"I like to get out there sit in the swell and look out" is how I think of a pleasant row in my home waters of Casco Bay, Maine. Along with dreaming of boats, like Culler's Otter, I dream of where to go in the boats. Next year's big row is out to Halfway Rock in the middle of Casco Bay, about 15 mile offshore. You can also see a large scale chart of Casco Bay.

Rowing in open water like this scares the hell out of me. When I sit there, in the swell, looking out, the butterflies flutter inside, making it more challenging to assess the situation and peruse the mental checklist of precautions. Weather window, ferry traffic, tidal currents, my energy level, time of day, schedule back on land, amount of food in the dry bag, do I have all the gear I need, what is plan B, plan C....

But I am learning that these butterflies are annoying but good; they keep me alive and ultimately confident. Once I am out there in open water, and I am feeling strong, confident in the boat, and having a blast, I relax and therefore row better. In my open water boat, Drake, I can cover about 4 nm per hour and that is an average. Time slips away and life is good. Christmas has been wonderful, and the weather cold, and now I begin to plan big rows for next year. I am training for long distance rows and hope to make a 20-mile row somewhat routine. Halfway Rock, located below the 'Not' in "Not for Navigational Use" is uncannily "halfway" between the Eastern and western points that define Casco Bay. It is an exposed rocky isle with a lighthouse. Landing there will be difficult, so when I row there next summer, it will be my longest pull yet, at least 25 miles total, depending on the exact route.

Time to dream, be patient as the sun makes its way back north, and time to get in shape!

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With a little time off to sit back at Christmas and reflect, new boats are dreamed of day and night and usually they are rowboats or sail-and-oar boats. Another problem is that I have many charts framed and hanging on my walls. So, it is far too easy to day dream of excursions in these new boats. Thus, for Christmas, I want a Pete Culler Otter for myself and to offer potential customers who also dream of rowboats and rowing. It is said by those who have rowed an Otter that is is about as fast as you can go in a fixed seat boat, though it is more oriented towards protected waters. Otter is 17-1/2' long, 3' beam, and draws 3". She is a narrow, flat bottom, double ended skiff (a 'clipper bateau, Culler calls it) that is cross planked on the bottom and carries three strakes of cedar on each side, with no gunwale timbers at all, and is pure simplicity. To get an oar span wide enough, Culler made extra long oarlocks which created the spread he needed to use up to 8' long oars. Culler is a giant in my mind, particularly with regards to oarmaking and rowing. I'll be teaching people how to make Culler style oars in a Wooden Boat School course and Lowell's Boatshop. Otter would make for a very light traditional boat, even planked all solid timber. I would use the newer flexible epoxies to glue the splines, bottom boards together and other sealants in the laps to get a trailerable, traditional boat. Here are some pictures I pulled from a thread in the Wooden Boat Forum about the Otter, and I appreciate the information the guys there have provided about this fabulous boat by Capt. Pete. I'd love to hear from others interested in this boat or about oars and rowing, Feel free to contact me by email or leave comments below. More on the Otter will be my Clint Chase Boatbuilder soon.

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'Tis the season for kitting out boats here in the shop. It is keeping the business very busy as we finalize the Goat Island Skiff kits and in January we'll be "kitting" Clint's design, the Drake Rowboat.

FAQ's

What is unique about our kits?
Clint's kits are the equivalent of a professionally built boat, dry fit to perfection, and then taken apart and packaged so that you can replicate the results at home. That means the hull lines will be "eye-sweet" and beautiful when you assemble the boat. The numerous and subtle tweaks that a professional builder does to make the lines of a boat 'sing' has been done for you. This is the unique part of our kits: the kit is not cut directly from a computer file, but rather comes from directly from a hull built by an accomplished boat builder.

What is included in a boat kit?
Our kits have a number of options to suit your timeline and budget. One option will always include plans and the plywood components, planks and bulkheads or molds. The plywood is BS1088 Okoume and comes from Maine Coast Lumber, a trusted source for us. Timber kits are available. Pre-laminated components are available, frames, stems, and backbone components. A further option is a complete timber kit that gets you set up with seats, gunwales, floorboards and all the wood you need to build the boat. You can see kit information at our website kit information page.

Why buy a kit?
When I suggest to people that they buy a kit they sometimes are offended because they feel we don't think they have the skills to make their own kit. The truth of the matter is that we build our own boats from kits as well. In fact, a successful Pro Boatbuilder will build from boat kits himself. The reasons are the same as for you and me: it saves a lot of time, it saves money due to less waste in materials and less wasted time, and the results are a better boat. The boat fits together with less fuss and the lines are reproducibly beautiful every time.

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Our first kit offering at Clint Chase Boatbuilder is a plywood and timber kit for the Michael Storer designed Goat Island Skiff (GIS). Why buy a kit? Folks are sometimes offended when I suggest this, feeling that it is thought they don't have the skills to make the parts themselves, but that is not it at all. We build all of our boats in the shop from kits!!! Even professionals do it and the reason is that it makes the build process quicker and smoother and the result is more professional. In the case of the GIS, we have made parts and built the hull of the boat, making all the small tweaks that professionals with a good eye make to the lines of the boat to make them look eye-sweet. Any design, no matter how well drawn, will need some eyes on it in 3D to make final tweaks. We also have checked bevels and made some adjustments for a rabbeted gunwale, which covers the end grain exposed at the top of the gunwale. Our kit captures all these professional practices so you can get a better boat. Currently, kits are cut per order, but we may move to CNC when volume increases.

We were attracted to this design initially because of the sail plan, a beautifully proportioned Balanced Lug. Upon further reflection we noticed something was missing for RAID sailors and for others who might use the boat as a sail & oar craft. It needed a mizzen. A small mizzen gives great control of a small boat, allowing one to lie head-to-wind for reefing at sea or for heaving-to. It allows you to back off a beach or a dock, with practice. It is useful for trimming the sail plan, adjusting weather helm to create "feel" in the tiller. A mizzen makes single handing much easier, especially for switching between oars and sail, because the boat will tend itself and stay head-to-wind while you stow oars and fidget with things at the mast. For a useful diagram showing How to Sail a Lug-Yawl, by James McMullen.

We can supply a kit for the GIS as well as the mast and spars. Masts are round, hollow using the Birdsmouth technique. Yard and boom for the GIS are solid, laminated Northern White Spruce. Laminated spars stay straighter over time with changes in moisture content in the wood. We can make custom 9' oars specifically designed for the GIS. Rowing in the Goat Island Skiff is quite enjoyable, whether it is from the dock to a local area with wind, or coming back when the wind has petered out. Products for the Goat Island Skiff can be seen in the GIS Flyer on our website Goat Island Skiff Page.

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Today I was taking an oar to show a group of students and I was reminded about how well Oarsman Marine Tallow keeps the leathers tight on the loom and quiet in the oarlock. I discovered this stuff while at the Wooden Boat Show a couple years ago, bought a small container, and now I live and swear by it. I apply it as seen in the pictures every other row, or every row when I am rowing frequently. I also use it on my oarlocks and sockets. Great stuff. To order some, contact the maker, Rodger Swanson.

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Clint will be teaching his Traditional and Modern Oarmaking course at the Wooden Boat School in July 2010. There are a huge number of wonderful course offerings up there this year and Clint is proud and honored to be a part of the scene.

Students will leave the course with actual, usable, and beautiful oars to put on the gunwales of there boats and go rowing. If anybody wants to make a paddle instead, the skills and processes involved are no different from oar making and we'd be happy to have you in the course.

You can visit Wooden Boat School's on-line course catalog for more information and also see my website for more information about our line of oars, stock and custom made.

Clint Chase Boatbuilder -- Oars

Wooden Boat School -- Oarmaking Course

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Oars are a delight to make and we are trying to make something new for the market. A prototype for a Carbon Fiber blade-Spruce oar has been completed for a customer here in Portland to be use for his new sculling boat, an Annapolis Wherry, being built by him from a Chesapeake Light Craft kit.

The main prototype effort here were the blades, an infused laminate of carbon fiber with a light core material in the middle.


The core adds stiffness with negligible additional weight. Infusion is incredibly tricky to get right and much time was spent in making it work to make a perfect blade.


The looms are Sitka Spruce for these oars (and can be done in native Northern White Spruce) and they are specially designed such that they counterbalance perfectly with the carbon blades. The blades will lay on the top of the water and without any pressure from the hands.


This balance means less fatigue for the rower, a better feel, and greater speed because the rowers kinetic energy is not wasted in moving a blade-heavy oar forward and backwards as the blade exits at the release and enters at the catch. Another design element to Clint's oars is in their flexibility. Oars should flex a little, especially in fixed seat boat, but also in sliding seat boats (the amount will differ depending on the rower). The faster the boat goes and the faster the rower wants to go, the stiffer they may want their oar to be made. But for recreational sculling and pleasure rowing in fixed seat boats, you want an oar with an amount of flexibility. It means less fatigue, a gentler stroke at the beginning and end, and better endurance for the rower. How much flex is very subjective and based on experience on the water as well as intuition. When Clint makes oars, you'll often see him shaping the loom then taking it to the floor and springing it. Then the shaping continues based on the feedback from the wood.

Every board, each species, and different length oars will all feel different. What is 'right' is based on our customers' needs, rowing style, their goals, the waters and conditions the rower is in most of the time, and of course it depends on the boat itself.

You'll notice that the oar blades are quite different between these two oars.

The blade area and the shape are key factors in how much "Slip" the oar has in the water. Slip is a term for how much 'grab' the blade has on the water, how much water the blade holds. Thus, a large, wide blade slips less in the water and can potentially produce more drive for the boat. There are other factors of course. But for the sake of this post, looking at these two different oars, the spruce spoon blade oars are specifically made for open water conditions where feathering is not completely necessary. The carbon blades will need to be feathered especially when the water is choppy. The blade area is also more outboard making these more efficient oars for flat water conditions or when there is a slight chop, for feathering. Other differences between these oars are in the oar 'leathers'.


The carbon blade oars have a plastic sleeve that makes feathering easy. The all spruce oars have traditionally stitched leathers with a custom 'button' that we produce on a lathe with nylon.


The split buttons are seized to the leathers with nylon twine and epoxy (and elbow grease). Another big difference between these oars are the upper looms. We laminated spanish cedar to the upper looms of the carbon blade oars to help counterweight the oars and make the looms a little more durable (and it looks snazzy!). The result is very nice and no lead counterweights were needed in the handle. The oars are sensationally light for 9'6" sculls.



I will update the post when I have a proper scale to take weights. The spruce spoons are counterweighted with 2lbs of lead (see lead insert sticking out of handle, boring hole for other insert).

The balance point for both oars is just below the leathers and the result is a very comfortable oar on the water that is effortless to bring through the stroke cycle, from recovery to catch, the blades have little perceptible weight to them. Careful varnishing follows construction. We use a fabulous product called Le Tonkinois, a linseed varnish that makes a durable finish that is very easy and pleasurable to maintain.


A parting shot shows what makes me as excited about this new kind of oar as much as the performance benefits it is the aesthetics that make them special. The contrast of Spruce wood and Carbon Fiber to me represents the yin and yang of oarmaking -- balance. We are trying to make rowing more fun with balanced, high-quality, beautiful oars made with passion.

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Clint's design the Drake Rowboat, "A new take on the Faering for the modern oarsman" is featured in the 2010 Small Boats edition by Wooden Boat Publications. It is on newstands and it is a great issue. Click here for more info.

Clint is also a recommended US builder for Michael Storer boat designer and will be producing a line of high-performance rudders and centerboards using a unique foil template developed for small boats by Michael Storer with research done by Aerodynamicist Neil Pollock. In addition to high performance foils, look for tillers, Birdsmouth masts and spars, and a new oar designed by Clint employing carbon fiber blades on a refined Sitka Spruce loom. This new oar will be up in a few days, so stay tuned! You can see more about Michael Storer's talk at my shop earlier in this blog site. Michael's website is http://www.storerboatplans.com/

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Today was a short 9 mile row around some inner islands of Casco Bay. Pushed hard and maintained a little under 5 kts much of the time. One of the few times I've really pulled much of a wake in Drake. One thing to look for in any great rowboat is the wake. The clean exit of water such that it is not attached to the boat, but rather breaks cleanly from the surface of the boat as the hull passes by means less drag. When power is applied to a boat's hull, the stern is depressed as the hull approaches hull speed and tries to climb the bow wave created by the hull itself. The result of this is drag from the transom, if the boat has one. Others have commented about the lack of any visible wake left as we row by in Drake. The trade off of this low drag means that it is tough to hit top speeds...getting into the 5-6 knot range is something I have not done with Drake for any stretch, but have also not spent much time trying to do. This row I took, leaving the kids behind with Mom on the beach, saw a variety of conditions that reminded me how proud I am of designing Drake. Whether it was headwind, tailwind, a cross-breeze, a chop on top of open ocean swell, or bucking a strong flood tidal current, we were still able to maintain 4.5 + knots for about 2 hours. My wife, who was a top collegiate sculler, commented as I rowed back onto the beach, "Holy cow, that was quick! How'd you do that so fast."

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The scene of the talk

Eric Risch Echo Bay Dory Skiff


MIK giving pointers


MIK was an engaging speaker. Thanks, Michael!

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Dana, Clint, and Michael getting things started...

Clint introducing the speaker and asking everyone to share a bit about themselves...

Lots of visuals during the talk...

Including an amateur built rudder and rudder box for a Goat Island Skiff.


On November 1st I was pleased and honored to introduce Michael Storer, an Australian Boat Designer reputed for his simple, elegant, and approachable boats, to a group of 21 members from the wooden boat community in Maine, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire. Some knew of Storer's work, others have built his boats, and many knew him as an important name and wanted to learn more about the man and his message. His message was simple: that we can vastly improve our boats by paying a great deal more attention to three areas: the centerboard and rudder foils, the spars and sail, and the hull itself. With regards to the foils, Michael convinced is audience that it is the way they are made -- with care towards fair, accurate foil shape and towards a smooth surface -- that most matters. Michael has taken research in optimal foil design and applied these foils to boats that, without them, would not sail nearly as well upwind and would be much trickier to handle. These foils are flat in the middle, thin for reducing weight and wood use, and closely approximate the hydrodynamics of a true NACA shape, without the expense and fuss and awkwardness of a wing-shaped foil in a square centerboard box or rocking around on a flat work bench during shaping.

With regards to spars and sails, Michael's point was clear that the most important aspect of spars is that they flex and bend in the right way, the right amount. Spar bend is critical to the ability of a sail rig to absorb a gust, reducing heeling and putting the energy into forward momentum. The sail need not be a 600-dollar racing sail, but a simple polytarp will do cut with round to create the draft necessary to create power in the sail. His PDR Oz boats are a case in point. They all sail with polytarp sails, about a $30 dollar investment. And because they all use the same cloth, they can race against each other without the "upping the ante" attitude that has cause racing to be more expensive and less accessible to more and more people around the world.

Interestingly, Michael left the hull out for last. He says the hull is less important because of the way quality foils and spars can make a good boat go faster than it should. The PD racer is a square hull and wide flat bottom. As evidenced by the messabout after the talk, it does go beautifully. Why? Because of the foils and spars, but also because the hull is light. Michael discussed the keys to making a hull light, using light plywood in a hull that is reinforced the right way, using stringers, fillets, butt joints, and interior compartments that create a light, stiff structure with nothing more than 6mm plywood. Fiberglass is heavy and Michael stressed that fiberglassing adds weight with little gain in structural integrity or even abrasion resistance. Most boats being glassed with 6oz cloth do not need it for structure and are not being used in such a way they it is needed to protect the boat from abrasion. Cloth as light as 2-oz cloth will be enough. He said that builders have also succumbed to the "upping the ante" mentality, trying to do things better and better and better than anyone else, ending up with heavier boats and poorer performance.

Australia saw another 25-plus years of wooden boat development that America and Europe did not see because of the way that market forces drove us to Fiberglass boats much sooner than they did in Oz. The result is much further refinement of glued-plywood construction and testing in the small boat racing circuits around the country. We are just now learning here in the States, thanks to Michael's generous knowledge sharing and this trip he has made to the USA.

Afterwards we enjoyed some great rowing and sailing off Portland's East End. Pictures of the messabout can be seen at the WoodenBoat Forum and at Michael Storer's own Oz Forum:

http://www.woodenboat.com/forum/showthread.php?p=2372819#post2372819
http://www.woodworkforums.com/f169/

Folks will see many of Michael's philosophies played out at Clint Chase Boatbuilder in the Spruce-Composite oars, Birdsmouth masts, and soon foils, tillers, and other components made to improve the performance of customers' existing dories, skiffs, dinghies, and utility boats. Please check my website as updates will be ongoing as product development progresses and made available for sale.

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I've been away much of the last month preparing for and traveling in China to unite with our newly adopted daughter. We are back home and starting to readjust. Getting back to work has been a challenge. But we got the keel off of Frolic! My brother-in-law, Hank Osborn, is a 'get-it-done' kind of guy, which is just what I needed to jump back into the projects. We have a blog for Frolic at:

www.flyingfifteenfrolic.blogspot.com.

Frolic is a 1950 vintage Flying Fifteen under restoration at Clint Chase Boatbuilder. It is co-owned with a family member and will be restored and sailing by summer. She'll join the family fleet of ff's in Gouldsboro, Maine.

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Taking a break from the start up work for the business and the worries of how to make it all work is important for me. Moreover, getting on the water is my professional development. Using boats, thinking about how they go through the water, and trying new oars or different ways to rig the boat for sailing all matter to my finished products coming out of the shop.

Oars are a key product for my business and every time I row some new nuance of rowing and oars is realized. In these photos, you can see Portland Head Light and the stern of Drake and the oars I made specifically to Drake and my physique and style of rowing. The Spruce oars are spoon blade oars with lead in the handle so they counterbalance beautifully. These 9'1" oars are excellent in rough water because the blades are only 4-1/2" wide and have their maximum blade area outboard, providing the most propulsion. I don't need to feather these oars even going upwind. Certainly, there is more resistance but the energy feathering in rough water isn't always worthwhile.

Those two elements above won't change much. The hull form and my bodily form won't vary over time, but the conditions around me will. Wind, tidal current, waves/chop, my energy level and boat speed will all change. Upwind rowing and downwind rowing require different oars, for instance. You want a shorter oar to enable a higher stroke rating going upwind. Downwind you can use a lower rating and a longer oar and/or a larger blade area. Choppy conditions may require switching to the shorter oar. But once the wind goes calm and the water is flat, the longer oar will be more efficient. So, a good rower and rowboat needs to carry two sets of oars. For Drake, the ideal combination would be a 8'9"-8'10" spoon blade oar for upwind work and a 9'2-9'3" with a short, wide carbon blade for downwind work or calm conditions. It takes time to figure out what works for you and your boat. After a full season, I'm realizing this and luckily the 9'1" spoon blade oars have been a great all around oar to use for Drake and I.

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Vacuum Infusion Process (VIP) is the name of the technique used to make composites. In Maine, this is the new generation of composites and much of our advancement in the state is owed to the North Star Alliance which administers Federal funding Maine received a few years ago and to the Maine Advanced Technology Center which trains people in VIP using world experts in the technology. VIP is easy in concept, difficult in practice: the reinforcements for the part (carbon, kevlar, fiberglass, core materials). Our oar blades are a couple layers of Carbon Fiber on either side of a core called, Soric. The core adds stiffness without much weight; the carbon gives the strength. HOW the carbon is sized, the weave pattern, the fiber orientation all impact the properties of the oar. This will take time to develop, but we believe it is worthwhile. Part of the difficulty is that so few are taking on VIP in small shops to produce part. WE ARE PAVING OUR OWN WAY!

These pictures show some of the behind-the-scenes of the process. The carbon fiber is a woven fabric like any that cuts with scissors. We cut it to a pattern a little oversize. The carbon has a stiffness to it that harks to it's eventual properties when infused with resin. Yet, it drapes like any fabric might. The shop is getting a little cool now so, to keep mold temperatures and ambient curing temperatures up, we create a warm environment with good-ol' lamps. There will be plenty more to show after the next set of blades is complete this week.

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It has been awhile so this is a quick overall update on projects:

* Goat Island Skiff kits can be cut anytime. Marketing for kits will begin by late Winter time and CNC cutting will be part of the plan. Meetings with CNC companies will happen early winter. I am taking coursework in Rhino/CAD to enable me to create files, modify files, and give them to CNC cutters.

* The Deblois Street Dory lines and offsets are finished an available. Hull #1 is being built by a customer here in Portland. Construction and sail plans are being produced now and plans will be available this winter. Kits for the D St. D will eventually be produced for the kit catalog.

*Frolic, the Flying Fifteen is as it was upon delivery. The keel comes off in the next week. As this is a personal side project, progress on it depends on how much customer work is going on at the time. Clearly, we have been busy with customers, so Frolic sits awaiting her complete restoration.

*Carbon fiber blade-Spruce oars are underway and will be part of a line of custom and semi-custom oar and paddle offerings that will become part of our specialty line of products. An online shop will be part of this endeavor, but probably won't be set up until early Spring in time for the Boat Shows. The blades are epoxy, vacuum-infused carbon fiber for total lightweight blades and balanced oars.

* Another specialty is Birdsmouth mast and spar construction for craft up to 22'. In the shop, staves are being cut for a Shellback Dinghy and Goat Island Skiffs. We use beautiful White Spruce and Sitka Spruce. We'll be combining the two species to make beautiful masts. Clint will have a line of mast types to choose from revolving around Birdsmouth construction, with different wood species to choose from for the spars.

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Flying Fifteen #87
Built in England 1950
Hot Molded Mahogany Hull
Spruce Spars

A new restoration project has come into Clint Chase Boatbuilder, a personal project of the owner/proprietor and co-owned with Vlado Dresar, a family member and fellow craftsman who lives in Ontario. Although the project is part of the projects at Clint Chase Boatbuilder, she deserves a separate blog. Feel free to follow along at a new blog, The Restoration of Frolic.

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Carbon oars are in style at Clint Chase Boatbuilder! These are a pair made by Clint's students. They can made at any size, shape, and part of any length oar. They make most sense on 8' or longer oars where outboard weight must be kept to a minimum.

On the Dory design front, the lines are complete. To learn about my design approach, click here.

Other news: coming into the shop will be a vintage Flying Fifteen the building of which was supervised by Uffa Fox himself in the ate 1940s. Photographs will be forthcoming. The plan is to give the boat a total restoration. Everything is orginal: oak spars, Egyptian cotton sails, laminated mahagany hull (varnished).

Quite a few inquiries into Shellback Dinghies have been coming in with one order in place. If interested in this great boat, please let us know!

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Since starting to work in my shop "full time", I have yet to put a full day in due to a neck injury and complicated planning to adopt a girl from China. Nevertheless, some light duty work is getting done, namely the modeling of the Deblois Street Dory for a customer, some marketing work (such as starting the blog!), and some prep work for some spar and oar making. We ordered several hundred dollars worth of carbon fiber and other supplies for making the carbon blades with the Vacuum Infusion Process (VIP). More on that later when we get started with infusing the blades.

For now, check out the dory model lines which have been finalized on the model and will be transferred to the plans tomorrow for the customer. Each batten that you see represents the overlap of the planks, the "lap" width, roughly 1". So the lower edge of each batten, made out of 1/4" x 1/8" pine strips, represents the bottom of the plank. They were hot glued on by eye and adjusted until it looked "right". The next step, after drawing these lines on the paper plans, is to draw the construction and sail plans. The customer will be building this Fall.

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The Deblois Street Dory model is coming together! The approach is to model it at 1/4-scale and line off the planking on the model. These points will be transferred back to a 1/4-scale lofting of the boat and the lines plan will be redrawn to show the chines. A new table of offsets will be made and a couple in Portland will be building the Dory this Fall. Feel free to see a drawing of the Deblois Street Dory by clicking HERE.

In Goat Island Skiff land, preparations are under way to produce Birdsmouth masts as kits or final products, depending on the customers needs. We'll make a Birdsmouth mast for our own Goat, first, and ours may be the first Birdsmouth Mast to be used in a Goat Island Skiff! The plan is to market these to other Goat builders who might not have the time or interest in taking on this project. The picture shows the key to doing this on a semi-production basis, a stave taper jig. A long plane will be used to do the work; the plane sole will follow the hardwood guides and the staves will lie in the "bed" between the guides. The staves will eventually match the guides' width and carry the right taper along their length.

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