In 1946 the great Bob Wills recorded a hit song about a chubby little feller with a big appetite: Roly Poly, Daddy’s Little Fatty. When we decided to build a 12-foot version of our buxom dory line for me to take down Grand Canyon, the name Braddy’s Little Fatty immediately attached itself to the design. We drew her up on the lofting table a few weeks ago and decided she still wasn’t quite big enough for a front seat passenger. We designed a sealable rear footwell for a passenger, but it can be sealed up as a hatch if solo boating.

I still have not mastered Rhino computer design well enough to create the side panel pattern, so we built a strongback for the first hull. Nowadays we install as much of the bulkhead and deck framing as we can into the ribs before building the boat. It’s so much easier and more precise.

Here’s the bottom of a scarf glue-up on the side panels, making two eight-foot sheets of plywood into a fifteen-foot-nine sheet..

Then we wrapped one of the long sheets of plywood onto the strongback and drew the pattern.

With the side-panel established, it didn’t take long to assemble the hull, put on the bottom, roll her up and complete our framing. We also inaugurated a far more sophisticated dust colletion system. It rocks.

Cricket and Glade took a couple days off to launch some friends on a Grand Canyon trip. We couldn’t resist the temptation to put our Fretwater magnet on Bryan’s gigantic truck.

They took our little Puntiac up for its first splash. She got rave reviews for stability and maneuvarability. And her decks are hell for strong.

 

Back in the boatshop we halted work on Roly Poly and banged out a second Little Fatty hull, named Jordan River, for a client. Here’s Cricket taking advantage of our new little rolly stools.

We also built 0ne of our big 15’6″ Babe hulls for the same fellow. He’s taking them home to finish the decking.

A full to bursting boatshop.

And now we are packing for a well deserved and much needed vacation on the beach. See you next month!