The author says, 'In for a penny in for a pound,' and commences to build nesting Whitehalls, one with a clear shrink wrap skin.
I used light frames of cedar and oak covered with fabric or sheet material.
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His boats were not without flaw,
His joinery was often quite raw,
But planks did appear,
Engagingly clear,
And what you could see through, he saw.
By Stephen Bobo
I like to build good boats. That's not to say I build good boats well. That's another matter, and I don't want to talk about it! It's the good boats part that I want to tell you about. Platt Monfort of Wiscasset, Maine has designed a number of pretty boats which are fun to build once one has overcome some of the common notions about the difficulty of certain boatbuilding techniques such as steam bending wood. I particularly like the several Whitehall designs he has. They are pretty, light as a feather; the plans are simple and complete, and the result is a surprisingly seakindly boat, which weighs next to nothing. In short - good boats. And this is the story of one of these beauties, or maybe two; yes, surely two.
The Monfort Associates Aerolite boats are nothing but light frames of cedar and oak covered with a heat shrink polyester cloth. However, one of his promotion pieces shows one of his boats covered in clear plastic. In talking to Platt about this, he said it was extremely difficult to build since the stuff didn't shrink, and he had to glue strips of it to each of the stringers covering the steam bent frames. His picture showed someone sitting in the boat in a swimming pool since, I suspect, he didn't feel that the thing should go very far offshore. Well, there's a pond next to my house which generations of kids have used as their own swimming pool. It's shallow, and if you canoe in it, you're likely to pass an egret up to his ankles in the water. In short if your boat falls apart in this pond you can probably walk ashore and keep your shorts dry. A good place to try out unorthodox boatbuilding techniques.
So, I bought plans for two Aerolite Whitehalls, one 11 feet, and one 10. In for a penny in for a pound, I always say. The smaller boat was to be covered with transparent material, and the larger was to be covered with conventional stuff. The larger boat serves several purposes. First, if the small one falls apart, the big one can be used to go out and rescue the other one. Also, since the transparent plastic is apt to be fragile, and not particularly rugged, the small boat would be built so that it would fit inside the big one. Voila, we have a see-through boat, and (for modesty) a cover boat.
The cover boat uses heat shrink polyester and has a 'seabright'
skeg, hollow so the see-through boat can nest inside.
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Build the big one first, so you can use the material from its molds to make molds for the little one. Turns out there are some modifications to the design of the big boat needed to accommodate the little one. For example, the skeg. I made the 11-foot boat with a Seabright skeg. That is, it's hollow, built up of plywood so the skeg from the little boat can fit inside. Also, the big boat can't have any seats or thwarts or any athwartship stuff at all. Fortunately, Platt's design says to use floatation cushions as seats in the little boat, and fairly conventional furniture in the big boat. I just changed the insides of the two boats around. Platt hates when I mess about with his plans, but progress has it's cost.
Other than the accommodations, I didn't fool with the design much at all. Except for the tholes. I like thole pins. Dynamite Payson showed me how the dorymen used thole pins, and nothing could be simpler. They drill two holes in the gunnel, and thread a piece of small stuff down through one and up the other. Then you drill a hole in the end of two trunnels and tie each end of the line to a trunnel. When you want to row, you pull on the line, and the trunnels pop into the holes, and you run out your oars. Foolproof. I can't tell you how many oarlocks I've dropped over the side. Now another form of thole has been used in the past, and that sounded even simpler. It used a single trunnel put into the hole in the gunwale. Then, the oar has a becket, a simple loop of rope that goes around the single thole and holds the oar in place. My version, which may combine the bad features of all of the above, is a piece of plywood bolted through the gunwale with a becket made up into a hole in the plywood. Somehow, to me, this version seemed sexy. I'll let you know when I've lived with it for a time.
The frames are steamed in a conventional steam box. In this case an outboard tank with water and antifreeze on a wood stove and hooked to my normal steam box, but a garden hose is just as good for steaming single small frames.
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The larger cover boat was built from 3/8" square pine stringers over 1/4" luan molds. Steamed 3/16" x 3/8" oak frames were ooched under the stringers and held in place with Monfort Associates Clampits. When the frames were dry, they were bonded in place with a glob of thickened epoxy. The See Through was built up from 1/4" x 3/8" oak for the frames and 3/16" stock - pine, cedar, or whatever for the stringers - and 1/2" okoume plywood for the thwarts and transom. 3/16" is way too skinny and limber to use for stringers, and consequently they weave their way over the frames. Actually, I used 3/16" stock because I was trying out a new stapler for a cold-molded version of a 15-foot sloop I'm building, but that's another story. When the frame was finished it didn't look too awful; far from fair, but I thought the cover would minimize most of the defects, and the boat weighs out at 22 pounds. Covering the cover boat was conventional using heat shrink Dacron furnished by Monfort. The finished hull without oars weighed out at 26 pounds.
Cover finished out and ready to paint; See Through ready to cover.
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Covering See Through was another matter. I searched the entire plastics industry for clear plastic I could use. At one time I had a boat shop which I copied from Lang Warren of Kittery Maine. It was a translucent green house in which I built a number of boats. But I really wanted a plastic that was crystal clear. The best stuff I found was crystal clear stretch wrap for covering pallets. The major problem was that it was only 0.001 to 0.0015" thick. Also. It will continue to stretch, and gets thinner as it stretches. I'm gung ho, but it didn't sound like the optimum cover material to go to sea with, so I finally had to go back and resort to winter cover shrink wrap, which comes in white, blue, black (I believe) and clear or not quite clear depending on whether you talk to the salesman or the guy who handles complaints.
Shrink wrapping a boat for a winter cover is an art that requires a lot of technique, and not a little expense. Fortunately, I found a Scotsman, Hugh McCann, manager of Hewitt's Cove Marina (Hingham, Massachusetts) who in typical Hebridean fashion will tackle any job on any object that has a waterline and a keel. He gave me a course in shrink wrap 101, which I flunked, and so he did the job for me. The major secret to the job seems to be to learn the trade from a roofer who installs flat roofs. You can also rent the equipment from hardware stores but don't say "boat" or the price will go out of sight. These hints make the cover much less expensive. We had no idea how to attach the stuff to the gunwales, or how to deal with the transom, although the two sides of the bow covering were cut and "welded" together. Remembering that the stuff was only a temporary wrap, I insisted on having everything fastened with removable hardware or compounds. No 3M5200 for See Through. The transom was wrapped like a Christmas package, and a second transom screwed over the whole megilla.(a nautical term for covering a transom with unshrunk shrink wrap.) The wrap at the sheer was stapled to the gunwale, and a piece of varnished 3/16" x 3/4" mahogany stapled to it using 1/2" Monel staples. They look very neat and shippy if they are driven vertically into the center of the mahogany strip. After the boat was covered, I screwed an oak shoe to the bottom using silicone as a sealant. I have no idea whether it sticks to the polyethylene shrink wrap or not.
Clockwise from top left: Hugh McCann putting winter cover shrink wrap on See Through. The nesting twins are afloat at the dock. Dad giving the tons-per-inch-immersion test. At last we're underway and my daughter seems to think there's nothing to it!
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Sea trials were somewhat trying, since after launching and rowing over to the dock I offered the boats to the family to use and love as I did. (Rowing is a dream and, by the way, it's a real hoot to look at your wake from inside the boat.) Frankly, I was ambivalent about sending my heirs out in such a contraption. But in for a dime in for a dollar, I always say; after all they can swim and there was no longer any ice on the water. To my great surprise, the boats held up all afternoon, and they are expecting to see some regular usage, since the See Through seems to be perfect for finding stuff on the bottom, and also, there are those who feel that normal boats cover up too much bikini. Once built, the frames are not difficult to recover, either with the heat shrink polyester or the shrink wrap. The boats become very stiff when the covering is installed, and since they are so light they really receive very little damage when they are inadvertently banged against something. The See Through will puncture with a sharp object but the tear will not run away, and can be patched with (transparent) tape. Also, when the season is over you can leave the boat outside. After all, it's already got its winter cover.
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