Bolger Featherwind - Dave Carnell $200 Sailboat

Article By Richard Frye

The spars on the Feather wind were made from a nice piece of straight grained yellow pine treated 2x6. I ripped it to 1-1/2" making it square and rounded the edged. Worked great for many years. The mast was laminated 2x4s of the same material and rounded.

Dave Carnell who was a friend of mine took Phil Bolgers Featherwind and made it simpler and easier to build. I was the first person to ever build one by using the tack and tape method, and visited him at his home when he lived in Wilmington, NC. Wish I still had that boat but she is way too big to car top.

Dave has now since moved to San Diego so his son could look after him. The sad thing was that about 2 days after I left his house his wife passed away. She had been ill for a very long time. He was also a genius! We had sandwiches and wine on his deck everyday I was there and went off shore in his old Simons Sea Skiff. I've lost contact with him and if he is still living he would be in his 90s. Good man!

I still have the original plans Dave gave me a long time ago. If I had a shop I would certainly build another one and it don't take that long to build. A week in the shop and I'd be sailing another one. It acutally goes together fairly quick. What takes time is the invisible butt joints on the sides. Other than that, it's just a very easy to build boat, and you don't have use that invisible joint on the side either. Standard construction is faster than tack and tape, stitch and glue or whatever.

Dave's old Nutmeg was water logged and he hadn't been able to take care of her due to his wife being ill and he was getting very old too. I think he was 80 when I visited him. Can't remember. The old boat weighed about 150 pounds or more! At one time I had 4 people..(none of us were lightweights) and Bubba... the other couples dog, a Golden Retriever at 108 pounds, and a huge, bigger than I can pick up cooler full of ice, beer, food, Twinkies fried chicken, etc! You name it! and the boat did fine. Dave said she would easily carry 1200 pounds. I believed him after that.

Talking about a great daysailer AND.....gunkholer in fairly sheltered waters? My Featherwind was the best. I later put a lightweight cabin roof on her, installed an anchor locker up front that was self draining, and mounted a 90 square foot balanced lug rig, then I added a bow sprint to handle a 35 sq. ft. jib and took off for parts unknown, new worlds to be discovered...to go where no man has gone before! Great boat! With those big sails, she could be a handful in a brisk wind and would walk off and leave everything in a slight breeze to moderate wind! I had three sets of reefing points in the main with a clubed self tending jib.

I took out some of the rocker when I built her that made her much faster. I could even reef the jib around the club. Only one set of reef points on the jib. I was playing around with that for trolling and fishing rather than to keep changing to a smaller sail just to slow down to catch fish. For general day sailing and holidays...mainly Memorial Day and July 4th, I still used the lateen rig because of the colors and she performed so well with it. I had her in 30 mph + winds at one time with the lateen and she went to warp speed!!!!! I also wound up breaking a mast shoe that day because of the severe winds, but that was easily repaired in about 10 minutes and we took off again! She weighed only 105 lbs. excluding the junk, mast, sails, anchor, etc.

I also made the oars for her and painted them red, white and blue. After about 3 years of hard use, I fiber glassed the hull and repainted her the same color scheme but the epoxy and glass cloth added noticeable weight and brought her up to about 140 pounds. And I also add two more long keel stringers on the bottom of the hull to stiffen up the 1/4" plywood.

When the big flood came I lost my camera too with all kinds of pictures! It was in the shop and I had not downloaded anything. It was a camera that did not have an SD card and had to be downloaded to the computer. I was getting ready to do an article on it ...well....after losing everything, including boats and trailers, it kind of took the wind out of my sails for several years. But if I get another shop one day....I will build another.

I'm also working on a super lightweight dolly that I can carry my PDRacer Wet Rooster. Just another project in the working! Nice breeze today, sunny, bright, and it would be great on the lake but a little on the cool side.

Have a good one. R.