Son of a Son of a...

It was bound to happen.

The 2014 Sailing magazine profile of the first of these experiments: the highly modified Frankenscot.

​That sweet skipper of mine left the house early on a wintery Thursday morning, announcing, "I'm going on a shopping spree!"
"Ooh, where?" says I.
"The lumber store!"

Lumber for a new creation.

After more than a decade of thrills and spills racing the Everglades Challenge, my favorite skipper has decided to up the ante. 

What shape, you might ask, would that TAKE? I mean, 300+ miles along Florida's west coast on an unsupported human-powered adventure craft of his own making—what could be yet more exciting than that? 

Here are a few of the highlights of that trip: sharks, sinking, salt-water crocs, jumping fish, sunburn, various exotic snakes, lightning strikes and squalls, sleep deprivation, boat butt— 

How about doing the race solo?  NO, not this year. On the first Saturday of this March, the same TwoBeers and Jahn Tihansky (WaterTribe name: Moresailesaid) will onboard Spawn headed to Key Largo from St. Pete Beach.

But YES, TwoBeers is currently working in concert with OH Rodgers (aka Ninjee) to build a barky suited to single-handed adventure racing, to launch for the 2026 Everglades Challenge.  

Ooooh! architect at work!

TwoBeers and Ninjee have been scheming and dreaming about this for a while.  
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Among the design criteria: it needs to be quick, but not hazardously overpowered. It needs to be kindly, but not a tub. A shallow draft that's both rowable and sailable, and light enough for one person to launch from the high tide line of Fort DeSoto Beach... 

And sure enough, a design is drawn, thanks to Ninjee. 

TwoBeers goes on a lumber shopping spree, and it begins.
They make a mold for the hull, ingeniously reproducing the drawn lines from the plans in 3-D with 1x2s.  Clever pre-high-tech technique.

They create a sturdy base from 3/4 inch plywood and 2x6s. It's heavy like gravity is heavy. 

Using the 1x2s to replicate the curves of the drawing, they can then make "stations" or ribs. 

Now, THAT looks like a mold.

Once the ribs are set, the next step is to layer strakes of 1x2s into the nascent hull mold, and screw them into place. 

Now, to make a smooth and finished mold ready for fiberglass or (ooh!) carbon fiber,  Jeff applied long narrow strips of very thin plywood (Luan, for those who like details) onto the strakes on the diagonal. 

Then a second layer goes in at the opposite diagonal.   

This all gets—in the colorful parlance of the boatbuilder—screwed and glued.

The process repeats to translate the drawing of the boat's sides into three dimensions.

How much wood would a woodchuck—wait, never mind. 

Again with the plywood strips, this time longitudinally rather than on an angle for the sides, which are referred to here as patterns.  

And then...we all wait, as the glue sets. 

Just kidding.

The glue set that same day, more or less. But OH and Mr. Linton have been swept away from the boat yard on various sailing adventures, not the least of which is Jeff's upcoming 2025 Everglades Challenge.

When next they meet to build, there will be finishing touches to the hull mold, then they'll build additional molds: centerboard trunk mold, ballast tank molds, and a deck mold.
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via GIPHY