Three Hulls: A Sailing Outrigger for Adventures Near and Far By John C. Harris March 2023 Most of the sailing pics here were nabbed from Billy and Sierra's Instagram page. I'll let the multihull gurus fight over the question of whether this is a "trimaran" or an "outrigger." I think of trimarans as boats that are optimized purely for sailing. An "outrigger sailing canoe," on the other hand, is understood to have a wider variety of uses. A "variety of uses" is an understatement, perhaps. When handed the design brief last fall, I recall whistling and thinking: "Now THIS will be interesting ..read more

"Canoe Yawl Crazy" Autumn Leaves, A Speculative Design By John C. Harris February 2016 You can download plans for Autumn Leaves here. The first sailing report, for a lug-rigged version is here. CLC Designer Dillon Majoros is responsible for  these lovely renderings of Autumn Leaves The latest sailing report, including both jib-headed and lug-rigged examples, is here. I've always been afflicted with Canoe Yawl Madness.  To me, a "canoe yawl" isn't just a design type;  it's a self-contained small boat cruising philosophy.  According to this philosophy, sk ..read more

 By John C. Harris April 2012  Used to be, I couldn't sell a lug rig to anyone.  The early Mill Creek kayaks had lug rigs, and of course the Eastport Pram had a standing-lug rig starting in 1999. At the time, one prospective customer's reaction to the Pram's humble but effective sailplan was typical.  He called it a "square rig."  Gently corrected, he persisted.  "No, I'm calling it a SQUARE rig!" he harrumphed, and what he meant to say was that he thought the boat would be a barkentine when it came to sailing upwind.  He was wrong, of course;  lug rigs ..read more

How to choose a kayak ..read more

WoodenBoat Magazine #240: The Geometry of Rowing By John C. Harris This is an article I wrote in 2014 after years of frustration with oars being the wrong length in fixed-seat boats. (The article is concerned ENTIRELY with fixed seat boats. Sliding seat craft are another kettle of fish.) There are many sources offering a standard formula for oar length, but nearly all of them are based on a single variable: the boat's beam at the oarlocks. I'd known since I was a kid, splashing around in oddball rowing craft, that the problem was a polynomial equation. Many factors are at play: the type of ..read more

The (Unending) Search for the Bigger PocketShip By John C. Harris March 2017 Exactly nine years ago the first PocketShip emerged from the building shed. There had been no market research, no polls, no focus groups; it was simply a boat I wanted for myself. She was designed to weigh no more on the trailer than my small Honda could tow, and to have a roomy cockpit and cabin. Above all she was to sail well, really well.  PocketShip #1 has been sailed hard for nine years and is one of the rare designs I feel no impulse to improve. She'll claw to windward when it's blowing old boots ..read more

  By John C. Harris February 2015  October 2016 Update: Plans are available.  Click here for launch photos and plans. John Guider has covered something like 6000 miles of the Great Loop in a modified Skerry. Marian Buszko piloted his 7'6" Eastport Pram 700 miles around Florida.  Scott Mestrezat paddled a stock Kaholo SUP 2400 miles down the Missouri.  Various Northeaster Dories have cruised long stretches of every coastline of the US and beyond. Having designed all four of those boats, I've spent many hours pondering how you might optimize a small, easy-to-build boat ..read more

by John C. Harris July 2015 "Wale" is an Old English word that means "ridge" or "rib."  It seems to have taken on its nautical inflection, "a ridge of planking along the rail of a ship," upwards of a thousand years ago.  It became a "gunwale" as soon as there were guns to mount there, round about the 14th century. Down the ages the suffix "-wale" came to be attached to various bits of wood around the top edge of a boat.  There are outwales (also known as "rubrails") and inwales.  Scholarly prelude disposed, we'll tuck into the installation of inwales ..read more

Round Table Discussion:  The Design of Hard-Chined Home-Built Kayaks By Eric Schade, Nick Schade, and John C.Harris November 2015 Nick Schade's hard-chined Night Heron SG kayak The idea of building your own kayak is very, very old.  For indigenous hunters of the far north, from the Aleutians to the east coast of Greenland, building your own kayak was a matter of subsistence and survival. Replicas of the aboriginal kayaks perform incredibly well in every respect. Modern designers stand on the shoulders of giants. Building your own kayak (or any boat at all) for recreational purp ..read more

WoodenBoat Magazine #256: "Marine Plywood: A Consumer's Guide" By John C. Harris This article was commissioned by WoodenBoat back in 2017. The editors there are meticulous and often prescribe careful and specific outlines for a given assignment, and I was thinking this would be a dry, academic piece. But I was encouraged to include personal testimony, which does enliven the material a bit. 20 months or so after writing it, I don't find anything to change. I'd hoped to see someone take a chance on producing paulownia plywood using plentiful domestic U.S. sources, which could be a great substit ..read more