Percy Blandford's Boat
Nearly fifty years ago ( where does the time go?) I built my first boat. It was a 14 foot Percy Blandford designed canvas covered decked canoe. Blandford was a Brit, and his little book “Canoes and Canoeing” published back in 1962 was my guide through the process. Countless other men, women and children have built similar canoes with the help of his book. Some of them probably didn’t have any more money or tools than I did. A lot of them did a better job. Much of the pine frame on my boat was cut to measure with a hand saw in my apartment bedroom. After I used a coping saw to shape a couple of the plywood frames, I realized it would take me years to build this boat. I resorted to an adult ed class in wood working that included access to a bandsaw. This was fortunate because my room mate was getting tired of cleaning up the saw dust that I tracked into the living room on the wall to wall carpet. I made pilot holes in the pine for the screws with an awl. A screw driver and a cheap little wood ‘shaper’ for rounding edges made up the rest of the tool kit.
My library copy didn’t have a dust jacket. The boat illustrated is a good approximation of mine though my boat has never seen a wave bigger than six inches!
As I recall, the budget for the lumber, plywood, canvas, paint and zinc coated screws ran around 75 dollars. It took two quarts of paint but we got ‘er done. The paddle was a closet rod with two blades of luan plywood. At Blandford’s suggestion, I fashioned two approximations of a Turk’s head knot around the shaft as drip catchers.
The initial voyage on Puffer’s Pond was deemed a success, and the little cartopper subsequently traveled the clam flats and backwaters of the Merrimack River estuary, Plum Island Sound, and Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire. After I left Massachusetts, the canvas covered boat explored several Chesapeake creeks and the waters of the NY Canal system along with various coves and marshes of Lake Ontario’s Thousand Islands and south shore bays. Though it didn’t possess the robust rock resistance of a plastic kayak or an aluminum canoe, it’s light weight allowed me (just barely) get it on top of the car and haul it upstairs to a second floor apartment. I christened it the good ship Fundulus, after the fat little minnows of the salt water marsh. A friend of mine thought I called it ‘fungus’ and hereafter the boat atop the car was known as the Green Growth.
Eventually, it went into a long hibernation under the house. However, my interest in the light weight canvas boat has re-ignited. Muscling the plastic kayak into the back of the pickup truck isn’t as easy as it used to be twenty years ago. The forty pound canvas boat is looking pretty good to me these days. I hauled it out from under the house, cleaned up the worst of the dirt accumulation and slapped a coat of gray paint on it. I launched it for a test paddle and discovered: 1) it was much more tippy than I remembered and 2) it leaked! However, I’m still agile enough to get in and out of it, so I think I’ll cob up a repair and give it a go this summer. Maybe I’ll even do a re-canvas job next winter.
The good ship Fundulus awaiting ‘repairs’
Naval architect Percy Blandford passed over the bar in England in 2014. He was 101 and he enabled thousands of DIYers with ample ambition and short supplies of cash but to get out on the water with his various designs for canoes, kayaks, sailing dinghies and surf boards.Blandford interview here
It was a different age then, but the DIY movement lives on in an endless array of digital You Tube videos of today. Perhaps there is a glimmer of hope for the survival of humanity. So here’s to Mr. Blandford and all those who have struck out on voyages of discovery in his boats.
Anyone out there have a good boat building tale to share with the ‘Chronicle”? Also for paddlers here is a new book of note- My “New York State Canal System Beyond the Erie” is being released on June 5 by Arcadia Publishing. Cover image below. Order from me via my buy books link at my website or find it in a bookstore near you.
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