Maryland
Plan by Howard I. Chapelle
Chesapeake Bay Crabbing Skiffs, Figure 4.
I've written a lot here about the history, plans, and reproductions of the two-sail cabbing bateau (deadrise skiff) built by Simmons at Cambridge in 1910. Howard Chapelle took off the lines and published the plan shown above.
I've also written a lot about Cinnamon Girl, the two-sail crabbing bateau built by Kevin Brennan in 1993. In my profile here, I called Cinnamon Girl "the last two-sail crabbing bateau". This article is about the next-to-last one (two, actually) - built in 1942 in Seattle. I found this article in Messing About in Boats, vol. 25 no. 2, June 1, 2007. I've reprinted the full text and photos here.
Another Cinnamon Girl 65 Years Ago [before 2007]
By Jim Melcher
I enjoyed Kevin Brennan’s article, “Cinnamon Girl, a Chesapeake Bay Crabbing Skiff” in the April 1, 2007 issue.
In 1942 I was 20 years old, in the US Coast Guard, and stationed at Harbor Island Base in Seattle, Washington. At the funky boatyard base on the Duwamish River, my buddy Bob Nelson and I maintained the fleet of motor yachts that patrolled the Seattle waterfront during WWII.
Sailing was in my blood. On my living room mantel is the racing trophy my mother won in 1924 and another I won at the Nantucket Yacht Club Regatta in 1939, racing Stage Harbor Catboats. It’s a complicated story of how I got from New England to Seattle, but by 1942 I had put in time at Edison Vocational Boatbuilding School in Seattle and worked as an apprentice in local boat shops. With a toolbox on my shoulder, I had parlayed my way into the Coast Guard as a 3rd Class Carpenter’s Mate.
Kevin Brennan mentions Howard I. Chapelle’s yachting magazine articles. I lifted the same plan Kevin used and built the same boat. As I remember, Bob Nelson and I had to scrounge a lot of the material. The cross planking came from a cedar log 5’ in diameter that was tethered to the river float. We bucked off a 4’ length, split it into rough planks, and put them through a planer to finish 3⁄4” stock. We built two skiffs, one for each of us. Bob installed rigging from a derelict sloop, but I stayed with the cat ketch and made all my spars from Sitka spruce.
On a short leave, I beach cruised to the San Juan Islands before I was shipped overseas. I can’t recall what became of the skiff.
