The beginnings of an idea

First let me say I have been a sailboater for a very long time. My first sailboat was a wooden row boat with a pole nailed to the bow and one of my mothers bed sheets attached to that. A friend and I made it when we were 10 at our families had summer places on Late Champlain. The two of us decided we would sail it across the lake from the New York side to the Vermont side. It wasn't long before a very angry and upset parent came out in a motor boat and towed two wanna be sailors back to shore.

A number of decades and a half dozen real sailboats latter, the love of sailing is still here but I'd reached the point where being out in the weather, hauling sheets, tacking and jibbing had become a lot more work than fun. And since my crew had all grown up and had other interests besides going out in that dumb sailboat again. I decided the time had come to get something that I could use for fishing, just relaxing and would keep me out of the weather during the early spring and fall here on Cape Cod. A back up boat for the times I didn't have a crew to ease some of the chore of sailing. So I proposed the idea to my mate and I was told that my budget for yet another boat was limited. Basically $0.

That sent me climbing around the bone yards at marinas and searching that old stand by, Craigslist. I had always liked the idea of a downeast style boat and the search began and a few were found but they had a lot more numbers in their price tags  than a $0 budget could handle.

Then I read an article about adding a hard dodger to an open boat and the gears started turning. Why stop at a dodger? A little pencil and paper work and the concept could be expanded and turned into small cabin. All I needed was a good stable hull. The search was on again.