If only she could talk, that open boat with the flat bottom and squared edges. An uncomplicated boat, yet she has her own history, her own character. We have found that Chesapeake boaters wax nostalgic about their skiffs and consider them less as boats and more as members of their families. Here are a few of their tales.
Why Mess with a Good Thing?
Shortly after graduating from college, I purchased an Apache 1600 skiff. It was a fiberglass eggshell with bench seats and a flat bottom, which made it excellent for spine-compression in all sea conditions. It had no cleats, which I fixed by mounting plastic cleats that broke easily. It had no console, which I fixed by building one that rapidly delaminated. It had no storage compartments, which I fixed by adding milk crates. And it developed cracks in the hullsides, which I fixed by ignoring them. (It was entertaining to watch the hullsides ripple as we hit waves, and the cracks were above the waterline, so why mess with a good thing?)
Despite all of these traits, I loved that skiff with all of my heart and soul. Sure, it contributed to my chronic back problems. Yes, it is slightly amazing I didn’t manage to sink it on those days when reasonable anglers with 30-footers stayed at home, and I did not. But that little skiff had one thing going for it: it was cheap. Cheap! Cheap! Cheap! It was all I could afford, and it gave me access to the fishing spots I’d spent countless nights thinking about. It may have been a piece of junk, but it accounted for flounder up to 24 inches, weakfish to eight pounds, and stripers up to 42 inches.
In my mid 20s, I got a new job. It paid better than any I’d had by a long-shot, and I quickly decided to sell the Apache and get a bigger boat. One day a guy came to look at it. After we went for a sea trial, he pulled out a wad of cash, peeled back a few bills, and handed them to me. He left with my Apache hitched to the back of his truck. That night, I cried.
~ Lenny Rudow
Racing Toward the Past
It’s Saturday morning, 5:30 a.m. Most sane people would still be sleeping. I don’t fit in that category. I drive four hours to play three hours and drive four hours back in the same day. If you ask me why I would say it’s all because I’m passionate about Smith Island Crab Skiffs.
I first heard about these skiffs in December 1998 in Chesapeake Bay Magazine. Richard “Dicky” White grew up in Oxford, MD, and always admired these boats, so he built the replica Salty Eel in 1992. A few years later, he and some of his buddies from Oxford came up with the idea of bringing the design back by challenging the folks of Crisfield to a race. Each team built their own boat using the designs patterned off boats from the Calvert Museum and the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum in St. Michaels. The only other limit was that it must have no more than 20 horsepower. They held their first race in September 1998.
I have always been a lover of maritime heritage. Growing up in Mathews, VA, on the water, my father and I would spend weekends scouring the marinas around the Bay looking at boats. When I was a teen, my dad bought and fixed up and old buy-boat. I enjoyed that boat more than any other before or since. From December 1998, I carried that article on the skiffs around and read it over and over. I went to a few races, but I did not have the carpentry skills to build one and was unable to afford to pay someone else to do it for me. So I waited.
Ten years later, I heard about a cheap one for sale. It had been sitting for a couple of years. I was told the water-cooled engine didn’t run, steering was frozen. It was painted dark green and was on a homemade trailer. How could I say no? I brought it home, threw out the old engine, sanded/repainted it, put in new engine mounts and an engine. I re-christened her Old Bay to look like the well-known spice can, but it was really to reflect the old traditions of the Bay. When I finally got her in the water, her bow rode so high I could barely see over the boat. I spent the next two years tweaking with a wedge to get the bow down. To this day I still am doing what every racer does: tweak, test, then tweak some more. She made her debut in 2008 in Crisfield. The next year I won my first (handicap) race named after the man that restarted the heritage: Dicky White
I always had wondered what had happened to the original reproduction crab skiff, the Salty Eel. His son told me that shortly before he died in 2003, he gave the boat away to a boy in a small town on the Eastern Shore. With a few phone calls I located the boat and owner and made arrangements to see it. She had been sitting outside for five years with no covering; her motor was a rusted mess, the trim work was peeling, and her planking had been removed allowing water to rot the frames. Still the owner was not ready to sell it. From that day on it became my unicorn, an elusive creature that you can see but never quite capture.
Two years later, I caught my unicorn and transported it 200 miles to Virginia. She waited until she got home before the rusted trailer springs broke off. I replaced the tires and springs, glassed the inside of the boat, stripped and refinished the varnish work, re-planked the deck, and powered her with a donated engine. She is now restored to her original condition and is being kept inside a shed were she will be protected.
~ Trey Shinault
To Fish and “Shoot” in the Shallows
Attached are a few images of my skiff, a Custom Gheenoe NMZ highsider, 15 feet, four inches. The boat drafts five inches of water and is a perfect platform for shallow-water fishing. These boats are made in Titusville FL, near the famous Mosquito Lagoon where people catch large red drum and speckled trout in the shallows. I have used the shallow draft advantages of this boat to find fish and photograph areas that were otherwise only accessible to kayaks and canoes. This boat has all of the advantages of a kayak with a motor. I have an eight-horsepower motor that allows the boat to cruise at 15 knots.
When I take pictures, I put all of my equipment—cameras, four to six lenses, a tripod, and underwater housing—in Pelican cases; they’re waterproof and shock-resistant, and they float. The boat is great for calm water, not the best when it’s rough. I choose my days and good spots with not much open water.
~ Jay Fleming
A Working Girl
I use my boats to do things. My boats have always been sort of like pickup trucks, and it’s been that way for a long, long time. My 17-foot Boston Whaler Montauk is getting toward the end of her 21st season. She has worked for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation more than she’s claimed. She’s also been a writer’s boat and has had some benefits, such as good electronics; she’s been a test sled for them. She’s a working girl.
With her Mercury 60-horspower four-stroke engine, she’s got a lot of shove. She tops out at 31; she’ll plane off at 10. I have a huge range of speed so that I can fit her to the seas. She’s easy to tow, easy to launch, and I don’t know how many ramps she’s been on in her life. The fuel bill is less than one gallon per hour.
I wrote a book on the John Smith Trail for the National Geographic and a pamphlet (smithtrail.net/things-to-do/water-trail-adventures). My boat’s done just about all the John Smith Trail: way up the Patuxent, up the Susquehanna. She’s been to Washington, DC, Fredericksburg, Richmond, Suffolk, and Smithfield; up every branch of the Elizabeth River; up the Pokomoke and the Nanticoke. She’s a real easy boat. She does a lot of work and remains a good fishing boat, a good boat for picnics. She’s never been skied behind, but I trust my granddaughters may want to try that. How can you argue with a boat like this?
~ John Page Williams
Thursday, September 26, 2013 - 10:00
(This story appears on page 89 of the October issue of PropTalk)
If only she could talk, that open boat with the flat bottom and squared edges. An uncomplicated boat, yet she has her own history, her own character. We have found that Chesapeake boaters wax nostalgic about their skiffs and consider them less as boats and more as members of their families. Here are a few of their tales.
Why Mess with a Good Thing?
Shortly after graduating from college, I purchased an Apache 1600 skiff. It was a fiberglass eggshell with bench seats and a flat bottom, which made it excellent for spine-compression in all sea conditions. It had no cleats, which I fixed by mounting plastic cleats that broke easily. It had no console, which I fixed by building one that rapidly delaminated. It had no storage compartments, which I fixed by adding milk crates. And it developed cracks in the hullsides, which I fixed by ignoring them. (It was entertaining to watch the hullsides ripple as we hit waves, and the cracks were above the waterline, so why mess with a good thing?)
Despite all of these traits, I loved that skiff with all of my heart and soul. Sure, it contributed to my chronic back problems. Yes, it is slightly amazing I didn’t manage to sink it on those days when reasonable anglers with 30-footers stayed at home, and I did not. But that little skiff had one thing going for it: it was cheap. Cheap! Cheap! Cheap! It was all I could afford, and it gave me access to the fishing spots I’d spent countless nights thinking about. It may have been a piece of junk, but it accounted for flounder up to 24 inches, weakfish to eight pounds, and stripers up to 42 inches.
In my mid 20s, I got a new job. It paid better than any I’d had by a long-shot, and I quickly decided to sell the Apache and get a bigger boat. One day a guy came to look at it. After we went for a sea trial, he pulled out a wad of cash, peeled back a few bills, and handed them to me. He left with my Apache hitched to the back of his truck. That night, I cried.
~ Lenny Rudow
Racing Toward the Past
It’s Saturday morning, 5:30 a.m. Most sane people would still be sleeping. I don’t fit in that category. I drive four hours to play three hours and drive four hours back in the same day. If you ask me why I would say it’s all because I’m passionate about Smith Island Crab Skiffs.
I first heard about these skiffs in December 1998 in Chesapeake Bay Magazine. Richard “Dicky” White grew up in Oxford, MD, and always admired these boats, so he built the replica Salty Eel in 1992. A few years later, he and some of his buddies from Oxford came up with the idea of bringing the design back by challenging the folks of Crisfield to a race. Each team built their own boat using the designs patterned off boats from the Calvert Museum and the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum in St. Michaels. The only other limit was that it must have no more than 20 horsepower. They held their first race in September 1998.
I have always been a lover of maritime heritage. Growing up in Mathews, VA, on the water, my father and I would spend weekends scouring the marinas around the Bay looking at boats. When I was a teen, my dad bought and fixed up and old buy-boat. I enjoyed that boat more than any other before or since. From December 1998, I carried that article on the skiffs around and read it over and over. I went to a few races, but I did not have the carpentry skills to build one and was unable to afford to pay someone else to do it for me. So I waited.
Ten years later, I heard about a cheap one for sale. It had been sitting for a couple of years. I was told the water-cooled engine didn’t run, steering was frozen. It was painted dark green and was on a homemade trailer. How could I say no? I brought it home, threw out the old engine, sanded/repainted it, put in new engine mounts and an engine. I re-christened her Old Bay to look like the well-known spice can, but it was really to reflect the old traditions of the Bay. When I finally got her in the water, her bow rode so high I could barely see over the boat. I spent the next two years tweaking with a wedge to get the bow down. To this day I still am doing what every racer does: tweak, test, then tweak some more. She made her debut in 2008 in Crisfield. The next year I won my first (handicap) race named after the man that restarted the heritage: Dicky White
I always had wondered what had happened to the original reproduction crab skiff, the Salty Eel. His son told me that shortly before he died in 2003, he gave the boat away to a boy in a small town on the Eastern Shore. With a few phone calls I located the boat and owner and made arrangements to see it. She had been sitting outside for five years with no covering; her motor was a rusted mess, the trim work was peeling, and her planking had been removed allowing water to rot the frames. Still the owner was not ready to sell it. From that day on it became my unicorn, an elusive creature that you can see but never quite capture.
Two years later, I caught my unicorn and transported it 200 miles to Virginia. She waited until she got home before the rusted trailer springs broke off. I replaced the tires and springs, glassed the inside of the boat, stripped and refinished the varnish work, re-planked the deck, and powered her with a donated engine. She is now restored to her original condition and is being kept inside a shed were she will be protected.
~ Trey Shinault
To Fish and “Shoot” in the Shallows
Attached are a few images of my skiff, a Custom Gheenoe NMZ highsider, 15 feet, four inches. The boat drafts five inches of water and is a perfect platform for shallow-water fishing. These boats are made in Titusville FL, near the famous Mosquito Lagoon where people catch large red drum and speckled trout in the shallows. I have used the shallow draft advantages of this boat to find fish and photograph areas that were otherwise only accessible to kayaks and canoes. This boat has all of the advantages of a kayak with a motor. I have an eight-horsepower motor that allows the boat to cruise at 15 knots.
When I take pictures, I put all of my equipment—cameras, four to six lenses, a tripod, and underwater housing—in Pelican cases; they’re waterproof and shock-resistant, and they float. The boat is great for calm water, not the best when it’s rough. I choose my days and good spots with not much open water.
~ Jay Fleming
A Working Girl
I use my boats to do things. My boats have always been sort of like pickup trucks, and it’s been that way for a long, long time. My 17-foot Boston Whaler Montauk is getting toward the end of her 21st season. She has worked for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation more than she’s claimed. She’s also been a writer’s boat and has had some benefits, such as good electronics; she’s been a test sled for them. She’s a working girl.
With her Mercury 60-horspower four-stroke engine, she’s got a lot of shove. She tops out at 31; she’ll plane off at 10. I have a huge range of speed so that I can fit her to the seas. She’s easy to tow, easy to launch, and I don’t know how many ramps she’s been on in her life. The fuel bill is less than one gallon per hour.
I wrote a book on the John Smith Trail for the National Geographic and a pamphlet (smithtrail.net/things-to-do/water-trail-adventures). My boat’s done just about all the John Smith Trail: way up the Patuxent, up the Susquehanna. She’s been to Washington, DC, Fredericksburg, Richmond, Suffolk, and Smithfield; up every branch of the Elizabeth River; up the Pokomoke and the Nanticoke. She’s a real easy boat. She does a lot of work and remains a good fishing boat, a good boat for picnics. She’s never been skied behind, but I trust my granddaughters may want to try that. How can you argue with a boat like this?
~ John Page Williams
If only she could talk, that open boat with the flat bottom and squared edges. An uncomplicated boat, yet she has her own history, her own character. We have found that Chesapeake boaters wax nostalgic about their skiffs and consider them less as boats and more as members of their families. Here are a few of their tales.
Why Mess with a Good Thing?
Shortly after graduating from college, I purchased an Apache 1600 skiff. It was a fiberglass eggshell with bench seats and a flat bottom, which made it excellent for spine-compression in all sea conditions. It had no cleats, which I fixed by mounting plastic cleats that broke easily. It had no console, which I fixed by building one that rapidly delaminated. It had no storage compartments, which I fixed by adding milk crates. And it developed cracks in the hullsides, which I fixed by ignoring them. (It was entertaining to watch the hullsides ripple as we hit waves, and the cracks were above the waterline, so why mess with a good thing?)
Despite all of these traits, I loved that skiff with all of my heart and soul. Sure, it contributed to my chronic back problems. Yes, it is slightly amazing I didn’t manage to sink it on those days when reasonable anglers with 30-footers stayed at home, and I did not. But that little skiff had one thing going for it: it was cheap. Cheap! Cheap! Cheap! It was all I could afford, and it gave me access to the fishing spots I’d spent countless nights thinking about. It may have been a piece of junk, but it accounted for flounder up to 24 inches, weakfish to eight pounds, and stripers up to 42 inches.
In my mid 20s, I got a new job. It paid better than any I’d had by a long-shot, and I quickly decided to sell the Apache and get a bigger boat. One day a guy came to look at it. After we went for a sea trial, he pulled out a wad of cash, peeled back a few bills, and handed them to me. He left with my Apache hitched to the back of his truck. That night, I cried.
~ Lenny Rudow
Racing Toward the Past
It’s Saturday morning, 5:30 a.m. Most sane people would still be sleeping. I don’t fit in that category. I drive four hours to play three hours and drive four hours back in the same day. If you ask me why I would say it’s all because I’m passionate about Smith Island Crab Skiffs.
I first heard about these skiffs in December 1998 in Chesapeake Bay Magazine. Richard “Dicky” White grew up in Oxford, MD, and always admired these boats, so he built the replica Salty Eel in 1992. A few years later, he and some of his buddies from Oxford came up with the idea of bringing the design back by challenging the folks of Crisfield to a race. Each team built their own boat using the designs patterned off boats from the Calvert Museum and the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum in St. Michaels. The only other limit was that it must have no more than 20 horsepower. They held their first race in September 1998.
I have always been a lover of maritime heritage. Growing up in Mathews, VA, on the water, my father and I would spend weekends scouring the marinas around the Bay looking at boats. When I was a teen, my dad bought and fixed up and old buy-boat. I enjoyed that boat more than any other before or since. From December 1998, I carried that article on the skiffs around and read it over and over. I went to a few races, but I did not have the carpentry skills to build one and was unable to afford to pay someone else to do it for me. So I waited.
Ten years later, I heard about a cheap one for sale. It had been sitting for a couple of years. I was told the water-cooled engine didn’t run, steering was frozen. It was painted dark green and was on a homemade trailer. How could I say no? I brought it home, threw out the old engine, sanded/repainted it, put in new engine mounts and an engine. I re-christened her Old Bay to look like the well-known spice can, but it was really to reflect the old traditions of the Bay. When I finally got her in the water, her bow rode so high I could barely see over the boat. I spent the next two years tweaking with a wedge to get the bow down. To this day I still am doing what every racer does: tweak, test, then tweak some more. She made her debut in 2008 in Crisfield. The next year I won my first (handicap) race named after the man that restarted the heritage: Dicky White
I always had wondered what had happened to the original reproduction crab skiff, the Salty Eel. His son told me that shortly before he died in 2003, he gave the boat away to a boy in a small town on the Eastern Shore. With a few phone calls I located the boat and owner and made arrangements to see it. She had been sitting outside for five years with no covering; her motor was a rusted mess, the trim work was peeling, and her planking had been removed allowing water to rot the frames. Still the owner was not ready to sell it. From that day on it became my unicorn, an elusive creature that you can see but never quite capture.
Two years later, I caught my unicorn and transported it 200 miles to Virginia. She waited until she got home before the rusted trailer springs broke off. I replaced the tires and springs, glassed the inside of the boat, stripped and refinished the varnish work, re-planked the deck, and powered her with a donated engine. She is now restored to her original condition and is being kept inside a shed were she will be protected.
~ Trey Shinault
To Fish and “Shoot” in the Shallows
Attached are a few images of my skiff, a Custom Gheenoe NMZ highsider, 15 feet, four inches. The boat drafts five inches of water and is a perfect platform for shallow-water fishing. These boats are made in Titusville FL, near the famous Mosquito Lagoon where people catch large red drum and speckled trout in the shallows. I have used the shallow draft advantages of this boat to find fish and photograph areas that were otherwise only accessible to kayaks and canoes. This boat has all of the advantages of a kayak with a motor. I have an eight-horsepower motor that allows the boat to cruise at 15 knots.
When I take pictures, I put all of my equipment—cameras, four to six lenses, a tripod, and underwater housing—in Pelican cases; they’re waterproof and shock-resistant, and they float. The boat is great for calm water, not the best when it’s rough. I choose my days and good spots with not much open water.
~ Jay Fleming
A Working Girl
I use my boats to do things. My boats have always been sort of like pickup trucks, and it’s been that way for a long, long time. My 17-foot Boston Whaler Montauk is getting toward the end of her 21st season. She has worked for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation more than she’s claimed. She’s also been a writer’s boat and has had some benefits, such as good electronics; she’s been a test sled for them. She’s a working girl.
With her Mercury 60-horspower four-stroke engine, she’s got a lot of shove. She tops out at 31; she’ll plane off at 10. I have a huge range of speed so that I can fit her to the seas. She’s easy to tow, easy to launch, and I don’t know how many ramps she’s been on in her life. The fuel bill is less than one gallon per hour.
I wrote a book on the John Smith Trail for the National Geographic and a pamphlet (smithtrail.net/things-to-do/water-trail-adventures). My boat’s done just about all the John Smith Trail: way up the Patuxent, up the Susquehanna. She’s been to Washington, DC, Fredericksburg, Richmond, Suffolk, and Smithfield; up every branch of the Elizabeth River; up the Pokomoke and the Nanticoke. She’s a real easy boat. She does a lot of work and remains a good fishing boat, a good boat for picnics. She’s never been skied behind, but I trust my granddaughters may want to try that. How can you argue with a boat like this?
~ John Page Williams