This classic Pacific Northwest design is from the board of George Calkins, and was drawn in 1963. It was the biggest of the Bartender class, which was designed for the rough surf off Washington and Oregon’s Pacific coast. The design was so successful that it was accepted by the U.S. Coast Guard for use as its surf rescue boat.
We built this boat with a mid-section stretched 16 inches – one frame bay – to yield a design length of 27 feet 4 inches, and will raise the hardtop over the steering console an inch or two for the owner’s headroom. It is framed in sitka spruce, planked with marine plywood and sheathed in 9-ounce fiberglass below the waterline and 6-ounce glass above.
It is the second Bartender we’ve built. The class of 2012 Interior Yacht Construction Class built the interior of this boat during the summer of 2012, and the class of 2013 built the hull. The Class of 2014 will complete the boat. Local marine tradesman Matt Mortensen will install the systems.
The Beachcomber Skiff, left, is a 15-foot long skiff with a rockered bottom suitable for rowing or carrying a small engine. We built these boats as rowboats.
The boat was designed by Nelson D. Gillett in the 1940’s as a big husky skiff capable of carrying a fair amount of weight in the form of fishing gear, crab pots and the like, and supporting a small family’s lifestyle based on small farming and coastal fishing. Mr Gillett espoused these ideas, and the boat’s design, in a pamphlet he wrote and sold in the 1940’s while working in a defense plant in the Pacific Northwest during World War II.
The Northwest School of Wooden Boatbuilding is located in Port Hadlock WA, on the Olympic Peninsula, and is a private, accredited non-profit vocational school.
Our mission is to teach and preserve the fine art of wooden boatbuilding and traditional maritime crafts.
We build both commissioned and speculative boats for sale while teaching students boatbuilding the skills they need to work in the marine trades. If you are interested in our building a boat for you, feel free to give us a call.
You can find us on the web at www.nwboatschool.org .
You can reach us via e-mail at info@nwboatschool.org or by calling us at 360-385-4948.
