Staysail Schooner Prudence

Heres a bit of a departure for Doryman. I received an inquiry about my Peter Culler Good Little Skiff (which hasnt sold yet; hint, hint!) the other day from a fellow named Roy. Turns out, Roy is a helicopter pilot on the Columbia River bar. His job is to shuttle pilots out and back, in all weather, to waiting ships on one of the most treacherous bodies of water on Earth.
But his true love is his schooner Prudence. We talked for a long time on the phone and Roy agreed to send me the story of his boat, which Id like to share with you...

" Prudence was built at the Morse Yard in Thomaston, Maine in 1965. She was built on commission for the Forbes Family of Boston.  Construction is mahogany on stem bent oak with bronze fastenings and a cast bronze shoe runs the length of her keel. She was originally rigged as a gaffer with a self-tending fore-staysail and two old-style jib furlers.  Having been constructed in 1965, she is relatively new in the world of Alden schooners.  In fact, she is design #993 and not listed in Aldens book."

"She sailed through The Panama Canal in December 1970 (we still have the transit papers) and made her way to the Pacific Northwest and eventually ended up in the stewardship of Len Skoog.  Len made the following modifications - some good, some not, depending on ones desires.  The rig was changed to a staysail schooner with aluminum masts (booms are solid fir), the main sail was set to a large Hood furler, his trademark pilothouse, an Isuzu C240 60 HP diesel with dry-stack and keel-cooler, some interior modifications to allow a nice shower, and many other interior creature comforts.  The only modification that drove me crazy was that Len cut off six feet of her bowsprit!  Thus, her jib was eliminated and the fore-staysail now became the jib, utilizing one of those old-style furlers from the 60s."

"During the first three years of our ownership, we tolerated the predictably massive weather helm.  Had she not been equipped with her over-sized, bronze, worm-gear steering, it would have been intolerable to even steer her. With the 4-blade, drogue of a prop that Len had installed (great for motoring/maneuvering, not so great for sailing), combined with the now inherent weather helm, she was not sailing to her potential.  So much so, that even on a broad reach in 25 knots of true wind (ideal conditions for a schooner) with her three working sails only (main, main-staysail and jib), she required having her wheel turned 180 degrees to maintain a proper course and angle to the apparent wind.  I experimented with minimizing the weather helm by incrementally reefing/furling the main allowing the Nav-Com to steer.  Once I was able to see the wheel was slightly off center, in an ideal position, I had furled in approximately one-third of the mainsail and the speed had dropped from 8 knots to just over 6!  This just wouldnt do!"

"So, I commissioned Chip Cherry of Cherry Boatworks in Gig Harbor to construct a new bowsprit utilizing her original plans.  After much discussion on what wood to use and if this would be the proper size, now that she was staysail-rigged instead of gaff, etc., we settled on using the original length sprit and using Sapele mahogony."

"We managed to get all this finished and rigged just in time for the schooner race in Pt. Townsends Wooden Boat Festival last September where, despite the inadequacies of skipper and crew, we placed a respectable fourth in some pretty good wind behind Martha, Alcyon, and Lucky Star.  Prior to this, Prudence had been barely an "also-ran."

"We may be prejudiced as a parent is to her child, but we think Prudence is absolutely one of the most beautiful boats on the Puget Sound, or anywhere, either sitting at anchor or under sail."


I agree with Roy. He does have a beautiful boat. (Now all he needs is a Culler rowing skiff to go along).

He didnt send me a good shot of Prudence with her new bowsprit, but hopefully, when I return from the Port Townsend Boat Festival this fall, Ill have some to share. Shes sporting her new rig in the blurry pre-race photo above, if you look closely.

All photos of Prudence, courtesy of Roy Wilkowski.
Thank you, Roy!

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Dory Schooner Hestur

I just got home from more than a week of work, out of town, to find a remarkable note from my good friend Chris Perkins, in Scotland.

The dory schooner, Hestur, built by Dan and Charlotte on the Loch Broom near Ullapool, Scotland has been launched after only two years in the shop. This dory is a just few feet shorter than my own dory, Mistral, which took ten years to build. So, not only am I in awe, but incredibly jealous of this impressive effort and the very beautiful product.

Jay Benford is a designer of impressive stature, so we should not be surprised to see a well crafted boat from his drawing board turn out so well.

The list of contributors to the success of this project is long and I suspect we will hear much more from Dan about that soon - after he catches up on his sleep, of course. A link for the blog documenting this new junk-rigged dory is located on the left side-bar, and also here.

Congratulations Dan and Charlotte!

And look at this! Dans father showed up with a beautiful Caledonia Yawl he built, to observe the festivities from the water. What a talented family!

All images, copyright by Chris Perkins. Thank you Chris for your kind and generous permission.

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Great Chesapeake Bay Schooner Race 2014

The Great Chesapeake Bay Schooner Race is held annually, with schooners of all types and sizes racing each other from the Bay Bridge North of Annapolis to the southern end of Chesapeake Bay. Starting at 13h30 on Thursday 16th October, this is the 25th running of the annual race, which was started by the late Capt. Laine Briggs.This is really two parties, one in Baltimore, Maryland, the other in Portsmouth, Virginia, linked by a yacht race.

I have sailed in this race twice before, on steel boats that I had designed. In 2004 it was on the 60ft gaff schooner "Ancilla II", then owned by Renny Barnes. About 5 or 6 years later I did it on the  Hout Bay 40 "Adventure" that was owned by Charley Holmes.

This year I will sail with Dan Hall on his GRP staysail schooner-rigged Shearwater 45 "Apella". She was built in Cape Town by Patrick Fraser. Patrick commissioned the Shearwater 45 design and built two of them, one for himself and the other for his colleague Denis Colclough. The one that we will sail was the boat owned by Denis and was originally named "Wave Maiden".

"Apella", snapped by solo-circumnavigator Ant Steward at a recent
chance meeting when leaving Newport RI.

The Shearwater 45 has a modern underbody below her classic good looks. It allows these boats to show surprising speed under most wind conditions.

The two schooners were both fitted out with very distinctive colours and detailing, styled after the very luxurious private Pullman carriages that were used by wealthy families to travel on the railroads of North America.

Sistership "Moonbeam" out of the water, showing underbody.

Gorgeous interior of "Apella", looking aft

Looking forward.

The cutter-rigged version of this design won two boat of the year awards at the 2000 Annapolis Sailboat Show. Read more about the Shearwater 45 in an earlier blog post.

Visit our website at http://dixdesign.com/.

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Design 90 76 6 Shoal Draft Schooner

Only two drawings were prepared for this preliminary design proposal; a Lines Plan and a Sail & Deck Plan.  I believe the Lines Plan that is shown here is the only one of the two that has survived.  Thats a shame as it would have been interesting to see her rig.

I always try to do an Internet search for the old customers to see if it might have been someone famous.  The plan list gives the name William McCoy.  I was more than amused to find that William McCoy was a rum-runner during prohibition and that he ran five different schooners between Bimini and Long Island.  Could it be that the firm designed one of them?  Probably not since prohibition ended in 1933 in the United States and this design was produced in 1935. Perhaps he just wanted to spend some of his profits on a fancy new boat.  Click here to read about him.

Principal Dimensions

LOA 76-6"

LWL 66-6"

Beam 19-8"

Draft 5-0"

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Our Schooner Race on Shearwater 45 Apella

The 25th running of the Great Chesapeake Bay Schooner Race proved to be a well-run and memorable event. The weatherman came close to creating big problems but it all worked out in the end. The massive cold front that tore apart parts of USA in the previous week arrived in Baltimore on Wednesday afternoon, dumping enough rain to wash out the planned Parade of Sail through Baltimores Inner Harbor. Other than that, everything went off with the usual smoothness of a well-practiced organisation.

"Apella" alongside "America II" at the start of the 2013 race.

Behind the wind-driven soaking of Wednesday, we were handed a couple of gorgeous days to carry us down to Portsmouth. The weatherman didnt get it all correct though. The forecast light breezes from the south at the start, swinging to westerly for most of the race, held only for the biggest and fastest boats at the front of the fleet. Behind them the wind was sometimes the opposite of the forecast and then fell apart into increasingly large holes that trapped boats for hours. The further back that they were in the fleet, the larger the holes and the longer they battled to get through.

As for us on Dan Halls Shearwater 45 "Apella", we had a pretty good race, one to store in the memory banks for recall in the coming cold winter days when only professional seamen and crazy people are out on the water. We had a good crew, comprising the owner, myself and a bunch of friends who are capable sailors.

Dan Hall, Dudley Dix, Paul Schaub, Dylan Bailey, Tom Miller & Scott Page.

We had a crazy start. Dan was on the helm, labouring under advice from Paul and myself that obviously conflicted with his own thoughts and must have been comical to anyone paying attention to us on nearby boats. Complicated by current, spectator boats and a big boat fleet that started 10 minutes before us but was mostly late to the line, we were dodging boats and going the wrong way within the last minute, yet still managed to cross the start line first, within 10 seconds of the gun and right at the committee boat. As Tom said, "sometimes too many chiefs actually works".

A Class gaff schooner "Hindu", which gave us some close-quarter racing.

We worked our way through much of the big boat fleet and had mostly good sailing all the way down the bay. Most of the time we were lying between 7th and 10th on the water and thoroughly enjoying what we were doing. A highlight of the race was twice managing to get ourselves ahead of the beautiful Baltimore clipper replica "Pride of Baltimore". When the wind came through after we broke out of the hole together, she sailed away from us.

Creeping up on the beautiful "Pride of Baltimore II".

We were in B Class, with our Windmill Point finish line 40 miles short of the Thimble Shoals line for the bigger boats in Classes A and AA. We planned to sail the optional additional 40 miles to claim "bragging rights" but gave up on that idea when the winds went light and onto the nose. Mission accomplished, we whimped out and motored the rest of the way to Portsmouth.

The awards party was today and we came away with first place in B Class, ahead of "Tom Bombadil". A great end to an enjoyable few days. Thank you to the crew of "Apella", all other competitors and especially to the organisers and volunteers who together made this such a successful event.

Tom, Dudley, Paul and Dan with the silverware. Scott & Dylan missed the party.

Dylan has promised to bring his Little Creek 47 "Flutterby" north from St Augustine, Florida, for the 2015 Great Chesapeake Bay Schooner Race and we will race the bay together again. I look forward to it.

To see our full range of designs, please visit http://dixdesign.com/.

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