A Blast from the Past: the Kodiak 31 Pocket Sailing Cruiser
EVERY SO OFTEN, I HEAR FROM SOMEONE WHO HAS COME INTO POSSESSION OF ONE OF THE STURDY LITTLE CRUISING BOATS BUILT TO MY DESIGN AND STILL SAILING 20 TO 40 YEARS LATER...
This time the email came from R.R. in Washington state. It asked whether I knew anything about a 32-foot junk-rigged schooner built in 2002 by Kettle Creek Boatworks. Of course, I did — since most of the boats built by that particular boatyard over several decades were from my board and dubbed Kodiak Cruisers — named in deference to the Ojibway totemic symbol for the bear, itself emblematic of strength and courage.
The Kodiak Cruisers were designed to be relatively economical to build in steel or aluminum at small independent metal shops using minimal heavy equipment. The anticipation was that many of them would be owner-completed beyond the metal shell.
The hulls of these tough cruisers were conically developed and so could be plated with sheet material without resort to plate rolling equipment. They were engineered to be rugged and durable and to provide maximized cruising accommodations for their otherwise relatively diminutive dimensions, and all were designed with a turtle back main deck forward of their pilothouses. The gains in usable interior volume — not to mention strength and overall structural rigidity — over trunk cabin configuration were significant.
Masts were engineered to be built of schedule-40 6061-T6 aluminum pipe which was in those days about 1/4 of the cost of a mast extrusion. And I had developed a method for faux-tapering the pipe sections by using a sleeved size-step-down at about 2/3 of total height above the deck. The step down in the relatively heavy wall of the schedule 40 pipe was accomplished using Flathead machine screws threaded through the outer tube into the innermost tube place after the sections to be joined were prepped and buttered with a polyamide/epoxy bonding compound.
The original rig provided for a single fully-battened, self-stowing lugsail somewhat in the manner of Blondie Hasler’s “Jester” — which was a Folkboat converted for offshore single-handed passagemaking. (https://jesterchallenge.org/jester-a-short-history/) My version, however, bore a definite resemblance to a high-peaked gaff mainsail. I have some memory, though, of being approached during the following ten years by someone who asked me for help in rigging one iteration of the K-31 as a Chinese style two-masted schooner. And as I vaguely recall, I responded by supplying details for a junk style rig that had been developed and supplied to me by designer and boatbuilder Tom Colvin in Virginia. (https://junkrigassociation.org/Resources/Documents/Hall%20of%20Fame/Hall%20of%20Fame%20-%20Tom%20Colvin.pdf)
Below you will find some additional details of the original design, plus some photos sent to me by the current owner of the 2002 32’ iteration currently in Washington state. Because I received this latest query on the Father’s Day weekend, it struck me as fitting, since I’ve always regarded these durable pocket cruisers as my seagoing “children”.
— Phil Friedman
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