Product Specifics Section
Length over all: 14' 4" Waterline Length: 14' 0" Beam: 5' 7" Draft, board up: 0' 5" Draft, board down: 2' 11" Weight 215 lbs. Sail area: 116 sq. feet
Product Info
"I think your design is terrific. I am working in a boatbuilders' co-op, so there are all kinds of boatbuilders around, and they all come in and admire my boat. I have followed your drawing and directions very carefully, and everything has just gone together perfectly. Congratulations on putting together a superb set of plans, and a great design." Jim Leefe, Sausalito, CA. "During my lifetime of sailing experience, my wife and I have sailed boats of many sizes, up to a Tartan 37. I am not sure that we have had any more fun with a boat than we are having with out Current [ACE 14] Solitude . Congratulations on an excellent design." John Breese, Fort Myers, FL.
The plans include six sheets of construction drawings, and full size patterns printed on Mylar for accuracy and ease of use. A centerboard and daggerboard are shown as options. The illustrated construction manual takes you step by step through each stage of building the boat. There are sections on selecting plywood and lumber, a full materials list, and specifications and drawings for a road trailer. MATERIALS, COSTS, AND BUILDING TIME Basic materials include: 8 sheets of 1/4" plywood, lumber for frames etc., a gallon of epoxy resin, fiberglass cloth, and paint. The materials will be available either from your local lumber yard, or by mail order. The total cost to put your ACE in the water should be about $2,500 - $3,000. The time you will need to complete the ACE will depend very much on the pace at which you work. A reasonably experienced woodworker could have the boat ready to rig in 170-200 hours. A wooden mast and boom would add 40-50 hours to that. WHAT YOU CAN ORDER: (Click on Boat Design and Prices Page and Order Form )
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50th Anniversary Collectors Issue - September/October Issue No. 300 Preview Now
November / December 2023
The international 14’s u.s. debut.
MORGAN GILES HERITAGE PROJECT Ivy Carus-Wilson at the helm of her West of England Conference dinghy, MYOSOTIS. She wrote that her dinghy “simply picked herself up and flew, not through the water but over it. She scarcely seemed to touch it. She flew like a thing possessed.”
The introduction of the International 14 to the United States is often credited to the brilliant but rascally Uffa Fox in the 1930s, but this is untrue. The credit actually should go to Frank Morgan Giles (see sidebar) who, together with his friend George (E.G.) Martin, got the class off the ground through British Yachting Association meetings in 1923. Four years later, in 1927, Morgan Giles designed and built a one-design fleet of these 14-footers—then called the National 14—for the Larchmont Yacht Club in New York.
The International 14 is a development class, meaning that it encourages design innovation within a set of parameters. It evolved from small British wooden craft of late-19th-century Victorian times, and gained international status in 1928; there are now 14 fleets active worldwide. Today’s boats are sailed by crews of two, each on trapeze, and have asymmetrical spinnakers. The boats remain on the forefront of sailing technology, and since 2001 they have sailed with hydrofoils on their rudders. (Fully foiling hulls have been tested but are not allowed.) The class website describes them as “14 feet of carbon fiber and adrenaline.”
The first arrival of a fleet of these exquisite wooden 14-footers on U.S. shores in 1927 was the result of a particularly fertile time in the development of the sport of sailing internationally. It is entwined with the birth of the Royal Ocean Racing Club (RORC), and the American sailor J. Linton Rigg, who helped instigate the first Fastnet Race in 1925, seems to have played a significant role in the introduction of the class to the United States.
In autumn 1927, the journalist E.G. Martin wrote an article in Yachting World magazine about a fleet of “Fourteen footers” that had been shipped earlier that year to the Larchmont Yacht Club to kick-start the class in the United States. They had been designed and built by his friend and colleague Morgan Giles at his shipyard at Teignmouth in Devon, constructed to high specifications and with enormous care to ensure that each boat was identical to the others. All this had chiefly come about, wrote Martin, because of Rigg’s enthusiasm for England’s new National 14 class.
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During the 1930s, Yachting magazine published a series of articles chronicling
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Cheerio II, 1931 46' yawl, formerly owned by actor Errol Flynn.
Handmade wooden canoe
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Article Tag: Penobscot Bay
Lessons from penobscot bay.
W hen I moved to the Belfast area of Maine in 1989, I brought with me ACE, a 14′ sailboat that I had built in North Carolina. She had a light, planing hull, and with a crew of two or three she was fast in a good breeze. I had had a lot of fun with her. Getting very wet in the process was no imposition in warm Southern waters.
The water in Maine’s Penobscot Bay is not warm, but after the sultry calms of the Carolinas, the brisk summer winds promised good sailing. My wife is a somewhat reluctant sailor, so I had rigged my boat with a trapeze and long tiller extensions for solo sailing. While I was on the trapeze, with two sheets in one hand and a tiller extension in the other, ACE was something of a handful, but in the right breeze she would take off like a scalded cat. Sometimes I would out-pace powerboats across the upper reach of the bay in the triangle of water north of Isleboro, between Belfast, Castine, and Searsport.
The wind had to be just right, though, for those exhilarating rides. Too little wind and the boat might zip along with a humming daggerboard and a flat, fizzy wake, but wouldn’t quite reach the frantic pace that, once experienced, made anything pale in comparison. About 15 knots of wind was ideal. Much more than that—well, that is what this story is about.
I had taken to sailing out of Searsport to avoid the beat up or down Belfast Harbor. One late spring morning, with a brisk northwesterly promising a thrilling sail, I hitched the boat trailer to my old Plymouth, and headed north along Route 1. On the drive to the launching ramp I passed flags crackling in the breeze and looking out over the bay I saw a carpet of whitecaps. Maybe I should tuck in a reef before heading out, I thought.
I’d had the good sense to invest in a wet suit soon after discovering just how cold the bay could be. Icy spray on a warm day was one thing, but the uncontrollable shivering that followed full immersion for more than a few minutes provided a salutary warning of the dangers of hypothermia. I rigged the boat, pulled the wetsuit on, and looked out from the launching ramp. The wind was blowing directly offshore, and the water’s edge was calm, only ruffled by the wind, but the whitecaps farther out were plain to see. I should reef, I thought again, but what if I could handle a full mainsail? If I could keep the boat on her feet, she might take off as never before. The temptation was too much, and with my mouth somewhat dry, I pushed off, and hopped aboard.
“Gust after gust found her heeled way too far with me hanging on by the skin of my teeth.”
I t was hairy, right from the start. Close to shore the breeze was gusty; its direction inconsistent. An accidental jibe would have meant instant capsize, so I tacked downwind, letting the boat round up and spilling the wind in the gusts, and jibing in the lulls. As I moved further out into Searsport Harbor the wind steadied, but it was strong, and the boat felt twitchy, darting ahead, then rounding up and heeling hard, with too much weather helm for comfort or good speed. Obviously, I needed to get out on the trapeze if I were to keep ACE on her feet, which she needed to be if I was to make the best of her planing bottom.
This wasn’t easy. There was that dodgy moment as I crouched on the deck and clipped the harness to the wire—I hadn’t got my weight out yet, the sails weren’t sheeted properly, and I needed to change my grip on the tiller extension. The wrong gust just then, and I’d have been over. I swallowed my apprehension, and managed it without fumbling; now the boat moved faster and toward more open water.
It was clear, though, that ACE was still not happy. The wind continued to increase farther offshore, and gust after gust found her heeled way too far with me hanging on by the skin of my teeth, sheets eased and sails flogging, the tiller hard to windward, and the rudder dragging. Then I would get her back on her feet, struggle with the sheets, only to be knocked down again.
I needed to come up into the wind just a bit, I thought. If I could trim the sails just right and get her properly up on plane, she’d outrun those gusts, and I’d have better control. I had more sea room now, and I set about trying to find that magic combination of sail trim and course that would set ACE free.
Of course, I should have seen that it was impossible. What followed were two broad reaches, from Sears Island to the Searsport shore, and back to the island, in a series of swoops as each attempt to find the sweet spot led to a knockdown. A tugboat near Sears Island on its way to Belfast would cross my course, and caused me to come up into the wind, and tack to head back the other way. By the time I reached the Searsport shore, the tug had moved out into the Bay; now, I thought, with the harbor to myself, I’ll make ACE fly.
But conditions were worse than ever. The wind had continued to increase, and again and again I was knocked down, releasing the sheets and regaining control only with the utmost effort. Closing in on Sears Island, the inevitable happened. I could no longer risk a jibe, and as I hardened the sheets and came up into the wind to tack, a gust hit, and we were over.
Now, I had capsized this boat may times in pursuit of thrills, and normally I could get her right back up. As ACE went down, I would climb over the windward gunwale, stand on the daggerboard, haul her back, scramble aboard, and be off again. This routine depended, of course, on the daggerboard being there. This time, it wasn’t. In my haste and trepidation on the launching ramp, I had neglected to secure it with its bungee cord. Now the daggerboard had slipped out of the trunk, and began to float away as the boat continued to roll until she had completely turned turtle.
For a moment I stood on the bottom of the hull, my eyes fixed on the drifting daggerboard. Without it, I was completely helpless, but could I haul myself back onto that slippery bottom if I swam after it? Well, nothing for it but to try, I decided, so in I dived. I retrieved the board, swam back, and found that by hooking my fingers into the daggerboard slot I could just wriggle my way aboard the capsized hull again. I fished under the boat, found a jib sheet, stood back on the chine, and hauled. Slowly the boat came up, and flopped back onto her feet again.
I tumbled aboard and lunged with the daggerboard to shove it back into its trunk, but before I could do that, the wind caught the flogging sails, the bow swung to leeward, the sails filled, and over she went again.
This time, at least, I didn’t have to swim for the daggerboard, but when I got ACE upright once more, the sails filled, and over she went again.
I don’t know how many times the same exact thing happened. In that wind, I just couldn’t get the daggerboard down quickly enough. Without it, there was nothing to stop the bow from being blowing downwind, the sails filling, and the boat capsizing. It seemed futile, but there was nothing I could do but keep trying. At some point I noticed that the tugboat was no longer heading for Belfast, but was sitting motionless a half-mile or so down the Bay. If I hadn’t been so busy, I might have paused to imagine the comments on my idiocy passing between the occupants of her bridge.
M y life was not in danger. I was drifting toward the rocky Sears Island shore. At worst I would have swum ashore and made a long, uncomfortable walk back to the launching ramp. The prospects for the boat were more dire. Soon, her mast would touch bottom and probably break. There would be no hope of keeping her off the rocks. I carried a paddle, but there was not the smallest chance that I could use it to work along the shore to a safe landing. The fetch from Searsport to Sears Island is about a mile and a half, but although the waves were not big, they were angry enough to make short work of a light plywood hull on those sullen rocks. Thanks to my wet suit, and my exertions, I was not cold, but I was getting tired. Soon, I knew, I would not have the strength for another effort.
Then, I had an undeserved stroke of good fortune. As the boat came back up one more time there was the merest lull; I managed to ram the daggerboard home and slam the helm down, and the boat rounded up, sails spilling the wind. For a moment I could rest. I bailed ACE out and sorted out the tangle of sheets and halyards in the cockpit.
“The tugboat was now steaming southward; perhaps I thought that I could show her crew that I knew what I was about after all.”
Now, I should be able to report that at this point I dropped the jib, reefed the main, and headed for home. I did not. The tugboat was now steaming southward; perhaps I thought that I could show her crew that I knew what I was about after all. I got out on the trapeze, and headed back for the Searsport shore, in one more wild pursuit of glory.
I was no more successful than before. The wind was now, if anything, even stronger, and the struggle harder; I did not even come close to getting ACE up on plane. I wrestled with the tiller, eased the main to its fullest, and laid back hard in the trapeze; at every second another capsize threatened.
Then, when I reached the Searsport shore, I could not get the boat to come about. I could not come up into the wind, so I had to try to tack from a reach. The boat was not going fast enough to carry her way through the eye of the wind; she would falter, and fall off on the same tack, heading for the rocks. I tried again, and then again.
Clearly, I had to do something. A jibe was out of the question, and the rocks were getting uncomfortably close. Now, at long last, I came to my senses. I let the sheets run free, scrambled onto the little foredeck, pulled down the jib, unhanked it, stuffed it under the foredeck, and reefed the main.
The boat was still over-canvased, but at least under control. I was able to tack away from disaster on the rocks, and belatedly admitted to myself that there could be too much of a good thing; another attempt at glory would be unwise, I headed back for the launching ramp. I still needed to put my weight out on the trapeze even with the reduced sail, but at least I could work to windward, and pretty soon I was back at the ramp and loading the boat on the trailer.
O n another occasion soon after this episode, I was broad reaching well out into upper Penobscot Bay in far too much wind, again chasing thrills, only to find that I had taken on more than I could handle. I didn’t capsize this time, but when I realized that I was really being pretty stupid, and headed back to Searsport, close hauled under just a reefed mainsail, I still needed the trapeze. It was rough out there, with short, steep, tumbling seas. I was well offshore this time, with not another vessel in sight, and I would much rather have just hiked out just on the side decks, but there was no making headway like that, so heart in mouth, I beat back hanging on that slender wire, wishing I’d stayed ashore.
Arch Davis grew up in New Zealand, where he learned the elements of boatbuilding and design, and sailed out of Auckland on the Hauraki Gulf and beyond. He moved to Maine in 1988, where he builds and designs boats for the backyard boatbuilder. In 2012, with his daughter Grace, he launched the GRACE EILEEN, a 30’ light displacement cruising sailboat, which they sail on Penobscot Bay and the coast of Maine. He no longer has an ACE 14, but he still takes the original Penobscot 14 out for an occasional row on Belfast Harbor. Plans and kits for his designs are available at Arch Davis Designs .
If you have an interesting story to tell about your adventures with a small boat, please email us a brief outline and a few photos.
A Maine Island Idyll
I t was a very gentle bump. I’d been sleeping comfortably at anchor after a long day on the water, but I was wide-awake in an instant. A few seconds later it came again—a firm nudge from below interrupting the soft, easy motion of my boat—and this time WAXWING stopped moving. I was aground. I checked my watch—3:30 in the morning, still an hour and a half to go before low tide.
I was quickly out of my sleeping bag and up at the bow, rolling back the boom tent to make room to work. There was no moon out, and in the pitch dark I tentatively stepped out of the boat, probing for the bottom with a bare foot. I slipped up to my thighs into the bracing, 60-degree water and found firm footing on a sandy bottom. With my weight out of WAXWING she floated again, her keel lifting just above the boulder beneath it. A gentle shove freed her and I hopped back aboard. Standing in the bow, I pulled the anchor rode and chain in as quietly as I could and stowed the anchor at my feet.
I reached under the boom tent, fished out one of my oars, and sculled WAXWING in a lazy half circle out to deeper water. The blade slicing through the water stirred up cascades of phosphorescence, which gleamed like fireworks across the inky black water. A dozen yards to starboard, a soft glow penetrated the murk; Rob slid back a corner of his boom tent, and the bright light of his LED lantern appeared. “Everything all right, John?” “No worries,” I called back cheerfully, “We’re just having a little adventure.” When I’m sleeping aboard my boat, being awakened by something that goes bump in the night is never just a good night’s sleep spoiled; it’s an experience.
WAXWING (top) and SLIPPER, loaded with gear prior to departure, wait at the dock in Herrick Bay, pointing southeast toward the islands that separate Blue Hill Bay and Jericho Bay. Summer mornings here are usually calm; winds develop as the day wears on and the sun warms the land enough to generate on onshore breeze.
R ob and I had started our adventure on the heels of the Small Reach Regatta, a gathering of mostly wooden, mostly owner-built small boats. The fleet had moored in Herrick Bay, a half-mile wide inlet between Flye Point and Naskeag Point near WoodenBoat’s campus in Brooklin, Maine. After the event, he and I had left our boats anchored there for a day of provisioning. Our plan was to circumnavigate Deer Isle under sail and oars.
The Ilur has a voluminous cockpit with room enough to carry gear for a multi-day trip. The blue duffel holds a bedroll, the green bucket is for bailing and collecting trash, a clear dry bag holds clothes, and the white bucket is the loo. The gray chests with red lids are kitchen and larder, the yellow soft cooler is ice chest for cold drinks and fresh foods, and the green cooler holds a five-gallon container of drinking water.
When we returned the next morning, Rob made preparations aboard SLIPPER, his 16′8″ Herreshoff Coquina, and I stowed a small mountain of gear in WAXWING, my 14′8″ yawl-rigged, François Vivier-designed Ilur. I made sure everything was secure and out of the way so I could freely move about in the cockpit, and we shoved off by mid-morning.
The tide would be in our favor until late afternoon; the wind, building out of the east, appeared as little cat’s-paws dancing on the water. The breeze swirled toward us across the bay, cooled our sun-warmed faces for a moment, then gamboled away. SLIPPER and WAXWING ghosted along side by side as the dark blue-green water slid lazily past. I got the rig set and shifted my weight to leeward to settle the boat over on its bilge to reduce the hull’s wetted surface and eke out a little more speed. Weaving among and around floating mats and broad bands of bronze-colored seaweed, we stayed well off Flye Point, where I could see, even now just past high tide, the telltale curdling of water washing over the barely submerged mile-long boulder field strewn between the point and Flye Island.
We were covering ground slowly—little more than 1 mph according to my GPS. At this speed, we would likely make it only as far as the east end of the Deer Isle Thorofare before the tides turned against us. Breaking out the oars, I began rowing gently while WAXWING’s big, fully battened, standing-lug mainsail took advantage of the bit of wind we had. With the tide coaxing us along, the combination of sailing and rowing nudged our speed up to almost 3 1/2 mph.
Off the Naskeag Point side of Herrick Bay, a broad-winged osprey vaulted from the top of a tall spruce, sailed out over the water, and pulled up momentarily to hover, eyeing the water before winging away. Rob and I row-sailed for a bit; the wind finally freshened and we shipped our oars.
As Rob passed the ISAAC H. EVANS in the Deer Isle Thorofare, the schooner was sailing against the tide and getting a motor assist from the yawl boat astern. Built in 1886 for harvesting oysters along the coast of New Jersey, she now works out of Rockland, Maine, and sails the coast as part of the Maine Windjammer fleet.
B y noon, we’d crossed the southern end of the Eggemoggin Reach, and rounded Stinson Neck, the southeastern tip of Deer Isle. Our course turned from due south toward southwest as Deer Isle Thorofare opened ahead of us; tide and wind now swept us along as the miles unfolded. From this vantage point, the shoreline of Deer Isle at the eastern end of the Thorofare is corrugated with peninsulas and islets. A sprawling archipelago of small islands between Deer Isle and Isle au Haut studded the steely blue waters as far as we could see.
The Thorofare is a very busy waterway along the southern coast of Deer Isle. As Rob and I sailed along, a group of five large schooners was heading up the passage together, working against the tide with sails set and yawlboats nudging them along. Toward the western end of the Thorofare, we ducked out of the main passage and headed south again, threading our way through numerous islets, nameless shoals, and sand bars on the way to George Head Island, an uninhabited islet scarcely a third of a mile long set in the heart of the archipelago.
The cove at George Head Island provides a protected anchorage until the tide covers the sand spit leading off to the left to Little George Head Island. Merchant Island and Isle au Haut Bay lie in the distance to the south.
We slipped into the cove on the east end of George Head in late afternoon, a short while before the low tide. A large sandbar extends from the northeast corner of the island, and another curves out from the southeast corner to reach its smaller sibling, Little George Head Island. The bars form a well-protected cove at all but high tide. Now, nearing low slack, both islands were fringed with a broad band of exposed, weed-covered cobble and boulders. In the shelter of the cove, the scent of the exposed intertidal was pungent but pleasant.
We would be sleeping aboard our boats, and with overnight winds expected from the southwest, we decided to anchor on the Stonington side of the northernmost bar, to be in the lee of George Head’s densely wooded eastern shore. By the time Rob and I had set our anchors for the night, it was not long past low tide, so I let out enough extra rode to have adequate scope for the midnight high. As we slept the wind and tide nudged WAXWING over a large boulder in the small hours of the morning, and the rippled sea and ebbing tide soon had it bumping against her hull.
With the boom tent up and after thwart stowed, WAXWING is ready for the night. The boom tent is a minimalist affair, very wind- and rain-resistant, but open at its ends. If protection from insects is needed, a 4’ x 6’ foot piece of no-see-um netting draped over the sleeper’s head is put to use.
Once WAXWING was safely anchored in deeper water, I settled down to try to get another hour or two of sleep, but it was nearly 4 a.m., and the fleet of lobsterboats that operates out of Stonington hustled toward the 50-yard-wide channel between the George Head bar and St. Helena Island. I could hear the roar of the big diesel engines even as the boats powered out of Stonington Harbor, and the din reverberated through the cluster of small rocky islands around us. The fleet approached and funneled through the gap only a couple of hundred yards from us. After the first few thundered past, I gave up on the idea of any more shuteye, and stowed my bedroll just as day was beginning to break.
While SLIPPER and WAXWING were rafted up for breakfast, the low tide uncovered the boulder garden on the north side of George Head Island. One of the boulders in the area knocked against WAXWING’s bottom in the middle of the night, requiring a bit of wading to get her over deep water.
Rob was up too, so I hauled anchor, sculled over to his boat, and rafted up for breakfast. I dug out my old brass Svea stove, an ancient and trustworthy traveling companion, along with my Bialetti espresso pot. The yellow flames from the fuel I’d dribbled into the primer hollow at the base of the stove flickered up and before long the little stove’s blue flame was making a roar of its own, Lilliputian compared to the big lobsterboats, but much more welcome. Breakfast was homemade granola, fresh Maine blueberries, and a piping-hot latte. Although Rob tends toward minimalist camping and frugal dining, no doubt habits fostered by years of sea kayaking, I sail a type of boat that was once meant to carry fishermen and a boat full of fish safely back to port every night. She is a weatherly little packhorse, and I happily take advantage of her capacity, routinely stuffing her with provisions enough to take care of three or four sailors on outings of as many days. Rob cheerfully tolerates my sybaritic tendencies, and made no objection to the foamed latte as I handed it across.
WAXWING and SLIPPER bobbed gently in the cove as the rising sun sent spears of gold up through breaks in the clouds. The water was glassy calm, and the dawn reflected in a great shimmering column of light. I was sleep-deprived and salt-crusted, but this was still heaven on earth. Arctic terns cried, wheeled, hovered, and dove along the bar. One hungry bird splashed down less than a dozen feet from us, then surfaced and wheeled away with a wriggling 3″ sand eel dangling from its orange beak.
Sipping our coffee, we listened to the weather forecast, looked over our charts, and considered the tides as we discussed the day ahead. We’d have light and variable morning winds, and afternoon winds to 10 mph. Low tide was fast approaching; our intended destination would be Butter Island, 11 miles up East Penobscot Bay. If we waited till midday, there would be wind for reaching, but we’d also lose a favorable tide, and progress would be iffy. We separated the boats, Rob weighed anchor, and we set out rowing north-northwest.
E ast Penobscot Bay was dead calm, disturbed only by the eddies swirling off the tips of our oars. Striking out into the wider waters between Deer Isle and North Haven Island, we made our course toward Eagle, Butter, and Great Spruce Head, a trio of mile-long islands in the middle of a cluster of smaller islands near the top of the bay. It was still early, and except for a few lobsterboats rumbling off in the distance, we had the eastern bay to ourselves.
After a bit of rowing, Rob and I were well offshore, but not entirely alone. A succession of seals followed us for about a minute at a time, staying 20 or 30 yards off our sterns, with their great, dark eyes fixed on us.
For the long row north to Eagle Island, Penobscot Bay was glassy calm.
Rob and I took a break, put on sunscreen, and snacked on granola bars and fruit. The tide carried us up the Bay and past the tip of Eagle Island. The water was glassy smooth from Deer Isle 2-1/2 miles to the northeast, the same distance to North Haven in the southwest. Over WAXWING’s transom, the sky met the open Atlantic beyond Isle au Haut Bay. We took to the oars again, pulled for Butter Island, and by late morning came ashore on the broad crescent of Nubble Beach on its eastern shore just before high tide.
We had the whole afternoon ahead of us, so we put the boats at anchor to keep them afloat through the falling tide cycle, and set off to explore the island. It is a mile long and a half mile wide, its shoreline scalloped with beaches. We walked a trail through shaded woods to the 150′-high summit of Montserrat Hill, where we could see the upper end of Eggemoggin Reach 7 miles to the north, and the undulating ridgeline of the Camden Hills 15 miles to the west across West Penobscot Bay. There is a polished granite bench at the summit, a memorial to Thomas Cabot who bought Butter Island in the 1940s to preserve it for the people of Maine. Engraved on its thick curved edge is a line for Tennyson’s poem “Ulysses”: “Come, my friends, ‘tis not too late to seek a newer world.” From the bench we had a clear view down to the beach, where SLIPPER and WAXWING were riding quietly at their shared mooring, with plenty of water beneath them in the receding tide. A schooner worked its way up the East Penobscot Bay, and thunderheads piled up over the mainland.
The view from Montserrat Hill took in WAXWING and SLIPPER anchored next to The Nubble, a rock outcropping at the easternmost point of Butter Island. Tides are commonly 10′ to 12′ along this part of the Maine coast. The boats are on a modified Pythagorean mooring to keep them afloat and off the beach, but easily retrievable.
We made our way back to the beach; it had been a full day, and we turned in after an early supper for a sound sleep anchored off Nubble Beach.
F ollowing breakfast the next morning, we set out north-northwest, rowing in the calm until we were about halfway between Bradbury and Pickering islands. The waking winds, coming from the southeast, hinted of a useful breeze. Rob and I set our sails to catch whatever breezes might help us, and then got back to rowing to speed us on our way. Not far off, pods of harbor porpoises surfaced, swimming in ever-tightening circles as they corralled small fish for their morning meal. The sound of their quick breaths carried across the water to us in the stillness of the morning.
In a light breeze Rob row-sailed toward Pumpkin Island and the top of the Eggemoggin Reach. Sail-assisted rowing made it possible to cover mileage more effectively when sail alone would have been too slow to keep the pair on schedule to make good use of the tidal currents around Penobscot Bay.
We rounded Pumpkin Island, a low islet scarcely large than a football field, skirted in bare granite with a squat cylindrical lighthouse attached to the keeper’s house at its center. At the head of Eggemoggin Reach, the winds steadied, so we stowed the oars and sailed southeast down the Reach toward the suspension bridge that links Little Deer Isle to the mainland. The breeze was now coming from the east-southeast, so we had to work to windward. The winds were still light, and the going was slow. I tacked back and forth below the bridge, looking up at the catenary curves of the main cables, the thick green girders beneath the roadway, and the delicate looking web of criss-crossed suspension cables between them. The tide had come to its high slack about the time I passed under the bridge, tacking back and forth between the Deer Isle causeway on one side, and a red nun on the other.
Rob was five or six hundred yards ahead of me in SLIPPER, and all of a sudden he was away like a rabbit, coursing down the Reach carried by an ebb tide flowing south to Jericho Bay. It dawned on me that where I was sailing the water was flowing north out of the Reach on an outgoing tide. I had not yet passed the tidal watershed! I was barely holding my own, tacking repeatedly from nun to causeway and back again and again. With the wind on my nose, and the strengthening ebb against me, I had no choice but to drop the rig and start rowing—with grim determination. After a half mile the rowing seemed easier, and I could see that the shoreline was slipping by a bit faster. I shipped the oars, hoisted sail, and with more than a little relief I was under way again, now keeping pace with Rob and SLIPPER.
The Deer Isle bridge, spanning 200’ at a height of 85′ above the water, opened in 1939. It was built to a design similar to Washington’s Tacoma Narrows bridge, which famously collapsed in 1940 due to wind-induced oscillations. The Deer Isle bridge was also damaged by oscillations in strong winds and extensively modified in 1943.
The day was warming up, and the onshore breeze was coming alive; the winds continued to freshen as the afternoon grew hotter. Before long I had to sheet the mizzen in tight, heave to, and tie a reef in the main. Down through the southern end of the Reach, Rob and I had some pretty spirited sailing, and we were both up and down on the rail for the next three or four miles, our two boats punching forward on blue-gray water generously flecked with white caps.
Around the outside of Hog Island at the tip of Naskeag Point, we met the 65′ schooner ISAAC H. EVANS, returning from Mt. Desert Island. With a magnificent spread of canvas driving her, she fairly swept up the Reach, soaring past us with a hiss of water foaming along her sides, a picture of power and grace.
With three miles left to go, WAXWING stopped at a sheltered beach on Sellers Island.
Soon we were rounding Devils Head at the end of Hog Island, and broad-reaching for Sellers Island, a wooded islet surrounded by boulders on all but its north side. I could see my wife Gabrielle on the beach, waving. She and our young friend Erika had been aboard WAXWING for the Small Reach Regatta earlier in the week, and today had sailed a small pram the half mile from Naskeag Harbor out to Sellers’s semicircle of white sand, hoping to meet up with us as we left the Reach. Seeing Gabrielle waiting for me on the island’s boulder-studded outer shore made me feel like a 19 th -century ship captain returning safe from sea after a long voyage.
Rob and I landed on the beach, and after a break to stretch our legs, Gabrielle joined Rob in SLIPPER, Erika hopped aboard WAXWING, and we took the pram in tow. It was early evening, and the onshore breeze was dying away with the setting of the sun. Gabrielle rowed SLIPPER around the point and up Herrick Bay toward the takeout, but there was still enough wind for WAXWING’s large and powerful rig, so Erika and I hoisted sail, and she skippered WAXWING back to the mooring.
We left the boats anchored and would haul them out the next morning. Rob and I paused at the top of the dock looking back at SLIPPER and WAXWING, both riding quietly at anchor in the last light of the day. There was more to Tennyson’s poem than the line inscribed in the bench atop Montserrat Hill on Butter Island. In another passage he expressed the lure that draws me to explore the coast in a small boat and the touch of sadness I feel at the journey’s end:
I am a part of all I’ve met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untravelled world whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
John Hartmann lives in central Vermont. He built his Ilur dinghy, WAXWING, to sail the 1000 Islands region of the St. Lawrence River, Lake Champlain, and along the coast of Maine. He details the Pythagorean mooring system he used at Nubble beach in the Technique article in this issue.
François Vivier’s Ilur
The yawl configuration is one of four options for the Ilur’s sailing rig.
The Ilur is a modern interpretation of the coastal inshore fishing boats that worked the Bay of Biscay in the age of sail and is naval architect François Vivier’s best-selling sail-and-oar design. Many hundreds have been built in Europe. The Ilur was an evolution of an earlier Vivier design, the Aber, with greater length, beam, and freeboard to make her a better choice for work in big water. The Ilur is available as plans and full-size Mylar patterns and as a CNC kit . I bought a kit from Clint Chase of Chase Small Craft, one of Vivier’s partners . The kit uses an egg-crate system of interlocking transverse and longitudinal bulkheads to ensure a rigid building jig. An additional advantage of this construction technique is that once the hull is flipped after planking, most of the interior furniture is already built into the boat. The egg-crate system not only provides a highly accurate building jig, but also yields an enormously strong and stiff hull. There are four different rig options: the boomless standing lug, a balanced lug, a lug sloop, and most recently, a lug yawl. I found the lug yawl an ideal rig for dinghy cruising, as it allows the boat to self tend when heaved to for reefing in open water, or if the skipper needs to go forward for any reason.
Ilur Particulars:
Draft, board up/10″
Draft, board down/2′10″
Weight including rig, anchor, and oars/400 lbs (approximate)
Sail area/130–150 sq ft, depending on rig
If you have an interesting story to tell about your adventures with a small wooden boat, please email us a brief outline and a few photos.
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 Ace Sloop Sailboat 17 KitThis model is great for free sailing in the swimming pool or pond. The mahogany hull is assembled from die-cut parts and the birch mast is included in the kit. Rudder, complete fittings and riggings, and nylon sails are also included. 
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The total cost to put your ACE in the water should be about $2,500 - $3,000. The time you will need to complete the ACE will depend very much on the pace at which you work. A reasonably experienced woodworker could have the boat ready to rig in 170-200 hours. A wooden mast and boom would add 40-50 hours to that.
The ACE 14 is an exciting daysailer with stowage compartments fore and aft which allow you to carry an ample load of camping gear for longer trips. She is designed for a crew of two or three, although she can be sailed singlehanded (she handles strong breezes beautifully under just a reefed mainsail). The ACE's simple, efficient construction ...
Photo montage showing the build processPlans and design by Arch Davis
Share. Tweet. #1. Arch Davis Ace 14. 03-19-2010, 05:00 PM. Would anyone happen to have any experience with the Arch Davis Ace 14? It is an attractive boat, and appears to be within my first-time builder skills, but trying to find information, photos, or a boat to look at is nearly unavailable beyond Arch's website.
The International 14 is a development class, meaning that it encourages design innovation within a set of parameters. It evolved from small British wooden craft of late-19th-century Victorian times, and gained international status in 1928; there are now 14 fleets active worldwide. Today's boats are sailed by crews of two, each on trapeze, and ...
Ace 14 Boat Plans: Ace 14 Length: 14' 4" Beam: 5' 7" Boat Plans, sails. Study Package: $12.00 Boat Plans: $165.00 Epoxy Kit: Call For Details Plywood Package: Call for details Sails, Rigging Kits, etc: Call for details For Shipping Cost, Click Here Go To Order Form
There are 24" x 36" blueline drawings for each design, showing the lines of the boat, construction sections, interior layout, and sail plans, and a booklet containing detailed descriptions of the boats, their development and construction, and numerous photographs and drawings. $15.00 + P&H. Shipping costs are given on the Order Form. PLANS:
Today's Posts; Member List; Calendar; Forum; Building / Repair; The WoodenBoat Forum is sponsored by WoodenBoat Publications, publisher of WoodenBoat magazine. The Forum is a free service, and much like the "free" content on Public Radio, we hope you will support WoodenBoat by subscribing to this fabulous magazine.
W hen I moved to the Belfast area of Maine in 1989, I brought with me ACE, a 14′ sailboat that I had built in North Carolina. She had a light, planing hull, and with a crew of two or three she was fast in a good breeze. I had had a lot of fun with her. Getting very wet in the process was no imposition in warm Southern waters.
            And, you can click Archived Reference Threads
Go to. Arch Davis ACE 14 ft., NEW. sailboat is basically completed and at the point where it can be finished as the 14' sailboat, rowboat or fishing boat. It was built from professional plans and a building manual (included in sale). It is very light weight (for its size) - current weight is approx 180 lbs - finished weight will be approx 210 lbs.
Original set of plans for the Arch Davis Ace 14' sailboat. Cute sailboat thrills without the cost of a bigger craft. These have been in my closet since 1989 and all the sheets are there in good condit
She is a pleasure to row, and sprightly under her simple sailing rig - a great boat for youngsters to mess about in. Bay Pilot 18 - an 18 ft pilothouse cruiser for outboard power. Laughing Gull - 16 ft self-bailing sailing/rowing skiff. Ace 14 - 14 ft performance daysailer
Ace Sloop Sailboat 17 Kit. This model is great for free sailing in the swimming pool or pond. The mahogany hull is assembled from die-cut parts and the birch mast is included in the kit. Rudder, complete fittings and riggings, and nylon sails are also included. (3)
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The WoodenBoat Forum is sponsored by WoodenBoat Publications, publisher of WoodenBoat magazine. The Forum is a free service, and much like the "free" content on Public Radio, we hope you will support WoodenBoat by subscribing to this fabulous magazine.
The St. Petersburg to Fort Lauderdale Race, known for captivating the sailing world from 1941 to 1990, is making a comeback. This prestigious race, considered one of the most challenging oceanic competitions, will kick off the SORC "Classic" Series in 2023-2024. Previously, the race attracted 134 boats, showcasing the spirit of competition and ...
SPINNAKER. STORM SAILS. Don't have your rig dimensions, no problem. Click here to search by boat: RIG DIMENSIONS TABLE . If you prefer for us to assist you in finding the right sail, please call 727-327-5361 or email: [email protected]. OR fill out our contact form here and we'll contact you: CONTACT FORM.
To view detailed boat plans description and spec pages, select a link below Penobscot 13 | Penobscot 14 | Penobscot 17 | 12 Foot Main Peapod | Sand Dollar | Laughing Gull | Ace 14 Grace's Tender | Jiffy V-22 | Jiffy 22 | Jiffy 9-7 | Bay Pilot 18 | Jack Tar | Grace Eileen 30 | Oar Plans
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Kayak launches/storage. Kayak storage, boat slips, and dry storage assignments can be purchased and/or leased as available. Located minutes from Downtown St Pete, enjoy its festivals and nightlife, 24/7 - 365 days a year. Home was staged at the time of these photos, selling unfurnished. Call now to schedule a private showing! ... 14.64%. MLS. 3 ...
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This includes a 24″ x 36″ blueline drawing showing the lines of the boat, construction sections, interior layout, and sail plan, and a booklet containing a detailed description of the boat, its development and construction, and numerous photographs and drawings. $12.00 + P&H: ($2.50 USA, $20.00 Canada, $24.00 all other countries.) PLANS:
See 14 photos. 165 114th Avenue N #165, ... 1.5 bath, Washer/Dryer in kitchen and carport, visitor parking, boat and RV parking too with a beautiful view of the park from your living room and private back patio. Included benefits and amenities with HOA include water, sewer, trash, pest control, and beautifully maintained grounds, clubhouse ...
Please call for shipping and handling. BULKHEAD KIT: Includes a set of the six bulkheads that give the boat her shape, with the transom, and two-part stem, beveled and ready to set up on the building jig. is $1,158.00 meranti/$1,200.00 okoume, including plans and Penobscot 14 DVD. Please call for shipping and handling.