Flutterby™! : Hannu's Boatyard

When I was a wee lad growing up in upstate New York, we lived on the edge of a pond. My grandfather built me (or perhaps it was us, but I was the oldest) a little square ended rowboat, and my sisters and I spent a lot of time out amongst the beaver lodges and heron nests and catfish and... well... no way around this... really yucky leeches, rowing around the pond.

My parents now have a place in Iowa that has a pond, my nephew heads out to visit them regularly, and we live fairly close to the flat water that is the Petaluma River, and have a couple of kids now infiltrating their way into our good graces.

I heard about the Bodega Bay Fisherman's Festival Wooden Boat Challenge at a SCWA meeting a month or three ago, and have been thinking that it'd be really cool to get together with my dad and build a boat for my nephew. Or, perhaps even cooler, would be to do the major cutting to the point where the thing can be assembled with a screwdriver and a power drill and let the nephew build it himself.

And I'm thinking that if our Family Connection kids show any interest, that may be a cool thing to do out here.

Anyway, here's a resource: Hannu's Boatyard - free boat plans has a number of nice little plans, including a two sheets of plywood dory that looks like it'd hold three people if two of them were small, something on the scale of the little red and white pram that my grandfather built for us. Not the size of a surf or swiftwater capable dory, but might be fine for an acre sized pond, or the protected tidal water of the Petaluma river.

Or maybe the 10½' skiff, which would be right at home on a small pond, or, at a foot and a half extra and a little more room for two adults, the 12' skiff looks like it'd be just about perfect for a lazy sunday row past the herons and egrets.

And all of those look like they could be done with a few sheets of super cheap 3/8" ply, which may not last forever, but my attention span isn't... hey, wanna go ride bikes?