29′ Bill Garden’s Personal Schooner (1975) – TOADSTOOL Email Listing to a Friend

The late William Garden designed and built TOADSTOOL for himself around the fin keel of a Thunderbird sloop that someone gave him and a pile of old growth cedar boards he had stashed away in his shop. There’s nothing quite like her. She embodies a great deal of experience and a unique style where the pieces flow wonderfully well together and into the entire boat. Bill spent a lifetime designing, building, and sailing all kinds of boats and had over 25 years using and cruising TOADSTOOL. In his words, written while building her, “TOADSTOOL is a traditional sort, and our woodpile seems to favor simple bent oak framing and carvel planking….In line with TOADSTOOL’s theme is the use of 1850 wooden engineering, requiring a minimum of costly hardware.”

Bill sailed TOADSTOOL single-handed out around Vancouver Island to Barkley Sound where he once owned a camp, and with his partner Jane Newman cruised and day-sailed the more sheltered waters on the east side of the island nearer home. Jane recalls a wonderful cruise north from their Toad’s Landing home near Sidney, north to Nanaimo and back.

Bill altered the boat some over the 30 or so years he had her and she now has a revised sail plan wherein the foresail, once gaff rigged and overlapping, is now a fully-battened, heavily-roached marconi sail with a boom, and is self-tending. Bill concluded “that the loose-footed foresail’s drive couldn’t match the simplicity of just rolling the wheel over to tack.” She now sets two headsails, a self-tending staysail and a roller-furling jib. “So today, under a reefed main, foresail and staysail, she’s handy as it breezes up. Then, if the wind favors somewhat, it’s a quick matter to cast off the furling line and she really comes to life.”

Below deck, she’s no longer quite like her drawings either, and never really was, but improved by Bill here and there over the years. Yet, she’s not lost an ounce of the ambiance that Bill Garden’s interiors are known for, so that “with oil lamps lit, the right seat cushion covers, and a seabag to lean on, this cabin [is still] a nice hideout.”

TOADSTOOL needs an owner eager to upgrade her cosmetics and make the age-related repairs, especially the brightwork which Bill always treated with what he called “old money varnish.” This was a mix of brown paint and varnish that hid imperfections through its semi-opacity and low luster sheen. A lengthy job, not necessarily expensive, but one that definitely needs doing so she no longer looks shabby.

Asking price is $34,500 per CWB, where she was donated in 2021. Prior to that she had a couple of owners after Bill Garden and was mainly sailed in Puget Sound.

Particulars are: LOD 29′ LWL 23′ Beam 9′ Draft 5’3″ Displacement 6,800 lbs. Sail area about 530 square feet. Power: 16hp Yanmar 2GM20F diesel. Designed and built by William Garden, Sidney, BC, 1975. Colored photos are current; B&W photos are from the late 1990s.

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