Norman Nevills, renown for his Cataract boats in Grand Canyon, made his bread and butter on the San Juan River in a simpler boat–the San Juan Punt. In these open boats he ran countless passengers down the San Juan and through Glen Canyon to Lee’s Ferry.

Here’s Norm running Syncline, a rapid now deep beneath Lake Powell’s muck and ooze.

In 2011 I replicated Redbud, an original Nevills Punt. We named her Boxcar in honor of a drowned rapid below Grand Gulch. The outfitter I built it for sold out shortly thereafter and the new buyer didn’t want Boxcar. So shortsighted. I bought her back and she sat in my boat loft for more than a decade getting wet only once, when Dawn Kish took her down the San Juan.

Finally I got a call from Cody Little, who had recently bought a San Juan permit. He wanted a Nevills dory. I told him there was no such thing but what he really wanted –a Nevills punt–was sitting forlornly in my loft. He arrived in mere moments to buy Boxcar.

Cody’s dream is for Tse Kooh, his river company, to run classic punts instead of the more “practical “rafts. In the winter of ’23-34 he and boatbuilder G built a second punt, Slickhorn. I finally got to row Boxcar last fall, and we cooked up the idea of expanding the fleet this winter. Here’s Cody and family in Slickhorn, and me in Boxcar.

Hats by Spur Hat Company.

We brought Boxcar over to the shop in mid-November, lofted and perfected her lines, and got ready to build. Because the interior fittings of Nevills’s original boats were a bit awkward–to say the least– we shifted a few bulkheads around to accomodate a more practical and comfortable load. But before we got started, our friend Cam walked in and asked if we were going to build one that was Doryak-sized. “A Puntiac?!?!” we asked. And with that, we were commited. A few days later the Puntiac was born. Impulsivity runs rampant at Fretwater.

Building the Puntiac was quite helpful in coming up with a system for the big punts. We re-engineered the deck support system to make it more structurally sound and easier to build.

Daisy approves.

I devised a new system for doing the huge scarfs required to make a 5′ by 16′ floor. The system utterly failed and I went back to the seven-inch grinder with 16-grit. I love the grinder.

Laying out the side-panel curves with our new batten, Steve, named for Steve Steele who gave us the perfect plank to cut it from, out of his famous boatbuilder father Keith’s grand stash of old Port Orford cedar.

Like most plywood-on-frame boats we build, the hull goes pretty quickly. The decks are what slow us down, but in this case, there aren’t a whole lot of decks.

And boom, like that, three punts were born. And a Puntiac. And we remodeled Boxcar’s interior.

Next year give Tse Kooh a holler, drop back and Punt.