Danish Double-Ender Yacht Sailboat Boat Plan Plans

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September October 1 9 8 7

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of engineering—so long as the winch and cable survived the load, and rust was held at bay by the galvanizing. (I

wonder what 30 years in warm water has done to that boat?) And we designed and built three smaller boats (25' long, with 18" draft) with very heavy boards. They stayed tight and carried sail nobly; but the hoisting winches were a hazard to incautious hands, and the boards, thrust upward on a shoal and dropping violently into deeper water, would snap even a very strong pennant. So we went to lighter boards, ballasted just enough to overcome any buoyancy left in the water-soaked wood. These boards

In our innocence, we thought they were very good centerboards indeed, and the pennants thrummed a noble orchestration when we slid down the front of a wave at a breathtaking six knots. were fitted with flexible pennants, usually a springy line, over a sheave in the trunk cap, and leading to a cleat in the cockpit. But before then, some 65 years ago, when we had not learned about laminar flow, or developed much skill or patience, we would haunt blacksmith shops and junkyards in search of a slab of ¼" steel plate that could be shaped and drilled for a centerboard in the new dory, or in the ancient catboat that had dropped its original board somewhere at the entrance to the cove. We'd pay 12 cents a pound, out of our clam money, for a lucky find, and sail away forever and a day with never a thought of rust or chafed-off pivot bolts. In our innocence, we thought they were very good centerboards indeed, and the pennants thrummed a noble orchestration when we slid down the front of a wave at a breathtaking six knots. So, to make a simple wooden centerboard: Proceed with the thought that it's likely to warp, slightly, at some time in its career, and therefore should be fitted with what may seem a ridiculous amount of clearance in the trunk— perhaps a slot 50 percent wider than the thickness of the board. Build it of green lumber, quarter-sawn; fit vertical cleats, as shown in Figure 4, on both ends; and, if the board is thick enough, install one-piece edge holts, top to bottom. Cut out that cavity in the after end, perhaps, and pour it full of lead to give just the right amount of negative buoyancy, Sharpen the leading and trailing edges—and

ignore sophisticated alarmists who know all about chords, and laminar flow, and what you can fabricate in aluminum or fiberglass. You can also save your money for a couple of

years and buy a very nice new sailboat that doesn't have a bit of that nasty wood smell. So you can, but it wouldn't be half as much fun as building your own—complete with

centerboard. Bud Mclntosh and Sam Manning have helped WoodenBoat readers understand the complexities of boatbuilding through their fine and frequent contributions to these pages. Bud designs and builds boats in Dover, New Hampshire, and Sam has a marine graphics business in Camden, Maine. This article on building centerboards is excerpted from the new book,

How to Build a Wooden Boat, by David C. "Bud"Mclntosh, with illustrations by Sam Manning. 48

September Ortober 1987

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by Robert Moss

I

n the 15 years that we have owned SKOAL, I have never walked or rowed away from her without looking back. As do all spidsgatters, she possesses that special Scandanavian quality of strength with grace. She is the "boatiest"-looking boat in our harbor at Brentwood Bay on Vancouver Island. My wife and I met SKOAL early on

in the search for our first sailboat. It was a winter Sunday when we saw her at the end of one of the floats at Oak

Bay Marina in Victoria. She was the most beautiful double-ender I had ever seen—beamy, elegant, and with one of the highest sticks ever for a 26footer. Her crew was "taking five" between races, and I knew one chap from school days. He invited me below into a beautiful teak-and-iroko interior with oak deckbeams highlighted against satin white, V-grooved decking. I was in love. I was then introduced to the owner, who said that SKOAL would be for sale in the spring! We struck a deal in that moment, and he invited me to crew for the winter races (it was then Octo-

ermen and the seas they worked in. SKOAL ghosts along in the mildest

zephyrs, yet she'll tackle the rough stuff with equanimity. One Sunday, a 45-knot southeaster canceled the race, but we took SKOAL out for a sail anyway. Going to weather under storm jib and reefed main, and later lifting to the swells on the run home, SKOAL possessed a confidence-building ease of motion. That winter we

placed third overall in the long-distance series. Finally, spring. The owner had sailed SKOAL 140 miles up Georgia Strait and lived aboard her for a month while he worked in Campbell

River, British Columbia. We arranged to meet in Nanaimo, about

riola Island and into Dodds Narrow—-just 180'wide—through which our estimated over-the-bottom speed was 13 knots! Then, past Thetis and Ruxton Islands and into Sansum Narrows. Here, the owner retired below for a nap. His absence gave me the Narrows and SKOAL to myself. The rock bluffs and trees rose steeply out of the dark, gray-green water. I stood abaft the cockpit with the tiller angling up beside me, and let my eyes follow the sweet run of the deck before me. It was the beginning of a long friendship. pidsgatters are not the work of a

single designer, but strong similarities define the general class. There is also a similarity to be found among spidsgatter owners. We tend to be emotionally attached to our boats and probably incapable of genuine objectivity regarding them.

We take a pride undue us as mere

mainland, I had now committed myself each race day to a 40-minute ferry ride plus a 20-mile drive on either .

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home. Northwest tides can be impressive, and we left on a morning ebb that would drop 11'. Combined with a northwest wind at a steady 20 knots, all was in our favor for the reach home. We flew south past Gab-

S

ber) to better know the boat. Since I lived in the city of Vancouver on the

end for a 7:00 a.m. sailing. The winter acquainted me with her sailing qualities, a seakindliness developed from generations of accommodation between Danish fish-

85 sailing miles south for the sail

The Skovshoved boat THORA, built in 1913 and one of the graceful intermediate links between the working kragejoller and the spidsgatter yacht.

owners that in many seas there are spidsgatters with 20, 30, or more seasons behind them still answering the needs of demanding sailors. They race well; they cruise well; they daysail well; and they are aesthetically

satisfying. How did the spidsgatter

WoodenBoat 78

ERS The author's spidsgatter SKOAL (above and below), demonstrating why it's so difficult for a spidsgattfr owner to row or walk away from his boat without taking a last look back at her.

September October 1987

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develop such a loyal cadre of "varnishers and caulkers"? The spidsgatter goes back to the clinker-built working boats, or kragejoller, of Denmark's inshore fisheries. But the boats of the Ore Sund, the narrow strait between Denmark and Sweden, really had the most influence. They had been given a finer entry to counter the short chop of the Ore Sund and were n o t i c e a b l y more graceful than other boats of the type. The Skovshoved boat (named for a fishing village above Copenhagen) is typical. As the illustration two pages previous shows, it differed from the later pleasure versions by being of open design with a ring deck, and carried a sprit rig with topsail. The long "widow maker" or bow-

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sprit was not inherited by the modern version, happily enough. The first pleasure kragejoller appeared around 1900, with cabins and both inside and outside ballast. Simply more comfortable adaptations of

the fishing craft, they, too, were clinker built but now carried a gaff rig. They were from 16' to 30' long

and became increasingly popular, especially along the east coast of Jutland. It was this early popularity that accounts for the endearing qualities of today's spidsgatters, for they were lucky enough to catch the attention of some very competent and competitive designers. The first was Georg Berg, who in 1914 designed KULING (which translates loosely as

"Cold, Dirty, Windy Weather"). KULING led the change to carvelplanked hulls and became the first spidsgatter as we now know them. She was of robust construction, heavily ballasted, and her 30-square-meter mainsail was tall and narrow with a short boom and gaff. Berg followed with PAN (40 square meters) and ORN (65 square meters). So, the spidsgatter was neither a creature of the marketing man nor a boat for one kind of water only. She had evolved in "real-life" working conditions and was then carefully refined by able professionals. Of these later designers, none had a more beneficent affect on the spidsgatter than Aage Utzon (for a reasonably close phonetic pronunciation, try "Oh-uh Ootzun"). In his book, The Proper Yacht, Arthur Beiser calls Utzon "the dean of Danish yacht architects" and refers to his "jewellike double-enders that do well in American and European racing." My wife, Liz, and I are pleased that our own SKOAL was designed by Utzon, drawn by him in 1935 when he was living in Alborg on the east coast of Judand. Earlier, in 1918, Utzon drew plans for a larger spidsgatter, a 55-squaremeter boat. Four of these were built, each with small changes to suit the taste of their owners. Best-known of the four was SHAMROCR, owned by the harbor master at Alborg. She became a favorite along the coast and was often the fastest, boat for boat, in major regattas. She finally met her match against REFLEX, a new spidsgatter from the board of Georg Berg, who had started it all two decSeptember October 1987

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dicted them to be slow, tender, and distressingly lively in a blow. What they did not consider was the spidsgatter's ancestry; generations of banish pilots and fishermen had built and improved their workboats, producing a craft that could live with the sea in all its moods. With their bouyant ends, the spidsgatters stayed dry and comfortable in a seaway while they provided more usable room below in the bargain. Owners swore their boats would not bury their bows in green water, and they claimed never to have taken a sea over the stern. In 1935, two Hansen designs, IBI and VAGANT, completed the famous Sjaelland Rundt, the annual race around the island on which Copenhagen lies, in very heavy weather and high seas. Today, spidsgatters thrive on San Francisco Bay and in other heavy-weather areas the world over. Many spidsgatters were exceptionally fast and, as is still the case today, victories on the race course established the reputation of boat and designer alike. Berg's MITA (26 square meters) and REFLEX won many regattas in Copenhagen while

DOXY, a 26' spidsgatter designed by M.S.J. Hansen, receives many admiring glances at the Victoria Classic Boat Festival in Victoria's Inner Harbour.

his BJORN

ades earlier with KULING. By now, interest in spidsgatters was high, and more and more of them were raced. However, the creative variety of size, scantlings, and rigs perplexed the race committees. Clearly, discipline was needed. Utzon had been trying to promote a spidsgatter class, and in 1925 the Jutland Sail Union agreed to sponsor a design competition for 30-square-meter

In the early 1930s, Marius Sofus Johannes Hansen, usually (and understandably) referred to as M.S.J. Hansen, designed his first spidsgatter in the 30-square-meter class, and class racing began at Copenhagen. Berg, Hansen, and Utzon dominated

and 45-square-meter classes. Utzon won the 45-square-meter competition and placed second to Berg in the 30-square-meter contest. From the

built by any competent builder of fishing boats, as the construction

winning drawings, scantlings and dimensions were fixed as well as consideration of room below decks and construction costs. To keep these costs in line, native Scandanavian woods were specified, apart from the

house, trim, and interior joinery. Eventually, there were designs for 20-, 26-, 30-, 38-, 45-, and 55-squaremeter spidsgatters. 54

the designs, with the most popular

classes being the 30- and 38-squaremeters. Many boats were fitted with auxiliary power, and all could be methods were the same—a fact that undoubtedly boosted the popularity of the boats. Usually, when a design is signifi-

(45-square-meters)

was

the fastest, boat for boat, for several years. A 45-square-meter, BON AMI, won 15 firsts in as many starts. Berg's 38-square-meter, ROLLO, was another consistent winner. Although there were differences among the boats of the leading spidsgatter designers, Berg, Hansen, and Utzon, all were evenly matched in performance, size for size. Hansen's boats, with less sheer and more curve to the stem and stern sections, were

closest to the lines of the old kragejoller. They were roomy and had an additional cabintop with a sliding

hatch forward of the mast. Berg's designs, by contrast, had a bold sheer with a sharp stem and stern sections and were also very roomy. Utzon's spidsgatters had strong, curved stem

sections, a slim rudder blade, and were a little less spacious below decks. They displayed, however, the

cantly different visually, it does not

most elegant lines of all. A variation

gain instant approbation. And so it

of the traditional spidsgatter was drawn by Hansen and some other designers in response to the Norwe-

was with the spidsgatter. The fashion leaders were the long, sleek, counter-

sterned cutters of the English school of naval architecture, and cutter proponents did not find the short, wide

spidsgatter appealing. They pre-

gian and Swedish markets. These boats were narrower and, some say, a bit lovelier of line. According to con-

temporary reports, they were no WoodenBoat 78

A sampling of spidsgatters from the leading designers for the class: (Left to right) 26- and 38-square-meter-dass spidsgatters designed about 1936 by Georg Berg; a 38-square-meter-class spidsgatter by M.S.J. Hansen; and Aage Utzon's 26' Solrosen design, the author's SKOAL. faster, but having departed from the kragejoller type, they were less seaworthy.

O

ur own boat, SKOAL (originally named TOVARICH, then SNOP II) was built in 1939 in Copenhagen by Kai Schwartz and, as mentioned earlier, to lines drawn by Aage Utzon. Schwartz is since deceased, and correspondence to learn more about him has been fruitless. We did learn that as the boat was finished, World War II began and, because of the Nazi occupation, she was not launched until the spring of 1946. That same year she received her Royal Danish Yacht Club measurement certificate from the Sundby Sailing Association. In 1953 she was sold and shipped by freighter to Vancouver, British Columbia. Her performance on Northwestern race courses, coupled with her handsome lines, created genuine interest. In fact, five more of her sisters were soon imported and, as far as I know, all these boats are still sailing and in good condition. I've already mentioned that the spidsgatters' beauty and performance inspire an uncommon loyalty among their owners. On a trip to Denmark, our holiday threatened to become a pilgrimage to various spidsgatter temples, otherwise known as marinas, boatyards, and old barns. September October 1987

While there, we met an owner who had sailed his boat since 1927. He took us to see the object of this marathon love affair and, as we had expected, she was immaculate. SKOAL is rather typical in her construction. She is planked with European larch (Larix decidua), the only deciduous conifer and a tough, durable wood commonly used for boat construction in northern Europe. (A choice bit of trivia: Larix deridua was used for the pilings on which Venice was built.) SKOAL's framing is white oak. Her fastenings are rivets, except for iron boat nails in the sawn frames. These frames are 1 3 / 4 " by 2¼" and are on 21¼" centers. The iron ballast keel weighs 3,238 Ibs. Trim and interior joinery are of teak, while the house is built of iroko. The 47¼' mast is solid spruce and is not original to the boat (her first mast was fir and spreaderless). Decks are foreand-aft-laid tongue-and-grooved larch covered with canvas. The cockpit has been lengthened by a previous owner and has a slide-in filler piece which allows it to be used as a cozy, fair-weather double berth. There are two berths below decks, a sink, a two-burner stove, heads, and good stowage room. Headroom is 4'10", entirely adequate for comfortable sitting. A 22gallon stainless-steel freshwater tank is in the bow, and a 12-gallon fuel

tank and two batteries flank the 12hp Farymann diesel. There is a backstay and boomkin, a legacy from a former owner who removed the original running backstays. While I hold some reservations about this, it keeps things simple underway, and the boomkin provides a measure of protection for the rudder. There seems a sense of purpose to a traditionally built wooden boat— far more so, in my opinion, than can be felt in a "one-piece" boat of fiberglass. The intention of the designer and the warm hand of the builder are evident in a proper wooden boat, and nowhere is this more readily perceived than in the spidsgatter. Elizabeth and I recently enjoyed a sailing holiday in the fjords of British Columbia with our boys, Tristan and Alexander. SKOAL provides room for all, as the lads are still quite young. We all helped put the boat to bed on our return, and as we left our small harbor at Brentwood Bay, once again, and quite without plan, I turned to look back at SKOAL. A special peace rewards the sailor who is entirely satisfied with his boat. Robert Moss juggles love of his boat with love of gardening and often remembers Eric and Susan Hiscock's difficulty with the same. Moss would like to hear from other owners of spidsgatters. He may be reached at 7239 Peden Lane, Brenlwood Bay, British Columbia, Canada VOS 1AO. 55

Part1

Can you repair this canoe? Is it worth it?" These are the first questions a person asks as I stare up into the darkened spaces of a canoe that is upside down on a car rack. The first question is easy to answer: "Yes, I can repair it." Given one rib, I could build a canoe around it—that's no problem. The determining factor is how much this person is willing to spend, which relates to the second question. I can't really say whether it's worth it or not. That is a personal decision that the owner must make. Is the owner interested in the historical significance of the wooden canoe, or is he looking at it as an investment? I do know that if a person is looking for monetary return on his investment, he would have better luck with pork bellies. Occasionally, the right canoe

by Rollin Thurlow

FOR SALE: Quality wooden canoe, needs some work. Priced to move. 56

in the right place will meet the right customer, but that is a rarity. In most cases the seller will make back what he has invested in a professionally restored canoe, but the market does not generally supply much of a profit. If a person is interested in the canoe because of its history, and appreciates the characteristics of a wooden canoe, it's only a matter of what he can afford, unless he is able to do the restoration himself. Most of the wooden canoes that have been presented to me to be examined were originally high-quality canoes; otherwise, they would not have lasted as long as they have. With luck, the manufacturer of the canoe is known, which helps determine its historic value. Many unidentified canoes are quality craft, but many people unfortunately equate quality WoodenBoat 78