Yawl boats have nothing to do with the yawl rig or a comparison with sloops and ketches, nor are they an awkward pun based on the Southern “you all”. They are a category of ships’ boats, a tender; its that simple.
Yawl boats are not to be mistaken for dinghies (with a few exceptions.) Most contemporary pleasure-sailing vessels, if they carry a dinghy at all, are carrying awkward and borderline-useless small boats.
If these “dinks” were equines they would be Shetland ponies.
A yawl boat is the equivalent of a pack mule, meaning strong, reliable, and capable of carrying heavy loads, under all conditions.
My awareness of yawl boats began about ten years ago when my wife and I went to Maine to sail for six days on the schooner Lewis R. French. The French is billed as “America’s oldest windjammer.” Built in Maine in 1871, she is just under 65-feet long, a two-masted coasting schooner, with no engine.
She carries two tenders; a Swampscott dory on davits along one side and a stout yawl boat with an inboard engine, hung on davits on the taffrail. I watched and listened to how the captain used the yawl boat. So began my education on yawl boats.
When going down a long passage between islands, choked with hundreds of lobster pots, with the wind dead ahead—“on the nose,” the captain of the French would have the yawl boat lowered, using her davits, and positioned directly against the transom. The mate would climb down into her and secure her to the transom, using stout eye bolts set into the planking of the transom. Once secure, he would start the boat’s engine, secure the tiller amidships and adjust the throttle as directed by the captain.
The mate would the return to the deck and secure the yawl boat’s cut-off switch.
The yawl boat had become a “push boat”. An alternative position as a push boat was being secured to either quarter; “on the hip”.
Using the yawl boat as a push boat accomplished several things:
No engine room space needed on the schooner.
No hull penetration/shaft alley.
No below decks fuel storage required.
No fuel smell, vibration or close-up noise from the engine.
Freed-up valuable space below decks.
Ease of maintenance and repair; when this was required the yawl boat could be put on a trailer and taken to the boat repair shop, with no expensive trip by the boat mechanic to the French.
What made all these advantages possible was a strong, Internal Combustion engine located in the burdensome hull of the yawl boat, that still could be hoisted on board the French using the davits.
Pete Culler had a yawl boat on his replica of Joshua Slocum’s SPRAY.
She was “just under 11 feet in length and of the traditional shape. Grub, ice and passengers were her daily cargoes, and even with all of that, she was a prime sailer. She carried a standing lug rig with two deep reefs, so she could make it back to the vessel (SPRAY) in a hard chance.”
Even without an engine, Culler’s yawl boat was handy, capable and an important part of what SPRAY offered to her charter customers.
On the Lewis R. French the yawl boat hauled firewood for the cast iron galley stove where food for over 20 passengers and crew was cooked daily. She also hauled aboard cases of wine, beer and canned goods, and then hauled away the trash they generated. When it was time for the traditional Maine lobster bake the yawl boat hauled the cooking pots for the corn on the cob, fire wood, serving tables and the cooks to the beach, then she hauled large clumps of seaweed to steam the lobsters in the open fire. Finally, the yawl boat hauled the passengers from the French, at anchor, to the beach for the lobster party.
Her size and build, similar to Pete Culler’s yawl boat, made her a stable platform, easy to enter and exit.
In Maine, the Maine Windjammers Association has several schooners, including the Lewis R. French, all of which are now “dude boats”, one of the few remaining ways the people can experience traditional sail.
Arguably, this introduction to traditional sail is amplified by using and understanding how tenders, ships boats and yawl boats were used over 150 years ago.
RUNNING AGROUND.
It is easy to forget how dependent on electronics contemporary sailing has become, so it is worth mentioning that knowing the depth of water beneath your keel was not always based on reading the numbers showing up on the screen of your fathometer.
For centuries this important information was obtained by the use of lead lines and sounding rods; literally providing “ground truth”.
The famous cruising couple Lin and Larry Pardy, whose cruising boats were engineless, wrote about their SOP, when entering an anchorage unknown to them. Their practice was for one of them to go ahead of the “mother ship” in their Fatty Knees dinghy (see References below.) The person in the dinghy would carefully take soundings and record useful bearings before signaling the other to let go the anchor. The Pardys avoided busy, crowded and expensive marinas, preferring to anchor out—cheaper, quieter, fewer boats and fewer insects.
In unknown waters this approach can be characterized as common sense, caution and good seamanship.
A good yawl boat, equipped with sail, oars and possibly an engine, is the platform of choice for exploring, sounding and understanding unknown anchorages—small enough to go into tight places and big enough to be comfortable; no knees under your chin while you try to deploy the sounding rod.
KEDGING OFF.
I live in a place where sediment transfer by wind, waves, tides and long shore currents goes on every day. Shoal waters are found everywhere in Apalachicola, St. Vincent Sound and St. George Sound.
There is a sailor’s adage that I often think of as I contemplate the mud flats and sand bars revealed at low tide.
“There are two kinds of sailors: those who have run aground and those who say they haven’t.”
In many places along the Gulf Coast running aground is inevitable.
What is important is how you deal with it—and that is yet another use of a yawl boat.
If you run around, when you run aground, if your yawl boat has an engine you can attempt to pull or push the mother ship off, or pull her over almost onto to her beam ends to break contact with the bottom, or you can try to kedge her off. To do this you need a substantial anchor attached to a substantial cable and carried, by the yawl boat, as far away from the grounded vessel as is practical—to good holding ground for the anchor. Using a windlass or capstan on the mothership you carefully try to pull her off of the mud and sand, having timed this effort with high tide, if at all possible.
Peter Culler, not surprisingly, did this, using conventional naval pattern anchors weighing well over 100 pounds. The accepted way to carry a heavy kedge anchor was to lash it beneath the yawl boat, row out to the desired location while paying out the cable. Then, quick like a bunny, cut the lashings holding the anchor to the yawl boat, go back to the mother ship and tramp around the capstan to gradually pull the old girl off.
Rest assured, this whole process will captivate the audience of dudes.
What this description of yawl boats shows is that a yawl boat is not some specialized sort of boat; rather is is simply any good boat of appropriate construction, size and characteristics.
What makes it a yawl boat is the creative and practical tasks for which it is used.
If you are considering a sailing dinghy, not a racing dinghy, for your boat, wife and children, think about one with a boom-less lugsail, with just two short spars. Like Pete Culler’s boat, you might add some reef points.
Seen any dinghy tenders with two deep reefs on their sail lately?
You, your wife and children will be better off for having learned when and how to reef.
PAU
Duncan Blair
References
THE SPRAY, Building and Sailing a Replica of Joshua Slocum’s Famous Vessel. R.D. Culler, pg.55, International Marine Publishing Company. 1978.
FATTY KNEES Dinghy. Designed by Lyle Hess. Fatty Knees Boat Co. L.L.C. P.O. Box 1549, Sagamore Beach, MA 02562. info@fattyknees.com