knockabout sailboats

Stuart Knockabout

L.f. herreshoff design 53, stuart knockabout: the legacy.

This boat is a descendant in a long line of great Herreshoff creations. In this case, L. Francis succeeded admirably in utilizing all his earlier experience and familiarity with his father's great designs, advancing them with his own independent genius and artistry. What evolved is his own pure creation, and an exceptional daysailer.

The Stuart Knockabout is a splendid example of her pedigree. She is exceptionally fast and, therefore, a joy to sail. She also has surprising power, considering her modest sail plan, and is not slowed perceptibly by an oncoming sea. She is comfortable and forgiving, and with every unnecessary piece of complicated gear absent, what is left is an uncluttered, simple, easily handled thoroughbred.

Every boat is, to some extent, some kind of compromise. But if you are looking for such attributes as space, comfort, ease of handling and shallow draft, combined with lots of speed in a larger elegant daysailer, you will probably not find a more qualified boat than this.

The Stuart Knockabout is an excellent option both for people wishing to upgrade from a smaller daysailer, and those wanting to experience a more simple alternative to their large cruisers. The Stuart Knockabout has been a great next step for many Herreshoff 12 1/2 sailers because the SK offers more flexibility and excitement, while retaining the classic aesthetic. The larger boat owners have also enjoyed the SK for their next boat because of it's convenience and ease of sail. How many owners of cruising sailboats habitually day-sail their boats? How much better off might some be in a really fine day-boat? The Stuart is easy to get underway and quick to put to bed with or without a crew.

Stuart Knockabout on the water

E&d stuart becomes stuart knockabout llc.

With the closing of Edey & Duff in 2010, and Bill Harding's retirement, Steve Ballentine and his daughter Amy Ballentine Stevens bought the molds and rights to continue building and marketing the Stuart Knockabout. Stuart Knockabout LLC is located at Ballentine's Boat Shop where final construction, finish and sales take place.

If you would like to know more about these boats, or would like to go for a test sail, please Email Us!

We are currently taking orders! New boats are made in Massachusetts, and can be shipped all over the world. Call to place your order or for additional information: 508-563-2800

Stuart Knockabout Overview - PDF

GOOD NEWS! October, 2016 - Stuart Knockabout and Ballentine's restoration of BEN MY CHREE are the cover story for this month's Classic Boat Magazine - Get your copy HERE ! .

Read Classic Boat Editor's Blog post by Rob Peake - " Knocking About on Buzzard's Bay "

See our Restoration of Ben Page.

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A Herreshoff Legacy Lives On

Count the stuart knockabout among the few to hold its value..

Photos by Ralph Naranjo

It took some time for the Stuart Knockabout, an L. Francis Herreshoff design, to take root and finally flourish. The 28-foot day boat first appeared in 1932 as line drawing number 53 in the L. Francis annals, and only one boat was built. In 1933, Ben My Chree (a Galic term of endearment), was launched and wound up nestled away in Casco Bay, Maine, at the island home of owner Willoughby Stuart. With its own small marine railway and boat shed, Ben My Chree remained in the family for nearly 40 years. In the mid-1980s, it was discovered in a Massachusetts boat shed by Bill Harding, a sailor known for his deft hand on the tiller and the builder of the popular Herreshoff 12 replica-affectionately known as the Doughdish. Harding fell for the lines of daysailer he had discovered, and he researched the boats lineage. After getting a feel for what it had to offer under sail, he decided that this was another slice of sailing history that deserved being resurrected.

Harding built molds and used his already proven approach to turning a timber Herreshoff into a fiberglass favorite. To accomplish the goal, he once again went to boat builders Edey and Duff to do the hull and deck laminating and Ballentines Boat Shop to harness its carpentry skills and talents in finishing off these elegantly trimmed knockabouts. Today, Ballentines handles all the manufacturing and marketing, and even puts on the annual national championship. There are more than 80 boats sailing in the wake of Ben My Chree, and the reason for their success centers around how the boat was originally designed, where it is built today, and why it will continue to sail into the future.

While nearly every major New England boatbuilder is offering a contemporary classic daysailer today (see PS January 2009 online), the Knockabouts long production run and coast-to-coast following give it an investment appeal that you seldom see in the world of sailboats-of any size. For a retired cruiser looking to downsize to a daysailer, this reason alone should bump the Stuart Knockabout up into the final round of hulls under consideration.

What makes this boat such a pleasure to sail has as much to do with whats missing as whats included. This sloop has been stripped to its essence, not a parsimonious approach to boat building, but rather one in which a fine pedigree is created from the foot of the keel to the top of the mast. There is also a startling difference between most contemporary, 28-foot production sailboats and the Stuart Knockabout. The latest luxury daysailers are accessorized with a cabin, bunks, galley stove, a small diesel-plus tanks to fill with water and fuel. While daysailing, the engine coaxes the boat on and off the mooring, and all too often, is a substitute for light-air sails. But for many, the bunks go unused and the stove remains cold for months at a time. The tanks grow their own plankton. In the end, the owners are lugging around a lot of unnecessary structure that shrinks the cockpit, lowers the waterline, raises the center of gravity and kicks up the cost along with the annual maintenance invoices. In short, more boat isn’t necessarily more fun.

The L. Francis Herreshoff design No. 53 defines a shoal draft, 28-foot centerboard/sloop. It has shallow draft (2 feet, 9 inches centerboard up and 5 feet, 6 inches centerboard down), sporting an impressive 50-percent ballast ratio that recoups the righting moment trade-off in the commitment to shallow draft and a lean (6-foot, 11-inch) beam hull. This results in good sail-carrying ability, and is why the Stuart Knockabout, like many of Herreshoffs designs, can make the most of long waterlines, a classic modified spoon bow, and fine sections aft. The net result is a 22-foot, 10-inch resting waterline that grows considerably with just a small amount of heel or squat, and an easily driven hull that can cope with breeze and chop, despite its low freeboard.

The Marconi mainsail and small clubfooted jib yield a combined 265 square feet of working sail area. This is fairly small by Herreshoffs (and todays) standards, but its clean hull lines provide adequate light-air efficiency, especially with the genoa substituted for the self-tacking working jib. An asymmetric spinnaker rounds out the light-air inventory, and even with the relatively low-aspect rig and moderate amount of sail area, the sloop starts moving with little more than a zephyr and is a delight to sail throughout a wide wind range. A J/80 crew will wave as they go by, but after a couple of hours, those lads leaning against the lifelines will envy the knockabout crew sitting in the cockpit snacking or sharing a tasty lunch.

The boats a made-in-America tale of Yankee tradition. Today, Hall Spars does the rig, and its just the right combination of alloy spar, low-maintenance reliability, and a buff-color traditional finish that conveys aesthetics and good performance. Even the sensibility of traditional three-strand, easy to splice, running rigging fits the equation. Edson casts the traditional bronze hardware, and provides the pump thats set deep in the bilge.

With a rail-to-rail traveler on the aft deck and a mainsail vang, theres plenty of opportunity to optimize mainsail shape and trim. The ballast-derived righting moment and moderate sail area keep the crew from scrambling to the rail as the breeze builds. One of the many appealing design attributes found in this boat is the way sailing remains civilized-an in-the-cockpit experience rather than a hang-over-the-rail tribulation. Even when the breeze pipes up, the moderate sail area and high ballast ratio locks in a welcome stiffness, and it justifies lugging around 2,400 pounds of lead ballast in a 4,000-pound boat. The modern foam/fiberglass sandwich hulls and decks weigh less than the original hulls and the ballast has been upped a bit adding extra stiffness.

The proclivity to heel is the Achilles heel of boats built with non-self-bailing cockpits. In this case, the Stuarts high coamings combine with its stiff countenance to prevent the down-flooding linked to a deep knockdown, a very unlikely occurrence. The crew at Ballentines add buoyancy (foam aft and a water-tight bulkhead in the stem) to keep a swamped hull on the surface. According to well-kept Ballentine records, one boat was actually caught in the vortex of a tornado moving over a lake with winds well over 100 knots. The boat was knocked down and swamped, but the owners were surprised at how well the built-in flotation kept it on the surface and upright, despite the flooded hull.

The Stuart Knockabout is a sailboat that looks as good underway as it feels at the helm. A long, carefully sculpted, varnished locust tiller delivers a fingertip feel. Observers note that even with the slightest bit of heel, the well-proportioned sloop stretches its waterline just enough to settle into the seaway and shoulder the waves without excess pitching. The long tiller affords enough leverage to eliminate any barn-door effect from the low-aspect-ratio attached rudder. The long run of keel and forefoot cutaway are in harmony with the sail plan. This results in on-the-wind sailing that could be described as balanced, and off-the-wind sailing that is a nicely controlled endeavor.

The large-main/small-jib sail plan is in complete harmony with the underbody. As the breeze increases, the Knockabout heels gradually and remains reluctant to go much beyond 15 to 20 degrees. Naturally, big increases in wind velocity, such as during a thunderstorm, can result in being overpowered. Like any sailboat, its not immune to fire drills.

Under power

The Stuart Knockabout is a prime candidate for an electric Torqueedo outboard or a small 3- or 4-horsepower, long-shaft four-stroke outboard. A port mounting bracket is fitted near the tiller, and the low freeboard gives the outboard plenty of prop submersion. When the engine is not in use, its easy to haul it back aboard, remove the bracket and stow the motor and bracket under the foredeck.

Pocket cruisers are indeed one of the most worthy ways to voyage under sail. But if your stints on the water are measured in hours not days, weeks, or months, why lug along a cabin and all that goes into such an interior? Look around your marina or out at the moored fleets, and tally up how often you see folks perched uncomfortably atop the cabin houses because the cockpit is nearly nonexistent. Add up how many of the capable cruisers return home to their slips in the late afternoon rather than swing-on-the-hook in a quiet cove. Designers and builders have been noting this trend, and the result has been a resurgence in capable sailing, large cockpit, daysailers. But rather than shell out $80,000 (or much more) for one of these new iterations, an option is to track down an old Stuart Knockabout. The Knockabout has both the enduring appeal of a classic and the design advantages of a true daysailer. It is a sailboat that has indeed had multi-generational appeal.

In the just under and just over 30-foot size boat, youll find cruisers, racers, and everything in between. Its this tween range that got us going this month and led to our close scrutiny of the Stuart Knockabout. The boat is neither a cruiser, nor a racer for the adrenalin-dripping sailor hoping to keep up with the kiteboarders. The Stuart works for those looking to savor a couple of hours of an afternoon sea breeze or a bit of local club racing. How she compares with a couple of other boats we call daysailers is worth mentioning. (See In Context table on right.)

The new CW Hood 32 is an elegant, and technically tricked-out, long-ended daysailer. With a carbon rig and vacuum-bagged molded hull, it has a few feet on the Stuart and still comes in lighter in displacement. Its Performance Handicap Racing Fleet (PHRF) rating of 147 will appeal to the race-oriented, as will the carbon spar and rod rigging.

The out-of-production J/80 is more of a one-design racer than leisure daysailer, and its proven ability under sail has a lasting legacy. Over 1,300 boats have been launched, and the used price for a sound boat is about $35,000. The new J/Boats that bracket the J/80 are the smaller, 22-foot J/70 speedster ($50,000) and the 29-foot, auxilliary-diesel powered J/88 ($150,000). Both are fine boats, but they offer less than an apples to apples correlation with the Stuart Knockabout.

The bottom line, at least from our perspective, is that although sailboat design and technological advances have moved ahead, and made for performance enhancements that count on the race course, the delight of simply being underway in a tried and proven traditional design still has merit.

Theres a lot to appreciate about a boat thats easy to handle, leaves just a few ripples in her wake, and is as pleasant to look at as she is to sail.

• Craftsmanship is at the Heart of Construction

The Stuart Knockabout’s performance ratios mark it as more conservative than contemporary daysailors.

• Ballentine’s Boat Shop

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Cape Cod Knockabout Retired Design *

Designed by: captain charles s. gurney.

The Knockabout is a wonderful centerboard racing one-design that has stood the test of time moving from a wooden to a fiberglass hull. Her open cockpit allows plenty of room for crew work and sail handling. The Knockabouts shoal draft makes them ideal for shallow waters. Most of the racing fleets are located along Cape Cod, but Knockabouts are day sailed throughout the country. Knockabouts are built in much the same manner as she was in the past with foam floatation, loose lead ballast, and a red wood planked cockpit floor but today with a fiberglass hull and deck and aluminum spars. The rudder design has been improved in the transition and is now made of fiberglass as well. One can easily launch and rig the knockabout at a ramp.

New Boat Options

Knockabout (standard) - white hull/standard color deck..........request quote.

Name painting & delivery also available

Prices subject to 6.25% Massachusetts Sales Tax, if applicable

© 2024 Cape Cod Shipbuilding Co. ®, Wareham MA USA [email protected]

Stuart Knockabout...

E&D Stuart becomes... Stuart Knockabout LLC

With the closing of Edey & Duff in 2010, and Bill Harding's retirement, Steve Ballentine and his daughter Amy Ballentine Stevens bought the molds and rights to continue building and marketing the Stuart Knockabout. Stuart Knockabout LLC is located at Ballentine's Boat Shop where final construction, finish and sales take place.

The Stuart Knockabout is an excellent option both for people wishing to upgrade from a smaller daysailer, and those wanting to experience a more simple alternative to their large cruisers. The Stuart Knockabout has been a great next step for many Herreshoff 12 1/2 sailers because the SK offers more flexibility and excitement, while retaining the classic aesthetic. The larger boat owners have also enjoyed the SK for their next boat because of it's convenience and ease of sail. How many owners of cruising sailboats habitually day-sail their boats? How much better off might some be in a really fine day-boat? The Stuart is easy to get underway and quick to put to bed with or without a crew.

The Knockabout's rig is really quite conservative, especially compared to other early designs. She carries only 265 sq. ft. of sail, and the plan is nicely divided for sail handling and delicately balanced steering. Despite this moderate sized sail plan, she's surprisingly fast in light winds and she certainly is when it breezes up. A good, deep-keeled, modern racing design of comparable weight and size with 100 sq. ft. more sail area may have a slight advantage in real light going, but the situation is reversed when it freshens a bit. The mainsail is equipped for slab reefing and the jib also can be reefed to its club. A Genoa can be added to her sail plan, and it really livens her up in wind under 12 knots.

If you would like to know more about these boats, or would like to go for a test sail, please Email Us or visit our Stuart Knockabout, LLC Web site .

Currently taking orders! New Stuart Knockabouts are made in Massachusetts and can be shipped all over the world. Call to place your order or for additional information: 508-563-2800

Stuart Knockabout - Overview and Specs (PDF)

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The Kin of Cape Cod Shipbuilding

• By Joe Berkeley
• Updated: July 13, 2021

Wendy Goodwin had been so busy running Cape Cod Shipbuilding, the 122-year-old family business, she didn’t have time to have a family of her own. Then the pandemic hit, the opportunity arose, and she began the process of fostering to adopt an 8-year-old girl.

On a day in early spring, when the sun shines on the Cape and the winter is almost forgotten, Goodwin’s daughter is in her office attending math class remotely. Goodwin is in a spare room, once the domain of the parts manager. Long before that, this space was where her grandfather, Les Goodwin, slept with his ballerina bride, Audrey, in the early days after they purchased the boatyard.

The place today certainly looks its age. Past Cranberry Highway, on the south side of the two-lane Narrows Road, a sign welcomes visitors onto the waterfront property along the swift-running Wareham River, which feeds into Buzzards Bay. A dozen buildings of different sizes and shapes are strewn about the 9.5-acre grounds. Most wear their patina of age with pride. All serve their purpose. No one ever said that a working shipyard had to be fancy, but quite a few boats inside and under Cape Cod’s care certainly are.

The past here is omnipresent. Outdated molds gather moss and have become part of the landscape, proving the longevity of fiberglass. Old-growth wooden floors inside the buildings are worn smooth by generations of boatbuilders. Big machines, lathes, jigs and tools created by dearly departed artisans live on, ready to put in an honest day’s work on designs that may well be immortal.

A nautical archeologist would have a field day here; it seems that bits of the past are behind every open door or cracked windowpane. Beneath these buildings and buried deep in the soil, he or she could very well unearth artifacts from the late 1800s, the time when—according to local historians—brothers Myron and Charles Gurney were manufacturing wagons and carriages on the western bank of the river. The Gurney brothers later got into skiffs and dories, and then ­sailboats—namely the Cape Cod Knockabout, an 18-foot one-design by Charles Gurney, first built in 1925 and still raced in parts of New England.

Upon the passing of Charles Gurney, a fellow by the name of G.S. Williams took ownership in 1935, but according to company legend, Wendy Goodwin’s grandfather Les Goodwin, a dealer from New Jersey, bought the company after visiting to complain about the quality of the builds he was selling. He and Audrey relocated to Wareham and moved into the office to run the new company.

In 1940, so their story goes, Goodwin purchased the Sparkman & Stephens-designed Mercury and built more than 200 of them while also building military tugs and launches for the US Navy. Postwar production then returned to small craft and one-design sailboats. According to the company archives, the Goodwin family enjoyed a rush of fiberglass production: Herreshoff Bull’s Eyes (derived from the Herreshoff 12½) in 1949, followed by Ravens in 1951, the W. Starling Burgess-designed Atlantic in 1956, the Knockabout in 1959, and the Capt. Nathanael Herreshoff-designed Goldeneye in 1960. It was 1962 when now-Hall of Fame inductee Cornelius Shields turned to Goodwin to build his eponymous one-design, drawn by Sparkman & Stephens.

Goodwin’s son, Gordon L. Goodwin, began working full time for the family company in 1969 and led Cape Cod Shipbuilding through its next chapter as a full-service boatyard. As it should come as no surprise, in 1993, Wendy Goodwin joined and brought a generational trifecta to the yard. The following year, E.L. Goodwin passed away at the age of 95, right before the yard was contracted to build new boats for the Day Sailer one-design class, which continues to this day.

Family is the keel of Cape Cod Shipbuilding, and it has kept the business upright and on course for more than 100 years. Goodwin’s first memory of the shipyard is feeding ducks from the dock when she was 4 or 5 years old. When we meet in early April 2021, she was out of breath, having just launched a flotilla of docks, which marks the beginning of another busy season on Massachusetts’ south coast. It’s the ebb and flow of every New England boatyard: Good weather brings customers out of the woodwork, and on this day, Goodwin’s phone and email inbox are blowing up.

One of the many challenges of keeping this boatbuilding business afloat in the United States in general, and on Cape Cod in particular, is balancing repairs with new builds. When people are not commissioning new boats, Goodwin takes on more repairs. Managing customers’ expectations, she says, can be more challenging than managing the workflow. “The hard part is letting customers know that we have an abundance of new boat orders and we can’t get to a repair,” she says, “or vice versa.”

Some in the industry might call that a good problem to have. Diversification is a sound financial practice. It’s also a wise strategy for a boatbuilder.

“The fact that we don’t have all of our eggs in one basket is the reason why we are 122 years old,” Goodwin says. “We don’t do just one thing. Right now in my shop, we have three Day Sailerss, one Heritage, some Bull’s Eyes and Herreshoff 12½s. If I didn’t have the Herreshoff 12½s to varnish every year, we couldn’t keep the payroll going. There’s no one bread-and-butter boat.”

At times, being the president of the operation means difficult decisions must be made, such as retiring boats like the Cape Cod Knockabout, which are no longer financially viable. “Dad didn’t talk to me for a week after I decided that,” Goodwin says, “but it was the right decision for the company.”

Regarding Wendy’s work ethic, the tree isn’t far from the fruit. Gordon could be retired at his age, but instead, you’ll find him at the boatyard every day. “You’ve got to get out and get the men and get them going so they can build the boats so I can go home and put bread on the table,” he says.

Is building antique one-designs romantic? Wendy Goodwin laughs when I ask—it’s something she does quite frequently. “This is not a romantic job,” she says. “That’s how people sell books and ­stories—the romance of boatbuilding. In reality, boatbuilding is dirty and smelly. What I find fantastic are the relationships and connections I make with other people through boatbuilding.”

One of those people is Matt Holt, the new owner of an older boat. Holt lives in the British Virgin Islands, and his boat, Tern , is a Cape Cod Marlin, designed by Herreshoff and built at Cape Cod Shipbuilding in 1961.

Holt describes Tern as “your most comfortable pair of jeans,” and says before he took ownership, Tern was cared for by Englishman Dr. Robin Erskine Tattersall. Tattersall modeled for the famous photographer Richard Avedon, represented the BVI in the Soling class in two Olympic Games, and cared for the medical needs of his community.

For 40 years, Tattersall loved and sailed Tern . Two back-to-back Category 5 hurricanes, Irma and Maria, however, did a number on it. Tern ’s dock was ripped out, it was struck by numerous charter yachts, and partially sunk deep in the mangroves. Its spars were broken, but the hull was intact.

Tattersall sold Tern to Holt for $10, with the understanding that he was its new steward. Holt reached out to Goodwin, and a trip to the records room in Building No. 33 revealed that Tern had indeed been built by her grandfather in 1961, and she was able to locate the paperwork, which documented all of its parts.

The historical records collection at Cape Cod Shipbuilding is vast, not so much because grandpa Les Goodwin was trained as an archivist, but because he didn’t throw away anything. The old invoices, Goodwin says, are invaluable when new owners of older boats ­discuss refits. “The fact that these boats are going on three, four generations, it’s pretty awesome.”

Goodwin and her team were able to re-create a spirit of a ­traditional rig for Tern featuring a single extrusion tapered mast, a new boom, standing rigging, running rigging, sails and covers, all shipped to the BVI. “The crate they built for me was two-by-fours ­covered in carpet. The rigging was laced into the crate using the sails as cushion,” Holt says. “The two-by-fours were covered in plywood. They hit a home run with the delivery, which was no small feat getting it down to this little island in the Caribbean.”

This dedication to craftsmanship brings all types of customers back to Cape Cod Shipbuilding. One fan is Olympian, sailmaker and world champion of many classes Steve Benjamin, who once fell in love with Atlantic No. 128, Cassidy . Benjamin was struck by the beauty and sailing capabilities of the W. Starling Burgess design. He also was impressed by the competition, the camaraderie, and the opportunity for mature sailors to remain competitive.

A skipper known to keep his race boats in Bristol condition, Benjamin has refit at least 10 boats over the years. Cassidy needed new deadwood on the keel, which was completely waterlogged, a topsides paint job in Awlgrip, and a bottom job coated with Baltoplate.

Past Olympians are not the only sailors who enjoy boats built by Cape Cod Shipbuilding. Geordie Shaver has sailed in five America’s Cups, and these days he gets his kicks racing in Newport, Rhode Island’s cutthroat Shields fleet. Shaver estimates that 90 percent of the Newport Shields fleet were built by Cape Cod Shipbuilding. And when there is a problem, people are happy to have an active builder nearby.

Like many boatbuilders, Cape Cod Shipbuilding would like to receive group orders for one-design fleets because building one boat at a time is less efficient. In fact, if a group order of six boats arrives for a retired design, Cape Cod Shipbuilding is happy to build the boats.

With the Shields class, Goodwin says, the goal is to always keep things one-design. “We’re walking a fine line keeping the class alive and making sure the competition is fair,” she says. “I don’t want the new boats to be slower or faster than the existing boats. We’re loyal to all of our fleets to make sure things don’t change.”

After listening to all of her customers, Goodwin noticed that many Herreshoff 12½ owners were tired of wrestling with outboards and outboard brackets. Looking to the future, Cape Cod Shipbuilding invested in crafting a redesigned Cape Cod Marlin Heritage. Designed by Herreshoff, the classic combines the best of the Fish and Marlin designs, and offers modern amenities such as inboard power, an iPod-ready sound system, and USB charger ports. A just-built flag-blue example sits on a railway cradle that leads to the water, freshly varnished brightwork shining like a gem.

No amount of cajoling will get Goodwin to name her favorite boat at Cape Cod Shipbuilding, but she will admit that the boat the family owns is a Shields. She was the Shields-class secretary for quite a few years and co-wrote a book about the class turning 50. “I adore the racing and the competition,” she says. “There’s nothing I like better than getting together in the cockpit and working together to make the boat move. It’s about the people in the cockpit and the smarts that’s shared between them.”

Goodwin’s love of sailing would strike a chord with her grandfather Les, who once wrote, “Sailing is a family sport that can be enjoyed by young and old together, so I hope my little girl may learn to sail, race and love small sailboats as real insurance against becoming a ‘sailboat widow.’”

In due time, Goodwin may well say the same thing to her daughter, who, should she keep up with her math homework, could be the next Goodwin to keep Cape Cod Shipbuilding sailing into the future. ν

• More: boats , day sailer , Herreshoff , one-design , print 2021 summer , Sailboats , Shields
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A Vintage Knockabout Design Finds New Life

The Camden Class,  designed in 1915 by B.B. Crowninshield, is a variation from a time when so-called knockabouts were all the rage. It could be argued that these and Crowninshield’s other elegant but simple dayboats represent the foundation of the one-design concept.

Only four of the Camden Class boats were built back in the day, and the design, which was intended as a racing fleet for the Camden Yacht Club, was supplanted at the club by the Haj boats. But the elegant design has had many admirers, including a man who started to build one on his own and has since handed the project off to Alec Brainerd’s Artisan Boatworks of Rockport, Maine.

The boat nearing completion in Brainerd’s shop was begun 15 years ago in Birmingham, Alabama. The builder, Dr. Marc Starer, had recently moved there from New England. “The people there were great, but otherwise I was homesick,” he said. “I missed the seacoast, and sailing. I thought what I needed was a nautical project.” A subscriber to WoodenBoat , he perused the boat plans they offered for amateur builders, and noted designs for three Crowninshield knockabouts: the Dark Harbor 17.5, the Dark Harbor 12.5, and the Camden Class 17.  He chose the Camden Class because he “particularly loved its looks.”

As with many a backyard boat project, this one dragged on for a number of years. Starer returned to Massachusetts, towing the half-finished boat with his U-Haul. Eventually he decided the partially built hull either needed to be scrapped or rescued by a new builder.

Enter Brainerd. Starer met him at a boat show where Brainerd was standing in front of another turn-of-the-century wooden daysailer design—a Watch Hill 15 built at Artisan—and the two got into a conversation. Brainerd revealed that back in his youth, when he was first thinking about becoming a boatbuilder, he, too, favored the Camden knockabout as an ideal first boat to build.  He had seen the ads for plans in the back of WoodenBoat . Why did he fixate on that design? He liked its looks.

When he started out as a boatbuilder, one of Brainerd’s first orders was for a Dark Harbor 17.5. He rebuilt a couple more, and has since branched out into repair and maintenance, as well as specializing in building classic wooden boats. But he never lost his desire to build a Camden Class knockabout. Starer, realizing that he’d found his builder, moved his project from western Massachusetts to West Rockport, Maine.

So what exactly is a knockabout?

Prior to around 1890, yachtsmen raced unique individual designs, each man using his pocketbook to try to vanquish all comers. It was common knowledge that longer boats had the advantage for speed, so in order to make the sport more fair, boats were grouped by size, usually based on waterline length. These boats were low, with flattish sections, hard bilges, and prominent overhangs. Going all-out to win cash prizes and private wagers, they tended to be crewed by heavyweights. Their oversized gaff rigs required short bowsprits, and, in some instances, boomkins to anchor the main sheet.

By the advent of the 20th century, yacht clubs were springing up in privileged enclaves along the Eastern seaboard, including in Maine. Within these various clubs, members began to realize that afternoon races would be more fair, and the boats less costly, if they sailed identical boats, kind of like the Model Ts coming off Ford’s new assembly lines. Yacht historian Maynard Bray argues that this “early desire for equal boats was much more about getting a bargain than it was about fair racing.”

Many clubs concentrated their efforts on compact, versatile boats, good for training or racing, with shelter allowing for two persons to camp overnight. These were the stipulations that defined a “knockabout.”

Members of clubs along the East Coast were ordering this style boat—low-sided, long-ended, and gaff-rigged but without a bowsprit, sporting a “self-tacking” club-footed jib and a short, humped cabin—in batches. Notable designers included Starling Burgess, Nathanael Herreshoff, Clinton Crane, and Bowdoin Bradlee Crowninshield. Crowninshield was prolific. His output ranged from Gloucester fishing and racing schooners to the America’s Cup contender Independence , and the astounding, nearly 400-foot-long, seven-masted schooner Thomas W. Lawson .

In 1908 Crowninshield was commissioned by the Manchester (Massachusetts) Yacht Club to design a true “one-design” class. (It was his design number 381.) He had the good sense to head to Maine to seek a boatbuilding yard with deep experience and hard-nosed cost control. Rice Brothers, of East Boothbay, Maine, built a first batch of 12 boats for $500 each, and they were so popular that more followed. Eventually many more of these 17.5-foot waterline boats were built for several different yacht clubs; oftentimes named after their home harbor. The design is now commonly known as the Dark Harbor 17.5. Crowninshield made small changes to the design between clubs, but all the boats were equally fast and attractive. Examples were scattered from Islesboro to North Haven and Bar Harbor.  How could the startup Camden Yacht Club fail to take notice?

Founded in 1906, the Camden Yacht Club was looking around for a suitable racing class. William J. Curtis and his family spearheaded the idea of a new knockabout fleet. His son William, Jr. conspired with Crowninshield to come up with something different by more than just small details from the ubiquitous 17.5 waterline knockabouts already racing. The design they came up with in 1915, the Camden Class, was a half-foot shorter on the waterline, six inches beamier, and had longer overhangs that extended the overall length from 25'10" to 28'3". Most noticeably, the sail area was increased by 40 square feet. The price charged by Hodgdon Brothers in East Boothbay was $770 per boat, including five full sail bags.

Four Camden Class knockabouts were built, and a 1916 edition of The Rudder magazine claimed they were “very successful.” There is no evidence that this group ever raced against the Dark Harbor knockabouts. However, at the 100th anniversary knockabout rendezvous at North Haven a few years back, the one surviving Camden Class sloop, now owned by the Cabot family on North Haven, competed against the other 17s. It did not win—but it was clearly not geared up for racing.

By the 1930s, the Camden Yacht Club switched gears and voted to acquire a fleet of European-designed and -built Haj boats. The four gaff-rigged knockabouts disappeared, with the exception of the Cabots’ boat and a basket-case aptly named Gone Away that is now in repose behind a Rockport boatshop.

All this brings us back to the Camden knockabout under construction at Artisan Boatworks. Brainerd has found places where Starer’s hull didn’t perfectly comply with the blueprints, but generally it was a credible start. Since the boat has been in the Artisan shop, the sheer and deck have been beautifully faired under the uncompromising eye of a pro, and the steam-bent cabin sides and coaming are beyond lovely. The cabintop beams were just beginning to be installed when I visited this spring. The boat will have a comfortable deep cockpit, which is a contrast with the Dark Harbors, most of which have shallow self-bailing cockpits.

I found it fascinating that the line of the stem seems to have been purposefully designed by Crowninshield with a slight bend so as to shorten the waterline. One might think this was intended to minimize the rating. It could also have been a result of Crowinshield’s experiments with concepts intended to minimize wetted surface, according to Maynard Bray.

The new Camden Class knockabout, to be named Starship , is scheduled to be launched this summer in Camden. Perhaps some of the Dark Harbor 17.5’s will be around to race it. 

No matter the result, it won’t be a case of one boat winning and one boat losing. It will be a case of two of the most perfect knockabouts in the world sharing the same space and time. 

Contributing Author Art Paine is a boat designer, fine artist, freelance writer, aesthete, and photographer who lives in Bernard, Maine.

Camden Class

LOA: 28' 3" LWL: 17' Beam: 6' 9" Draft: 4' 3" Sail Area: 350 sq. ft. Displ: 3,743 lbs.

Designer: B.B. Crowninshield

Builder: Artisan Boatworks 416 Main St., Rockport, ME 207-236-4231 www.artisanboatworks.com

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L.F. Herreshoff “Stuart Knockabout”

The Stuart Knockabout is a splendid example of her pedigree. She is exceptionally fast and, therefore, a joy to sail. She also has surprising power, considering her modest sail plan, and is not slowed perceptibly by an oncoming sea. She is comfortable and forgiving, and with every unnecessary piece of complicated gear absent, what is left is an uncluttered, simple, easily handled thoroughbred.

Every boat is, to some extent, some kind of compromise. But if you are looking for such attributes as space, comfort, ease of handling and shallow draft, combined with lots of speed in a larger elegant daysailer, you will probably not find a more qualified boat than this.

The Stuart Knockabout is an excellent option both for people wishing to upgrade from a smaller daysailer, and those wanting to experience a more simple alternative to their large cruisers. The Stuart Knockabout has been a great next step for many Herreshoff 12 1/2 sailers because the SK offers more flexibility and excitement, while retaining the classic aesthetic. The larger boat owners have also enjoyed the SK for their next boat because of it’s convenience and ease of sail. How many owners of cruising sailboats habitually day-sail their boats? How much better off might some be in a really fine day-boat? The Stuart is easy to get underway and quick to put to bed with or without a crew.

For further inquiries contact http://www.stuartknockaboutllc.com/

Related posts:

• L. Francis Herreshoff “Tioga II”
• Herreshoff S-Class HORNPIPE
• America’s Cup Yacht “Resolute”
• Herreshoff New York 40 “Rugosa II”

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1950 Blanchard Senior Knockabout Wooden Sailboat - boats - by owner...

I am reluctantly offering my 1950 26-foot Blanchard Senior Knockabout sailboat to anyone who wants to continue the project. My limited time, skills, money, and facilities are keeping this fantastic...

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• Sailboat Guide

1993 Edey & Duff Stuart Knockabout

• Description

Seller's Description

1993 Edey and Duff, Stuart Knockabout, a fiberglass sailboat with the Herreshoff pedigree. 3 sails, main, jib and genoa all in good shape. Bottom recently painted, mast inspected in 2019 and repainted, all standing rigging related in 2019, running rigging in gear shape, teak varnished every Spring, second owner.Torquedo 3 HP Electric engiine.

Rig and Sails

Auxilary power, accomodations, calculations.

The theoretical maximum speed that a displacement hull can move efficiently through the water is determined by it's waterline length and displacement. It may be unable to reach this speed if the boat is underpowered or heavily loaded, though it may exceed this speed given enough power. Read more.

Classic hull speed formula:

Hull Speed = 1.34 x √LWL

Max Speed/Length ratio = 8.26 ÷ Displacement/Length ratio .311 Hull Speed = Max Speed/Length ratio x √LWL

Sail Area / Displacement Ratio

A measure of the power of the sails relative to the weight of the boat. The higher the number, the higher the performance, but the harder the boat will be to handle. This ratio is a "non-dimensional" value that facilitates comparisons between boats of different types and sizes. Read more.

SA/D = SA ÷ (D ÷ 64) 2/3

• SA : Sail area in square feet, derived by adding the mainsail area to 100% of the foretriangle area (the lateral area above the deck between the mast and the forestay).
• D : Displacement in pounds.

Ballast / Displacement Ratio

A measure of the stability of a boat's hull that suggests how well a monohull will stand up to its sails. The ballast displacement ratio indicates how much of the weight of a boat is placed for maximum stability against capsizing and is an indicator of stiffness and resistance to capsize.

Ballast / Displacement * 100

Displacement / Length Ratio

A measure of the weight of the boat relative to it's length at the waterline. The higher a boat’s D/L ratio, the more easily it will carry a load and the more comfortable its motion will be. The lower a boat's ratio is, the less power it takes to drive the boat to its nominal hull speed or beyond. Read more.

D/L = (D ÷ 2240) ÷ (0.01 x LWL)³

• D: Displacement of the boat in pounds.
• LWL: Waterline length in feet

Comfort Ratio

This ratio assess how quickly and abruptly a boat’s hull reacts to waves in a significant seaway, these being the elements of a boat’s motion most likely to cause seasickness. Read more.

Comfort ratio = D ÷ (.65 x (.7 LWL + .3 LOA) x Beam 1.33 )

• D: Displacement of the boat in pounds
• LOA: Length overall in feet
• Beam: Width of boat at the widest point in feet

Capsize Screening Formula

This formula attempts to indicate whether a given boat might be too wide and light to readily right itself after being overturned in extreme conditions. Read more.

CSV = Beam ÷ ³√(D / 64)

Based on a single boat designed and built by Herresoff, for Mr. Willoughby Stuart in 1932. (Herreshoff design #53). Series production didn’t began until 1985?. Thanks to ‘Hal’ for providing corrected information. Molded by Edey & Duff. Finished by Ballentines’s Boat Shop.

This listing is presented by SailboatListings.com . Visit their website for more information or to contact the seller.

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