two large lazarettes on the bow, one for the fenders and dock lines and she also has a bow thruster that lowers down from inside the hull when needed and then pushes the bow from side to side. At each side of the cockpit, just aft of the dodger, are two powerful Anderson electric winches to tame the lines which are all led there, and further aft is another pair of winches.

for greater control while still self- tacking. Both boats have the greatest weight at the bottom of the keel, though Pandoras is a bulb rather than a shoe. Pandora has no toe rail and no bolts fastening the edge of the deck to the hull; rather these two major structural parts, both vacuum molded, are glassed together into one very solid piece with a small curve at the edge of the wide side decks. A very clean look.
She has a radar arch and at its port side, on fore and aft sliding tracks, is a davit block for lifting the outboard from the dink.
Friday, October 22
Bob picked me up from the Old Saybrook railroad station about 4 pm. The first thing we did was secure the 15 hp outboard to a pad on the aft rail and hoist up the Caribe fiberglass RIB dink by its nose, over the lifeline and laid it upside down, facing forward under the boom. We deflated it and tied it to itself to make it smaller in order to avoid chafing the lines and increase visibility around it a bit.

Then a delicious dinner at Bobs home cooked by Bob and Brenda, punctuated by the arrival of Gregg and his wife, son and future daughter in law, just in time for desert. After which, we all headed back to the boat so Greggs family could see it and I hit the rack early. I was assigned the quarterberth which is to starboard and has a separate entrance to the aft head. I think I got the best berth on the boat, roomy with no need for a lee cloth, as were rigged for the other berths, and the greatest privacy and shelter from potential cold drafts, while it also boasts three opening ports to catch a breeze in port, though it has two electric fans. Plenty of room for two.
Saturday October 23
In the morning we had to secure the nicely trussed dink to the boat so that potential big waves would not wash it away, rig the lifelines and preventers and deal with one small problem: no autopilot!! Bob did not panic but recalled that the workmen had opened the pod that contains its controls while working on something else. We reopened it, reinserted the plug and voila, the most reliable member of our crew, Auto, was back in action and we were underway at 7 am amidst the fall foliage on the Connecticut River.

Gregg had the helm until we transited Plum Gut and I  took over until we had rounded Montauk Point.

Then Bob set the waypoint as the buoy off Cape May. During our days together I learned that Gregg is a great guy. He has long experience with cat boats and currently has a Nonesuch 33, which he aptly calls a modern cat boat, based on its large sail set on a mast that is forward. He keeps her at a club in Stratford on the Housatonic River. I have never sailed on that river but plan to remedy that deficiency this summer. Gregg also races extensively and wins a lot, on other peoples boats, mostly a Saber 35 in the summer and dinghys during the winter frostbite series. Gregg is also the Director of Bridgeports municipal zoo where he has worked for near four decades and has a great eye for seeing and identifying wildlife, at sea and on land.
We used the main and small jib which provided plenty of power on our port tack broad reach out in the Atlantic with the winds from the northeast. We had one encounter with a Russian freighter which overtook us on our port side and crossed in front of us. It appeared that he would pass less than half a mile from us but Bob called him and he agreed to alter course about five degrees to port and thus passed 2.5 miles away. We enjoyed big ocean rollers, perhaps eight feet high but 100 feet apart that we glided over gently, the most lovely ocean sensation. We were averaging better than eight knots and peaking at more than ten.
Today was our coldest day, and the coldest part was during the day. I kept putting on more layers and ended up with pajamas under my jeans and four heavy long sleeve shirt, all under heavy duty foulie tops and bottoms, two pairs of heavy socks in my sea boots, two pairs of gloves, a watch hat and a scarf. But the chill did not get bad at night.

Bob fed us well on this trip. Today it was toasted muffins with our coffee, Grilled cheese sandwiches and in anticipation of the cold, two large bowls of tortilla soup which included all of the meat of a rotisserie chicken.

Sunday October 24
Not many photos at sea so we take sunrises and sets when we can. I requested and was granted my favorite off watch time: 8 p.m. to midnight, when I usually lose steam. But while I slept the Captains orders were wisely amended. We did not need two watch standers at all times during darkness because we were harnessed and tethered to a jack line in the cockpit, mostly under the dodger except when we periodically scanned the horizon and it was not stormy. As a result of this change, I enjoyed the unexpected and unusual luxury of more than seven consecutive hours off at night, taking the watch again from 3:30 a.m. until about eight.

With just the two of us aboard ILENE, we relieve each other more often.  Bob called the weather guru, Chris Parker, via SSB and we learned that the potential stop in Cape May for a day due to  potential bad weather would not be needed. While the wind would eventually come to our bow, it would not be strong and we could just power through it. So we changed the waypoint from off the Cape May harbor entrance to a buoy off Cape Charles, the northern end of the entrance to Chesapeake Bay, and altered course a few degrees to port.  Checking we saw that the dotted line took us very clse to shallow water off shore so we altered course a few more degrees to port to create a buffer. The GPS computed our arrival at about 11 a.m. and I figured another four hours to get from there to the dock in Hampton.
During the afternoon I did what I like to do on friends boats and put about 20 whippings in the ends of Pandoras lines. The wind got lighter and came around to the port beam. We put up the genoa for a while and later used a motor assist, turning it off when the winds looked like they would let us sail. Some hours we made only six knots and that seemed slow on Pandora but many boats cant go that fast at any wind speed. And we did not get the opportunity to see how Pandora does when heeled because this was a no-heeling trip.
Todays menu: gourmet honey-drizzled boat-baked drop biscuits with the coffee, tuna salad for lunch and a pasta with onions, sausages and cheese for dinner, all with chocolate chip cookies, snack bars and fruit. Like I said, no one went hungry. Bob is both cook and captain, and if the crew is not vigilant he washes the dishes too.
Monday October 25
When I came on about midnight, we were motoring and close hauled under main alone. A peaceful watch until the end when I almost damaged Pandora and made a big bang that got Bob out in a hurry. The wind had come further around so that it was now directly on our nose. So I winched in the mainsail to lie directly fore and aft to serve as a stabilizer. But I did not realize that the preventer was still attached and the bang was the giving way of the short piece of Spectra line that held its block to the base of a stanchion. Bob was correctly concerned that the block snapped back and hit and damaged the boat but he conducted a close inspection by flashlight, followed by another in daylight, which showed that no damage had been done. Whew! I like to improve my friends boats, e.g., the whipping, not damage them. I would not have guessed that the preventer, which is used to avoid the accidental jibe on a broad reach, would be engaged when we were sailing close hauled.
At the mouth of the Chesapeake there was a lot of shipping. I learned something about the Bay: there is no inside channel for deep draft merchant shipping heading south through the Bay from lets say Baltimore to Norfolk. What they have to do is follow the channel SE out of the Bay over the northern tunnel of the Bay Bridge Tunnel, and then go back in heading west in the channel over the southern tunnel. We sailed across this while one of the big guys swung clockwise past our stern. Skies were grey today as compared to the sunshine of the prior days. Here is the portion of the bridge between the two tunnels.

We were tied to the dock at 1:30 pm (elapsed time 55.5 hours for the 350 mile course) and celebrated our safe arrival, Bob to the left.

Gregg and I gave Pandoras exterior a soap and water scrubbing while Bob cleaned the interior. Then we showered, accepted a ride from a friend of Bob to the airport to pick up our car, and dined together at a local place and turned in for the night.

Sunday October 26

We rose, packed, breakfasted, thanked and said good by to Bob, had our picture taken and got underway at 8:45 am. Gregg and I took turns and drove across the Bay Bridge Tunnel whose fare has not risen in many years: still $13. The highways of the Delmarva peninsula have improved a lot in the last few decades, however. I had planned to get off at Fort Washington Avenue and 178th street to take the A train home but realized that there was a better drop off point at the Pelham station of the number 6 train. Gregg took over from there and was able to deliver the car to the New Haven airport before the 6:30 deadline.
Bob wrote a blog on a daily basis during out voyage (Google: sailpandora) and has since taken off from Hampton to Tortola, BVIs with another crew.Godspeed! I will read his blog after I post this one. I suspect he will have different observations about our trip together.
This was my last sail of 2015 though work continues on winterization and improvements, so stay tuned.  All told, on ILENE and other boats I sailed or lived aboard on 190 days of the 360 this calendar year. Im satisfied.
I got home in time to take the subway up to 34th Street for a panel discussion about the history on New Yorks waterways, at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. I had suggested this program to all Harlemites but was rather glad that none showed up. While I enjoyed it (it was moderated by Russell Shorto, whose book about Dutch New Amsterdam my book group had read) it was rather limited to the Dutch period and would not have satisfied the 21st Century sailor.

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