Email This Page to a FriendPreview: JUNE BUG, A Cat Schooner by Bill Garden
March 11, 2019
I’ve always wanted to build a June Bug ever since it appeared in a 1945 issue of The Rudder magazine. My dream may never see fruition, but I don’t want this design to be forgotten, so here is the entire how-to-build article—a stand-alone not requiring full-scale drawings nor a full-blown lofting. I recommend “boarding it up” with cedar (say 5/8″ or 3/4″ for the bottom planking with that lovely wood. But plywood could also be used: 1/2″ and 1/4″ for the bottom and topsides, respectively.
You’d build around her seven station frames, probably upside-down, then flip her over after planking and caulking the hull (or glassing it, if plywood) for completion.
A one-cylinder inboard auxiliary shows—and what a showpiece that could be! But a small outboard should fit nicely way back in the stern, by making frame #7 into a watertight bulkhead. Her inside ballast can be shifted to allow for any change in weight distribution.
Bill Garden created a 24-foot, square-sterned cat schooner of the same concept and published it ten years later in the September, 1955 issue of The Rudder. I’ve also shown that page at the end of this Guide Post.
The original drawings for June Bug and the 24-footer—as well as all the rest of Garden’s designs, some 400 in all—are preserved at Mystic Seaport and copies can be ordered there.
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