Category Archives: Boat Construction

Babyface Nelson

by Bruce Hutchinson

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Cover Photo: After two years of work, Bruce Hutchinson launched BABYFACE NELSON at Gull Lake in western Michigan.

What was I thinking? That phrase kept running through my mind during the 2000 hours over two years it took to build Babyface Nelson.  Now that it’s complete and I’ve logged 50 hours on the water, I can say it was a worthwhile venture. It’s too much fun! People have commented that it must have taken a lot of patience to complete the project. Patience had nothing to do with it: it was perseverance. I ran out of patience about the second layer of cedar planking! Continue reading →

The Importance of Stiffness in Small Boat Performance

by Meade Gougeon

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Cover Photo: The SWIFT SOLO is a single-handed skiff built by Bram Dally. Stiff, durable hulls are crucial to skiff speed.

One of the little known or understood characteristics of modern fiber- reinforced plastic composites is the loss of some initial stiffness capability after repeated cyclic loading. Loss of stiffness can be significant enough to cause a noticeable effect on performance, depending upon laminate makeup and degree of cyclic loading.

Loss of initial stiffness after repeated cyclic loading was first noticed in several highly competitive racing dinghy classes where older boats that had been sailed hard for Continue reading →

Building for Long-Term Competitive Performance

By Bram Dally

Swift Solo, a single handed skiff built by Bram Dally.

When Meade Gougeon asked me if I’d write a piece about what I’m up to for Epoxyworks, I was honored. He had read the January 2002 article on my single-handed skiff in Sailing World and offered the assistance of GBI (Gougeon Brothers, Inc.) to do some extensive testing for us on several composite samples. The findings will be made public and should be educational. The cedar-cored samples particularly interest me because we’ve had good success using cedar cores and there seems to be a pervasive lack of understanding regarding this composite in high-tech applications. While many high-quality ski and snowboard manufacturers have tried other exotic Continue reading →