Open Water Rowing in Casco Bay

"I like to get out there sit in the swell and look out" is how I think of a pleasant row in my home waters of Casco Bay, Maine. Along with dreaming of boats, like Culler's Otter, I dream of where to go in the boats. Next year's big row is out to Halfway Rock in the middle of Casco Bay, about 15 mile offshore. You can also see a large scale chart of Casco Bay.

Rowing in open water like this scares the hell out of me. When I sit there, in the swell, looking out, the butterflies flutter inside, making it more challenging to assess the situation and peruse the mental checklist of precautions. Weather window, ferry traffic, tidal currents, my energy level, time of day, schedule back on land, amount of food in the dry bag, do I have all the gear I need, what is plan B, plan C....

But I am learning that these butterflies are annoying but good; they keep me alive and ultimately confident. Once I am out there in open water, and I am feeling strong, confident in the boat, and having a blast, I relax and therefore row better. In my open water boat, Drake, I can cover about 4 nm per hour and that is an average. Time slips away and life is good. Christmas has been wonderful, and the weather cold, and now I begin to plan big rows for next year. I am training for long distance rows and hope to make a 20-mile row somewhat routine. Halfway Rock, located below the 'Not' in "Not for Navigational Use" is uncannily "halfway" between the Eastern and western points that define Casco Bay. It is an exposed rocky isle with a lighthouse. Landing there will be difficult, so when I row there next summer, it will be my longest pull yet, at least 25 miles total, depending on the exact route.

Time to dream, be patient as the sun makes its way back north, and time to get in shape!

A Pete Culler Otter for Christmas

With a little time off to sit back at Christmas and reflect, new boats are dreamed of day and night and usually they are rowboats or sail-and-oar boats. Another problem is that I have many charts framed and hanging on my walls. So, it is far too easy to day dream of excursions in these new boats. Thus, for Christmas, I want a Pete Culler Otter for myself and to offer potential customers who also dream of rowboats and rowing. It is said by those who have rowed an Otter that is is about as fast as you can go in a fixed seat boat, though it is more oriented towards protected waters. Otter is 17-1/2' long, 3' beam, and draws 3". She is a narrow, flat bottom, double ended skiff (a 'clipper bateau, Culler calls it) that is cross planked on the bottom and carries three strakes of cedar on each side, with no gunwale timbers at all, and is pure simplicity. To get an oar span wide enough, Culler made extra long oarlocks which created the spread he needed to use up to 8' long oars. Culler is a giant in my mind, particularly with regards to oarmaking and rowing. I'll be teaching people how to make Culler style oars in a Wooden Boat School course and Lowell's Boatshop. Otter would make for a very light traditional boat, even planked all solid timber. I would use the newer flexible epoxies to glue the splines, bottom boards together and other sealants in the laps to get a trailerable, traditional boat. Here are some pictures I pulled from a thread in the Wooden Boat Forum about the Otter, and I appreciate the information the guys there have provided about this fabulous boat by Capt. Pete. I'd love to hear from others interested in this boat or about oars and rowing, Feel free to contact me by email or leave comments below. More on the Otter will be my Clint Chase Boatbuilder soon.

Boat Kits and Information About Kits

'Tis the season for kitting out boats here in the shop. It is keeping the business very busy as we finalize the Goat Island Skiff kits and in January we'll be "kitting" Clint's design, the Drake Rowboat.

FAQ's

What is unique about our kits?
Clint's kits are the equivalent of a professionally built boat, dry fit to perfection, and then taken apart and packaged so that you can replicate the results at home. That means the hull lines will be "eye-sweet" and beautiful when you assemble the boat. The numerous and subtle tweaks that a professional builder does to make the lines of a boat 'sing' has been done for you. This is the unique part of our kits: the kit is not cut directly from a computer file, but rather comes from directly from a hull built by an accomplished boat builder.

What is included in a boat kit?
Our kits have a number of options to suit your timeline and budget. One option will always include plans and the plywood components, planks and bulkheads or molds. The plywood is BS1088 Okoume and comes from Maine Coast Lumber, a trusted source for us. Timber kits are available. Pre-laminated components are available, frames, stems, and backbone components. A further option is a complete timber kit that gets you set up with seats, gunwales, floorboards and all the wood you need to build the boat. You can see kit information at our website kit information page.

Why buy a kit?
When I suggest to people that they buy a kit they sometimes are offended because they feel we don't think they have the skills to make their own kit. The truth of the matter is that we build our own boats from kits as well. In fact, a successful Pro Boatbuilder will build from boat kits himself. The reasons are the same as for you and me: it saves a lot of time, it saves money due to less waste in materials and less wasted time, and the results are a better boat. The boat fits together with less fuss and the lines are reproducibly beautiful every time.

Goat Island Skiff Boat Kits Available

Our first kit offering at Clint Chase Boatbuilder is a plywood and timber kit for the Michael Storer designed Goat Island Skiff (GIS). Why buy a kit? Folks are sometimes offended when I suggest this, feeling that it is thought they don't have the skills to make the parts themselves, but that is not it at all. We build all of our boats in the shop from kits!!! Even professionals do it and the reason is that it makes the build process quicker and smoother and the result is more professional. In the case of the GIS, we have made parts and built the hull of the boat, making all the small tweaks that professionals with a good eye make to the lines of the boat to make them look eye-sweet. Any design, no matter how well drawn, will need some eyes on it in 3D to make final tweaks. We also have checked bevels and made some adjustments for a rabbeted gunwale, which covers the end grain exposed at the top of the gunwale. Our kit captures all these professional practices so you can get a better boat. Currently, kits are cut per order, but we may move to CNC when volume increases.

We were attracted to this design initially because of the sail plan, a beautifully proportioned Balanced Lug. Upon further reflection we noticed something was missing for RAID sailors and for others who might use the boat as a sail & oar craft. It needed a mizzen. A small mizzen gives great control of a small boat, allowing one to lie head-to-wind for reefing at sea or for heaving-to. It allows you to back off a beach or a dock, with practice. It is useful for trimming the sail plan, adjusting weather helm to create "feel" in the tiller. A mizzen makes single handing much easier, especially for switching between oars and sail, because the boat will tend itself and stay head-to-wind while you stow oars and fidget with things at the mast. For a useful diagram showing How to Sail a Lug-Yawl, by James McMullen.

We can supply a kit for the GIS as well as the mast and spars. Masts are round, hollow using the Birdsmouth technique. Yard and boom for the GIS are solid, laminated Northern White Spruce. Laminated spars stay straighter over time with changes in moisture content in the wood. We can make custom 9' oars specifically designed for the GIS. Rowing in the Goat Island Skiff is quite enjoyable, whether it is from the dock to a local area with wind, or coming back when the wind has petered out. Products for the Goat Island Skiff can be seen in the GIS Flyer on our website Goat Island Skiff Page.

Oarsman Tallow for your Leathers

Today I was taking an oar to show a group of students and I was reminded about how well Oarsman Marine Tallow keeps the leathers tight on the loom and quiet in the oarlock. I discovered this stuff while at the Wooden Boat Show a couple years ago, bought a small container, and now I live and swear by it. I apply it as seen in the pictures every other row, or every row when I am rowing frequently. I also use it on my oarlocks and sockets. Great stuff. To order some, contact the maker, Rodger Swanson.

Oars and Rowing at the Wooden Boat School

Clint will be teaching his Traditional and Modern Oarmaking course at the Wooden Boat School in July 2010. There are a huge number of wonderful course offerings up there this year and Clint is proud and honored to be a part of the scene.

Students will leave the course with actual, usable, and beautiful oars to put on the gunwales of there boats and go rowing. If anybody wants to make a paddle instead, the skills and processes involved are no different from oar making and we'd be happy to have you in the course.

You can visit Wooden Boat School's on-line course catalog for more information and also see my website for more information about our line of oars, stock and custom made.

Clint Chase Boatbuilder -- Oars

Wooden Boat School -- Oarmaking Course

Oars and Oarmaking: Different Strokes for Different Folks

Oars are a delight to make and we are trying to make something new for the market. A prototype for a Carbon Fiber blade-Spruce oar has been completed for a customer here in Portland to be use for his new sculling boat, an Annapolis Wherry, being built by him from a Chesapeake Light Craft kit.

The main prototype effort here were the blades, an infused laminate of carbon fiber with a light core material in the middle.


The core adds stiffness with negligible additional weight. Infusion is incredibly tricky to get right and much time was spent in making it work to make a perfect blade.


The looms are Sitka Spruce for these oars (and can be done in native Northern White Spruce) and they are specially designed such that they counterbalance perfectly with the carbon blades. The blades will lay on the top of the water and without any pressure from the hands.


This balance means less fatigue for the rower, a better feel, and greater speed because the rowers kinetic energy is not wasted in moving a blade-heavy oar forward and backwards as the blade exits at the release and enters at the catch. Another design element to Clint's oars is in their flexibility. Oars should flex a little, especially in fixed seat boat, but also in sliding seat boats (the amount will differ depending on the rower). The faster the boat goes and the faster the rower wants to go, the stiffer they may want their oar to be made. But for recreational sculling and pleasure rowing in fixed seat boats, you want an oar with an amount of flexibility. It means less fatigue, a gentler stroke at the beginning and end, and better endurance for the rower. How much flex is very subjective and based on experience on the water as well as intuition. When Clint makes oars, you'll often see him shaping the loom then taking it to the floor and springing it. Then the shaping continues based on the feedback from the wood.

Every board, each species, and different length oars will all feel different. What is 'right' is based on our customers' needs, rowing style, their goals, the waters and conditions the rower is in most of the time, and of course it depends on the boat itself.

You'll notice that the oar blades are quite different between these two oars.

The blade area and the shape are key factors in how much "Slip" the oar has in the water. Slip is a term for how much 'grab' the blade has on the water, how much water the blade holds. Thus, a large, wide blade slips less in the water and can potentially produce more drive for the boat. There are other factors of course. But for the sake of this post, looking at these two different oars, the spruce spoon blade oars are specifically made for open water conditions where feathering is not completely necessary. The carbon blades will need to be feathered especially when the water is choppy. The blade area is also more outboard making these more efficient oars for flat water conditions or when there is a slight chop, for feathering. Other differences between these oars are in the oar 'leathers'.


The carbon blade oars have a plastic sleeve that makes feathering easy. The all spruce oars have traditionally stitched leathers with a custom 'button' that we produce on a lathe with nylon.


The split buttons are seized to the leathers with nylon twine and epoxy (and elbow grease). Another big difference between these oars are the upper looms. We laminated spanish cedar to the upper looms of the carbon blade oars to help counterweight the oars and make the looms a little more durable (and it looks snazzy!). The result is very nice and no lead counterweights were needed in the handle. The oars are sensationally light for 9'6" sculls.



I will update the post when I have a proper scale to take weights. The spruce spoons are counterweighted with 2lbs of lead (see lead insert sticking out of handle, boring hole for other insert).

The balance point for both oars is just below the leathers and the result is a very comfortable oar on the water that is effortless to bring through the stroke cycle, from recovery to catch, the blades have little perceptible weight to them. Careful varnishing follows construction. We use a fabulous product called Le Tonkinois, a linseed varnish that makes a durable finish that is very easy and pleasurable to maintain.


A parting shot shows what makes me as excited about this new kind of oar as much as the performance benefits it is the aesthetics that make them special. The contrast of Spruce wood and Carbon Fiber to me represents the yin and yang of oarmaking -- balance. We are trying to make rowing more fun with balanced, high-quality, beautiful oars made with passion.