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The winningest guideboat in history is not the boat sitting in the Adirondack Museum claiming that title. In fact, the winningest guideboat is owned by one of our customers, Paul Neil. It is 17ft long, 70 lbs, cedar, spruce, cherry and pine. Doesn't matter, fresh water or salt, flat-water or heavy seas...this is the boat on which you want to place your money. |
| Of course, if you really wanted to insure that your money was safe....you would specify that Paul would be the person pulling the oars. Sometimes it's the horse; sometimes it's the jockey....in guideboat racing it is always both. |
| The boat claiming the title in the Adirondack Museum belonged to the late Howard Seamans. It is the winningest traditional Adirondack Guideboat...a distinction that boatbuilders understand but that is completely meaningless to the water. |
| We have often been asked why didn't we build a composite version of Paul's boat? We never really had a good response to that question.....other than it takes time and money.. ..mold-building is very expensive. |
| Add to that....we don't really know how strong the market would be for these boats. |
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Our initial
plan was to build the mold from Paul's boat. But...technical snags came
to mind and we feared we might damage Paul's boat. So....we decided to build
another cedar guideboat, identical to Paul's, and cast the mold from
that. The photo below shows Paul's boat, winning its class in a 22
mile open-ocean race around Cape Ann in Massachusetts.
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| The next photo shows our 17ft prototype composite version of that boat....again, Paul at the oars. (We drove 6 hours down from Vermont so that Paul could go rowing for an hour. His verdict? Thumbs up. However, he did suggest some tweaks which we are incorporating into the production boat. Thank you, Paul.) |
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What prompted us to go ahead and develop this boat was the number of questions from couples who wanted to row together. Two people could row our 15ft guideboat or our 14ft dory....but they would need a third person in the rear for balance/ballast...and that didn't work for everyone. Plus, the longer boat would give them greater speed and carrying capacity. And also....it would allow for a pair of sliding seats to be installed. |
| This next photo shows how we arrived at our prototype. We built one of our 15ft Adirondack Guideboats, cut it in half (a painful process cutting a perfectly good boat in half....still.....). We then cast a 2ft belly in the same mold and spliced it into the 17ft structure. Then we applied liberal amounts of fiberglass and Bondo (auto body filler) to fair out the boat's lines. |
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| The nearest boat on top of the trailer is the 17ft boat. The boat behind it is our production 15ft guideboat. (Just to give you an idea of how large that 17ft boat is....the 15footer behind it can easily carry 3 full-sized adults.) |
| In this next photo Justin and Ian, the brothers who built that boat, are securing their footbraces on our first day of trying the boat in the water. |
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| And here they are putting the boat through its paces. This photo was taken from nearly a quarter-mile away with a very long lens. Note how hard the boys are pulling on the oars....that boat is flying....clocked at 8 knots....occasionally surging to 9. Also note the wake the boat is leaving. Zip. Nothing. Like a knife through water. THAT is the measure of a hull's efficiency. |
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| This next photo is Paul standing between his boat and our prototype composite version of his boat. And the photo after shows both boats together. The boats look as if they are quite different...but mostly what your eye is noting is the difference in materials. |
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