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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Tyson Trudel says:
I am building Gardens’s update of June Bug a design which Garden called Boat in my one car garage in Seattle. I love this design and what Garden said about it it being a design for young boys to build and cruise. Garden designed a number of small schooners, The one that got me hooked on small Garden designed schooners was called Condor and was designed by Garden for Carl Nyberg (who with Jo Bailey wrote the classic cruising guide Gunkholing in the San Juan Islands). Garden designed Condor for Carl to thank him for Carl’s help in building Gleam the first in a series of three small schooners that Garden would design and build for himself, Gleam, Rainbird and Toadstool. Condor shared June Bug’s basic flat bottom design and construction with the addition of a canoe stern and clipper bow and bowsprit. When I first encountered Condor she was owned by Dick and Coleen Wagner who founded the Center for Wooden boats in Seattle. And for many years I dreamed of building Condor. In the midst of that time of dreaming I married had a child and bought a house with a one car attached garage which I could not find a way to fit Condor into and so I began to look for an alternate small Garden schooner to build which brought me to June Bug and eventually Boat. A that time I was working with Dick at the Center supporting the Center’s youth programs and I was able to visit Mystic Seaport for the third Teaching with Small boats conference. While I was at Mystic I visited the archives and was told that at that time they did not hold any more detailed plans or larger prints for June Bug in their collection, but I was able to get a copy of the article from the Rudder at this time I learned of the updated June Bug, Boat. I also read a review of June Bug in Low Resistance Boats by Thomas Firth Jones who had built a June Bug for a customer and had many nice things to say about her looks and few kind words for her performance. Particularly her dead flat bottom, shallow keel and lack of external ballast. I can’t prove this but when you look at Boat it seems like Garden is directly responding to Firth’s critiques of June Bug. Garden gave Boat a slight v to her bottom and a keel which extends another 12 inches below June bug’s keel with a NACA foil shape and 800 pounds of lead. To my eye she has the charm of June Bug with hopefully improved performance. I am currently working to enclose the cockpit after completing the interior fit out and installation of the mechanical and electrical systems including a one cylinder diesel engine. I hope to build the spars and sails this winter and launch her next summer. As an aside while I was researching June bug, I learned that Ruben Trane, who designed the Hen series of boats (Marsh Hen, Peep Hen, Bay Hen for construction in Fiberglass by Florida Bay Boats) based Marsh Hen the first boat in the Hen series on June Bug using her hull shape but removing her short keel adding a centerboard and replacing June Bugs cat schooner rig with a cat sloop rig.
Robert Denny says:
My, how I would love to have had a boat like June Bug when I was young. She might be great for old boys too. Bill Garden really had the ability to conjure up dreams with his artistic ability. I believe he modified this design later, giving her a slightly V’d bottom with more of a keel, and this design is in the Wooden Boat Catalogue.
Chris Smead says:
I wonder what it was like to be a kid in 1945. Could a typical “young fellow, handy with tools” really have taken on the construction a real boat like this? I like to think so. Were many built?
Maynard Bray says:
Sorry I missed your question when it arrived. There are no lines plan as such for June Bug because the information is shown on the two dimensioned layouts: the profile and plan views. Mystic Seaport has all of the Garden drawings and you should be able to purchase prints there.
Maynard Bray says:
Don’t have records of how many of these “how to build” articles resulted in real boats, but a lot of eyes surely saw them—and dreamed of building, like yours truly. Bill Garden estimated that only about ten percent of the full-scale prints he sold ever came to fruition and that most were purchased by dreamers who hung them on the walls of their shops.
wayne heisler says:
Maynard ? there are two lines to June bug one with a flat stern and one as a double ender, where is the balis keel at? can one get a set of lines of the june bug? wayne heisler box 101 chester nova scotia boj 1jo:: butch
wayne heisler says:
this could be a nice little boat for the weekend for two easy to build and roomy you never know what might happen and if it does I will let you know thanks: butch heisler chester nova scotia
Tom Conlogue says:
I’ve always loved how Garden sketches in his pipe smoking figure. It makes the design that much more thought provoking.