Jim Michalak

Flat iron skiffs are said to be easy to draw but very hard to get right. QT is my attempt at a flat iron skiff. The prototype was built by Paul Krayniak of Odessa, NY and a photo of his boat is presented below. The above photo is of Brad Boerger's QT. I...

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...

CABIN SAILBOAT, 18' X 6", 1300 POUNDS EMPTY A while back I presented a design called Fatcat2 which was a 15' x 6' unballasted sailing cuddy catboat. It is still in the prototype catalog, although one was built a few years ago but never used to...

CABIN SAILBOAT, 18' X 5-1/2", 600 POUNDS EMPTY Normsboat was designed for Norm Wolf of Washington D.C. to join a group of trailer traveling shallow water sailors. He wanted the ability to motor and self rescue in a knockdown. Simplicity of...

SAILING PRAM, 18' X 6.5', 450 POUNDS EMPTY Hapscut, Sailboat, 18' X 6.5', 450 POUNDS EMPTY In 2010 I was lucky enough to sail the TX200 with Chuck Leinweber in his Caprice. Chuck had me design Laguna just for this event and the Laguna fleet did quite...

CORMORANT, CABIN SAILBOAT, 32' X 8', 2500 POUNDS EMPTY Cormorant is the largest boat I've ever designed. I always warn folks to think twice and three times before building a big boat because you can buy a good used glass boat for less, maybe a lot less...

SAILBOAT, 18' X 6', 750 POUNDS EMPTY Caroline started as a blend of Philsboat and Frolic2. The idea was for a little more cabin room than Philsboat and hopefully with the same seakeeping ability that Frolic2 has demonstrated. I made it a...

AF3 plans come with two sailplans: the original sharpie spritsail (as seen in the photo below) and a balanced lugsail option. AF3, CUDDY SHARPIE, 16' X 5', 250 POUNDS EMPTY The AF3 (the original design study was called "Alison's Fiddle") prototype was...

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...

Poor Jon20, he's just a big dumb jonboat. 20 feet long and 6' wide on the bottom, 7.5' wide on the top. It takes a ton to set it 4" down in the water, and I expect the empty hull might weigh 600 pounds. So let's say she weighs about a half ton with a...

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...