Jim Michalak

LIGHT ROWBOAT, 12' X 45", 60 POUNDS EMPTY Vireo is a very light and simple boat with lines that make for very surprising performance. A while back I built a dink called WeeVee which was the usual 7-1/2' long. It had a V bottom full length and had to be...

Herb McLeod lives in western Canada and likes to tease the rest of us with photos like the one above. Beautiful! Here is his RB42 out camping with two aboard.RB42 is a row boat for two! The prototype was built by Herb McLeod of Edmonton, Alberta. Look...

Robote was designed for Frank Kahr of Rhode Island strictly as a rowing boat, very light and simple and fast and seaworthy. Frank had started a few years back with my WeeVee design shown here:What surprised both Frank and me was that both of our WeeVee's...

Sportdory is an attempt to improve upon the Bolger/Payson dory I built about 15 years ago. This boat is slightly smaller than my old dory. In particular the bow is lower in hopes of cutting windage. the stern is mostly similar. The center cross section...

Vireo14 is a 14' version of the original 12' Vireo which was quite popular with all of its builders. In this case the extra length comes from a straight "stretch" of the original design. By that I mean that the same cross sections were used but now...

buy Trilars plans to make Larsboat into a trimaran Larsboat was built by Lars Hasselgren to replace a Folboat that had finally met its end. Lars wanted capacity for two, plus decking, as with his old boat. I took Toto and...

The photo above is of a Piragua built by Bob Taylor down in Texas. Piragua is a very simple useful boat. I probably get more Piragua photos than of any other boat, an indication that more Piraguas get built. Piragua is made from two sheets of 1/4"...

Woobo was designed for the "perfect skiff" competition that Wooden Boat magazine had about ten years ago (hence the name "Woobo"). I didn't win anything and the experience led me to never enter another contest. Although the contest was well conceived I...

Eventually I tweaked Mixer to have a "through the water" bow. It's the same change that Roar went through to become Roar2. I called the new boat Mixer2 and here are some lines of it.The rest of the boat is identical to Mixer although it appears that I...

Piccup Pram was my first design to get built. Here is a photo of Chris Feller's up Chicago way. She is shown with the original 55 square foot rig. I still have the boat. The sail rig has been experimented with many times but the hull is identical today...

Toto has been my most successful design. Initially she was an experiment to test a new bow shape - a deep V bow that blends into a multichine well aft. There's a twist in the bow bilge panels and at the time I didn't know how to expand those panels on...

After the success Frank Kahr had with Robote I designed a smaller version with most of the same features. The idea was to get a fast and seaworthy boat that would cartop so easily that you would want to leave it on the car top more or less all the...