Ole Skiffer

When Jessica went off to college I assumed Martha and I would spend much of our free time running around the house buck naked. But as that dear, sweet lady said to me at the time, “Think again, McDuff”.

So I decided to build a small, open motor boat called a skiff. I got plans from a fellow on the west coast from an ad in Wooden Boat magazine. Martha and I went to Somerville, MA to Boulter Plywood and bought all the mahogany, marine plywood and oak I would need. It cost me $500. The year was 1989. We had to drive home to Milford, NH on back roads going slowly so the long sheets of plywood wouldn’t sail off the roof racks of the truck.

I put it together, mostly, over the next year then trucked it to the Cape house. I left it, unpainted, in the back yard and went looking for an outboard motor at the winter boat show in Boston. That next summer we bought a trailer and I finished the skiff.

Here it is, twenty years later, sitting on my mooring on the Bass River today.