Book Review - Wooden Boats for Blue Water Sailors Philosophy on Sailing, Design, and Construction

* * * by Alfie Sanford

great wave books, 2021

Review by Tim O’Keeffe, Boston Station, Buzzards Bay Post

Size, rig, deck layout, accommodations, tankages: when planning for their ideal boat, many experienced cruising sailors have wrestled with deciding on the proper combination of features. When it comes to material and method of construction, it’s easy to be swayed by long-held prejudices— frequently based on outdated generalities and a small sample of personal experience. In today’s environment, wood is often low on the list of options.

In his new book Wooden Boats for Blue Water Sailors, Alfie Sanford (BOS/BUZ) makes a forceful argument that wood, using the cold-molding method of construction, is a superior material for building hulls for oceangoing cruisers.

In the opening chapters Sanford lays out his bona fides. He begins with a description of his nearly 60 years of big boat sailing in 29 different vessels, most often as skipper or navigator. His keen intellect and training as an architect led him to investigate the weaknesses he saw in many of those boats and to contemplate alternative methods of construction that might prevent such problems.

As experienced a sailor as he is, Sanford’s boat building and designing history gives even more weight to his opinions. Along with his brother, he co-founded Sanford Boats in 1975, where from 1978 to 1982 they built 21 Alerion Class Sloops. Those replicas of Nathaniel Herreshoff’s personal boat were some of the first cold-molded boats in the country turned out on a production basis, and they’re still going strong today.

He later set up shop in the San Francisco Bay area doing extensive repair work on yachts and commercial fishing boats, as well as building a few vessels in both steel and wood, culminating with the construction of Fancy, a 53' cruising sloop of his own design. With her he tested some of the cold-molding techniques he had formulated during this period. In particular, he created efficiencies for a one-off build and devised an economical method for joining a prebuilt interior to the exterior hull.

While generally pleased with the results, he noted multiple places during the building process where improvements could still be made. These ideas ripened over the next two decades, leading him to design the 40' oceangoing yawl Starry Night. She was built to Sanford’s advanced cold-molding specifications by Pease Brothers Boat Works in Chatham, Massachusetts and launched in 2008.

Having made clear his enthusiasm for cold-molded wood construction, he sets out his case in the middle chapters of the book. Sanford writes, “Everyone likes wooden boats. Most people think the liking is romantic and obsolete. I wish to show scientifically that wood makes a superior boat, and to explain why.”

He proceeds to do this with extensive comparisons of various types of construction that include variations of wood, metals, fiberglass, and carbon fiber. He uses tables and clearly drawn diagrams to augment his precise and very readable prose. His mathematical training shows but doesn’t prevent readers with a less scientific bent from understanding the material.

In the concluding chapters, Sanford presents how this collected wisdom can be employed to make a wooden boat that is stronger, more durable, and easier to construct—resulting in lower labor costs. These chapters are aimed at taking the experienced builder through the entire construction process. Numerous sketches go a long way to help the nonprofessional follow the reasoning behind the suggested improvements.

His step-by-step description does not reference the building of any actual boat, but rather is, as Sanford puts it, “a thought experiment.” And while he has added a great deal of original thinking to the procedures, he readily credits a host of past and present designers and builders for their essential contributions.

I think knowledgeable readers will value Wooden Boats for Blue Water Sailors for making clear many of the advantages of cold-molding in this attractive, well-structured book. Even allowing for his obvious predisposition to wood, his reasoning and facts are compelling. Having read the book it would be hard not to give serious consideration to a method of construction that has so many positive attributes.

Wooden Boats for Blue Water Sailors is available for sale at bookstores and online retailers.