All Guide Posts » The Right Boat

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The Sculptor Within: The following was written by Tom Robinson, upon landfall on a tiny S. Pacific atoll after rowing 5,000 miles on his firs...

Guest Author

My Time With BARNSWALLOW—By Roger Taylor: With this post, OffCenterHarbor begins what we hope will be a long series by Roger Taylor where he’ll be describ...

Guest Author

Starship to Oceania, by Steve Callahan: An oddball boat on a passage to paradise transforms a quest for destinations into the joy of the voyage itself. “I...

Maynard Bray

Bill Garden Designs from The Rudder Magazine: These four little powerboats showed up in the design section of The Rudder magazine during the 1950s when there’d be a...

Steve Stone

Dreaming of a Herreshoff Golden Ball, with Wayne Roberts: Wayne Roberts built a 38-foot Herreshoff Leeboard Ketch in New Zealand in the 1980’s, and then sailed that boat fo...

Guest Author

A Rock And a Hard Place: Lessons Learned in Going Aground in HOI AN—a guest post by Bob Stephens: What follows was written by our friend Bob Stephens of the yacht design firm Stephens Waring of Belfast, ME. It’s...

Guest Author

The Once and Future Boat Bow, by Rob Mazza: This is an article from Good Old Boat (a magazine we like a lot), written by Rob Mazza. Good Old Boat and Rob have graci...

Steve Stone

The Secret to Happiness, Part 2: At Off Center Harbor, we like encourage the ideas of slowing down, getting out into nature in simple boats, and making t...

Bill Mayher

The Buzzards Bay 25: An Evolution, of Sorts: Written by Bill Mayher with photographs by Benjamin Mendlowitz My on-again, off-again romance with the Buzzards Bay 25 c...

Karen Sullivan

Turning the Page – Karen and Jim’s Excellent Adventure: OCH Guide Karen Sullivan and her husband Jim Heumann have made incredible voyages aboard their Pacific Seacraft Dana 24,...

Guest Author

How Sailboat Rudders Evolved: Current Designs Arrived Via Varied Routes, by Rob Mazza: This is an article from Good Old Boat (a magazine we like a lot), written by Rob Mazza. Good Old Boat and Rob have graci...

Guest Author

Origins of the Keel/Centerboard: Why American Sailors Stuck with a Movable Appendage by Rob Mazza: This is an article from “Good Old Boat” (a magazine we like a lot), written by Rob Mazza. Good Old Boat and...

Havilah Hawkins

Why This Skiff?: Note: The new skiff that we’re building in Brooklin this summer with local kids was designed by Havilah Hawkins. I...

Walt Ansel

BONNY BRIDE Progress — Restoring a Wooden Lobster Boat, Part 10 — Windshield, Trunk Cabin & Side Deck: It’s been a great spring on the BONNY B. My dad left for Maine in March, so I was back to single-handing, with...

Doug Hylan

Chesapeake Crabbing Skiff, by Doug Hylan: Some years ago, I was asked to draw a small version of the traditional skiff once commonly used by Chesapeake Bay crab f...

Maynard Bray

Twenty-two-foot Cruising Catboat, Beautifully Depicted: Hand drafting, made obsolete by CAD programs and computers, was once an art form, and yacht designer Fred Goeller’...

Guest Author

SHELDRAKE, A Charming Little Keel Sloop Designed by OCH Guide Nat Benjamin: This first message just came in from SHELDRAKES’s owner and our friend Steve Corkery—a guy with loads of experie...

Maynard Bray

Fine Boat Designs – The Herreshoff Fish Class: I‘m sure that N.G Herreshoff (NGH) realized he’d created something pretty special when he finished carving t...

Guest Author

Restoring SPARKLE: NOTE: Originally published as an article in Classic Boat magazine in March 2011, we’re happy to share the writing...

Maynard Bray

Fine Boat Designs – SPARKLE, A Speedy Sloop With A Whaleboat Heritage: SPARKLE was built in 1947 by aeronautical engineer Alex Irving in his back yard. Alex owned and raced her in Southern Ca...

Maynard Bray

Fine Boat Designs – LEGEND, A Straightforward Fast Cruising Sloop of 1951: Fin keels and separated rudders, short ends and flush decks are what many “normal” 50-foot racers have no...

Maynard Bray

Fine Boat Designs – DIVERSION & WUNDERBAR (by Kenneth Smith & Philip Rhodes): Old issues of The Rudder magazine, stored for many years here at home, contain some unusually fine designs—ones I bel...

Harry Bryan

Building a Quarter-sized Skiff; A Post by OCH Guide Harry Bryan: What a pleasant surprise to get this post from Harry! From the following, you can practice boatbuilding without needing...

Doug Hylan

Resizing a Boat Design—Some Things to Think About: It seems like every week I get a letter or an e-mail that goes something like this: “Love your HESPERUS design, but I...

Doug Hylan

SELKIE—My Personal Dreamboat: A 23′ Keel-centerboard Sloop: I should say at the outset that I am a lazy sailor. Although I have the greatest admiration for the sight...

Geoff Kerr

A Good Boat and a Great Client — The RAVEN Project: One of the joys of this trade is a working on an unusual project with a great client. The client’s qualifications are...

Havilah Hawkins

CREEK CRAWLER, A Simple Trailerable Houseboat by Havilah Hawkins: Early in the life of OffCenterHarbor we OCH Guides were asked to come up with three boats we lust after. One of the on...

Doug Hylan

Long Ends or Short? A Design Blog by Doug Hylan: The casual observer of workboats and yachts could be forgiven for some confusion as to why some boats have very long ove...

Guest Author

Catspaw Dinghy, A Guest Blog by Ben Emory: Sailors sometimes say that the enjoyment a boat gives her owner varies inversely with her size – the smaller the craft...

Doug Hylan

What About a Sailboat’s Displacement? Doug Hylan Discusses Light and Heavy: Among the dockside pundits, the discussion of light vs. heavy displacement usually revolves around the ability of a crui...

Doug Hylan

TUVA II, A New Concept for Cruising the Intracoastal Waterway: TUVA II is not (at least at this point) a finished design, but just a preliminary to a design that I would love t...

Doug Hylan

Notes on Boat Design, Part II—Three Basic Hull Types: HULL TYPE I Let’s start with a typical sailboat type hull, with a fairly fine bow and the transom up out of the wa...

Guest Author

Three Boats I Lust After and Why; A Guest Blog by Jim Giblin: The 60-foot OCEANUS that Bill Garden designed for his own use. I have lusted for this boat since I first saw her...

Guest Author

Boatbuilding: Instruction in the Art of Life—A Guest Blog by Lawrence W. Cheek: I come from El Paso, a godforsaken desert city where no one thinks about boats. After misspending my first 18 years ther...

Doug Hylan

Notes on Boat Design, Part 1 — The Case for Going Slower: Off Center Harbor blogs seem like they might be a good place to try to discuss some technical issues in boat design. The...

LinAndLarry Pardey

The Three Boats I Lust After (and Why) – The Herreshoff Buzzards Bay 25, Herreshoff 12.5 & Whio: I’ve had the good fortune to sail on dozens of different boats over the years ranging from 140 foot schooners to light...

Ed McClave

The Three Boats I Lust After (and Why): To tell you the truth, I don’t really lust after boats very much any more. So I’m going write on behalf of some othe...

Bill Mayher

Why every 12-year-old needs a Boston Whaler: The iconic 13ft Boston Whaler got all kinds of kids into boats in the 60s. This is a story I wrote for Maine Boats, Home...

Guest Author

Building Before Sailing: By Jessica Kerwin Jenkins, author of Encyclopedia of the Exquisite. I‘m going about it backwards, I know. Normally...

Kaci Cronkhite

Herstory Matters: the Spidsgatter Pax: Every wooden boat has a story… The main character is usually the designer or her most famous owner. From there the...

Harry Bryan

In My Shop: The Rambler 18 Outboard Boat: On our shop floor is a nearly completed 18’ Rambler 18 outboard boat. It represents a step that I have wanted to take...

Bill Thomas

In My Shop: A Fox, a Willow, a Phoenix, a Skerrie Skiff & a Pram: How I spent my winter vacation… This past winter I seem to have been a full-time boat shop. That’s not always th...

Gubby Williams

The Three Boats I Lust After (and Why): The Heart-Breaker, The Back-Breaker, and the Bank-Breaker Before placing three boats before a host of discerning...

Doug Hylan

Why Choose A Traditionally Built Boat?: The easy answer: So that when you wake up in the morning, sun streaming through a port light, you can admire the beautif...

Nat Benjamin

Three Boats I Lust After (and Why), by Nat Benjamin: This question should really be directed at amateurs, not “experts.” The problem with experts, professionals or whate...

Peter Neill

Three Boats I Lust After (and Why), by Peter Neill: To know the boat is to see into and beyond the boat herself. My three examples are real to me as much as metaphors; they...

Harry Bryan

The Three Boats I Lust After (and Why): I must protest. I have spent some time thinking about the title of this submission and feel that it has been my good f...

Geoff Kerr

The Three Boats I Lust After (and Why): Life as a boatbuilder satisfies many nautical longings. I get to keep track of the world of boats through shows, event...

Bill Thomas

The Three Boats I Lust After (and Why): When I find myself at leisure to enjoy what I call “recreational thinking” I often contemplate boats. I toy with dif...

Jane Ahlfeld

The Three Boats I Lust After (and Why): I would have to say I don’t really lust after boats. If I were to apply the word lust to boating it would be in relati...

Havilah Hawkins

Three Boats I Lust After (and Why), by Havilah Hawkins: A Creek Crawler I lust after a creek crawler, a powerboat that might resemble a small canal boat with a caboose recessed...

Brion Toss

The Three Boats I Lust After (and Why): Perhaps it’s my age, or perhaps I am suffering from adult-onset Asperger’s Syndrome, but I can’t say that there ar...

Walt Ansel

The Three Boats I Lust After (and Why): After 35 years of using a great variety of boats I’ve come to value their utility as much as their aesthetics. I feel...

Ginny Jones

The Three Boats I Lust After (and Why): The first of my favorite boats is the 11 foot sailing tender just being finished off at Gannon & Benjamin, here in V...

Brion Rieff

The Three Boats I Lust After (and Why): Probably the hardest thing to do is to pick only three of my favorite boats, so to make it easier, I’ve omitted the bo...

Queene Foster

The Three Boats I Lust After (and Why): Boat #1: Holger Danske “Lusting” is not a big enough word for it; sometimes I hear this boat calling… Holger Dan...

Lance Lee

The Three Boats I Lust After (and Why): As lust remains the first of the Seven Deadly Sins, an obsession from 1947 became enduring lust. My biases: traditional,...

Kaci Cronkhite

The Three Boats I Lust After (and Why): I’m lucky. Boat lust led to some amazing adventures with nothing to hide from my mother. Naive to boats just two short...

Doug Hylan

The Three Boats I Lust After (and Why): Perhaps it is my age, or maybe it is the fact that I spend a good deal of time taking care of boats, but generally speak...

Ben Fuller

The Three Boats I Lust After (and Why): A winter boat: a boat for simple, rugged exercise that’s able to live with snow and ice inside and forgive the dents o...

Alec Brainerd

The Three Boats I Lust After (and Why) – Buzzards Bay 18, Dark Harbor 12 & Belfast Lough One Design: There are designs that simply cannot be improved upon. The Herreshoff 12 ½, the Herreshoff Fish Class, the Buzzards B...

Dick Wagner

The Three Boats I Lust After (and Why) – Rozinante, Beetle Cat and Scow Schooner: Rozinante: A slim, lightweight hull with a well-balanced ketch or yawl rig, this boat keeps on sailing in the lightest...

Related Videos

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Among Old Friends, Part 4 – Beautiful Wooden Boats in the Benjamin River – GRAYLING, LILY CATCHPOLE, and MOLLY B: Can’t make it to Maine this summer? Well, jump aboard for a private tour through the exquisite fleet of boats in t...

What Makes Classic Boats So Beautiful, with Maynard Bray – Part 1 – Sheerlines: When it comes to understanding the hidden secrets of what makes classic boats so beautiful, Maynard Bray is the man for...

Understanding Wooden Boat Construction, Part 3 – Planking: In the third part of our series on wooden boat construction, Sean illustrates carvel, lapstrake, and cold-molded methods...

Understanding Wooden Boat Construction, Part 2 – Hull Structure: In Part 2 we see how the basic components of a wooden boat (bilge stringers, clamp, shelf, frames & planking) go tog...

Understanding Wooden Boat Construction, Part 1 – The Backbone: This clear and authoritative visual depiction of a wooden boat’s backbone structure will raise your understanding of h...

Every Design, Now Online – MIT’s Herreshoff Legacy Project: The MIT Herreshoff exhibit of models and drawings helps us understand the vast and engaging output of Nathanael Herresho...

Just Keep Going, Part 1 – Building the Drake Raceboat 20: Last year Nate and his brother Cooper tackled R2AK and this year Nate has undertaken to build his first boat and then ro...

Having a Boat Designed and Built – LA VIE EN ROSE: Having a boat designed and built is an experience in itself. As luck would have it, we caught up with David Lesser durin...

Restoring Mink, a 1914 Buzzards Bay 25: Part 3 – Putting Exact Period Details in Place: We visit with MINK’s owner and chief researcher to learn about how they put exact period details in place on the 1...

Restoring MINK, a 1914 Buzzards Bay 25, Part 1 – An Uncommon Approach: Over the last century, the Herreshoff Buzzards Bay 25 has lived a storied history indeed. Now, one of the five boats t...

Soul Sailing: A “soul sailor” (coined today by OCH) is a sailor who sails for the sheer pleasure of sailing. Although they...

The Smallest Boat in the Harbor — Nutshell Pram & Shellback Dinghy: As time moves on we are discovering that, often, it’s the smallest pleasures that generate the sweetest dividends...

The Closest Thing to Magic, Of Boats and Boathouses: When Harry Bryan designed and built the little sloop KATIE, he had no idea the magic she would keep bringing to him ...

FRANCIS LEE: The Ultimate Sailing Machine, Part 1 – The Design Spiral: When a veteran sailor and one of America’s great yacht designers get together to discuss the creation of a sailboa...

HEART’S DESIRE, Part 1 – New Life for an Alden Schooner: With a community’s help on Martha’s Vineyard and the tireless and skillful efforts of a young couple as they...

A Sail Aboard An Alerion 26 – KITTIWAKE: Of all of Nathanael Herreshoff’s great designs, perhaps his beloved ALERION proved to be the most seminal, spawnin...

The Joy of Having a Boat Built: An Outboard Cruiser Takes Shape: Yearning to cruise in style and burn only three gallons per hour? The joy of having an outboard cruiser built that’...

An Electrifiying Twist To The Gunning Dory: G.E.M.A. – The Gentleman’s Electric Mess-About: G.E.M.A, otherwise known as the Gentleman’s Electric Mess-About, has an electrifying new twist on the classic Chamberl...

A Three-Generation Dream Boat – The Herreshoff Fish Class Sloop – PERCH: We pass a significant milestone with this video — our 250th video for members of OffCenterHarbor.com. We fantasize abo...

SPARKLE: The Boat to Beat: In 1947, two NASA rocket scientists started playing around with sailboat design. The result was SPARKLE: the boat to bea...

Workboat Beginnings, Part 2 – The Flatiron Skiff: A flatiron skiff is simple to build, easy to maintain, and puts you onto the beach with dry feet....

SAGA — A Pacific Seacraft 25’s Transformation: Buy the boat you can afford and make it into the boat you want. This is the saga of SAGA, a Pacific Seacraft 25′...

A Boatyard Visit to Artisan Boatworks with Alec Brainerd: Alec Brainerd carries on the tradition of building classic boats at Artisan Boatworks in Rockport Maine. We wanted to se...

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The Off Center Crew

JOLIE BRISE – The Boat That Changed Tom Cunliffe’s Life: It takes quite a boat to change any person’s life, but for a life-long sea-going mariner like Tom Cunliffe it woul...

The Off Center Crew

Pilot Cutters — The Boats that Built Britain, Part 1: For a quick get-up-to-speed on pilot cutters, settle in for this short BBC-produced film hosted by our friend and OCH Gu...

Steve Stone

Fretwater Boatworks — Can’t Beat This Place for Fun: Fretwater Boatworks — a legendary someplace in the middle of nowhere....

Maynard Bray

W. Starling Burgess’ Schooners with Randy Peffer & Wayne Ettel: Although he lived only 67 years and was orphaned at age 13, W. Starling Burgess, like his father Edward before him, left...

Bill Mayher

Scoggie: From the furthest tip of Nova Scotia comes this sketch of a young boat builder with a philosophical turn of mind and an...

Steve Stone

Sailing Around the World in LA VAGABOND: Is it true that good things happen when you let go, take a leap of faith, and flow with the river of life? I love how Ri...

Bill Mayher