Schooner Creek Boat Works has been a fixture in the Portland sailing scene since 1977, when founder Steve Rander opened the doors of a wooden boat shop beside the Columbia River’s South Channel, next to the I-5 freeway. In those early years, it was very much a small-boat shop doing restorations and repairs using the new Gougeon brothers epoxy method. Steve wanted to start building a traditional daysailer in laminated wood-epoxy, and chose the 18.5’ Eel yawl by well known NW architect Bill Garden.
The crew built a wood lath mold and began cold-moulding this handsome canoe-sterned hull out of three diagonal layers of western red cedar and an outer skin of strip-planked varnished mahogany. It has a steel-plate center board, and carries 300 lbs of lead on the bottom to giver a draft of about a foot. The mainsail is gunter-rigged (a small vertical gaff) and usually features reddish-brown dacron sails that hark back to the Victorian era when the canoe yawl was the latest idea in minimal coastal cruising.
This was at a time when the modern wooden-boat movement was really picking up, and the Eel was the kind of boat that caught the eye of many enthusiasts, and Schooner Creek built about a dozen Eels on a semi-production basis with various cabin and cockpit options at an average of one a year through the 1980’s. One owner launched his Eel in Olympia and sailed it back to his home near Juneau, Alaska—a trip of about 900 miles. The next owner sailed it back to Puget Sound a decade later!
In 1982, Steve built the 42’ Magic Carpet for his own use using the same double-diagonal laminating pattern they had for the Eel, but they went “high tech” (for that era) by inserting a layer of structural foam between the inner and outer skins. Steve skippered the boat in several Pacific Cup races to Hawaii over the next decade. It is still sailing in the Pacific Northwest and is as stiff today as it was then. A lot of water flowed under the bridge while Schooner Creek built a reputation with a series of wood-composite race boats from 40’ to 75’ that often raced to Hawaii and cruised back.
Fast forward to the 21st century and the yard moved into a large airy building on Hayden Island with a repair yard and long-term storage covering six acres. Since then the business has come a long way from the early days, but for their latest construction program under the new owner, you could say they have returned to their roots. Now they have another standard hull mold and have been working on one to two boats a year. The difference is that now, the boats have twin 65’ hulls, can carry 49 passengers, and are as wide as a tennis court. The new Schooner Creek boats have something else in common with that previous generation of offshore keelboats—most of them have also sailed to Hawaii, not in a race this time, but on delivery to their homeports in the islands.
Big Cats for Big Waters
While you are unlikely to see a Schooner Creek charter catamaran in Puget Sound any time soon, all you have to do is book a trip to Hawaii and you will be in the state where modern catamarans were first developed, starting in 1947 with Woody Brown’s 36’ Manu Kai–“Sea Bird” in Hawaiian. (There is a great one-hour film of Woody’s life called “Of Wind and Waves.”) What’s more, you can sail on any of these modern Coast Guard-certified charter boats for the price of a ticket—they won’t be as wild and wet as Woody’s trips in the post-war years, but they are still great fun.
Along with some of the best sailing in the world, they will take you to some pristine spots where you can snorkel above the coral and encounter truly amazing sea creatures up close! That’s what I did on the very first of Schooner Creek’s Hawaiian catamarans. The boat was the 36’ by 22’ Kamanu—an early Kurt Hughes design built in the 1980s. I recall there was just enough room in the old shop for the “cylinder” mold where the hulls were formed from multiple layers of marine plywood and epoxy.
I had a personal connection with that project because Kurt’s introduction to Schooner Creek came when I invited him to Portland to give a talk at our local multihull club. (Yes, cruising multihulls really were all homebuilt in those distant times, and owners needed all the support they could get.) When the build got going for Kamanu, I was working on my 19’ DIY trimaran Vakea out the back, and was recruited to give a hand for the hull laminating. I donned a plastic apron and gloves, and happily helped to carefully position the sticky sheets on the mold for vacuum bagging.
That first catamaran was sized to fit a 40’ shipping container—that’s how it “sailed” to Hawaii. Some of the shop crew flew out to assemble it in the sun and had a great working vacation. In 1998, I took a trip to the Big Island myself to celebrate my 50th birthday, and sailed and dived on the Kamanu on the Kona coast. I wrote about the trip for Northwest Yachting —and the boat is still going strong today after another twenty years of daily cruises. Then the yard returned to keelboats for the next 20 years, so how did that modest little boat shop come to be in its present position as the leading builder of high-tech, U.S. Coast Guard-certified sailing catamarans on the West Coast?
Steve’s craftsmanship and reputation as an offshore sailor certainly helped, but it was his willingness to adopt new technology and design concepts that really gave Schooner Creek an edge over its competitors. From the mold for a 100’ Christensen mega-yacht to a vacuum-bagged ultra-light keelboat, Steve never met a design boat he couldn’t turn into reality with a bit of imagination and team of builders he had trained to combine old-fashioned wood with modern foam and epoxy. (I sat up late one night devising an acronym for his system, and final came up with COVE—standing for “COre/Veneer/Epoxy,” which was picked up for a while but seems to have been lost overboard a few years ago.
Besides the basic hull materials, Steve also insisted that every boat be fitted out as if it was his own boat setting off across the Columbia Bar and onto the wide Pacific. As the reputation of the shop grew, it expanded with a move in the mid-1980s into somewhat bigger premises on the other side of the freeway with a crane for haul outs, though the space was still not big enough to handle the 70’ ultra-light yacht that Steve had always dreamed of sailing. In the early 1990s, he dealt with that by adding a portable extension to the big doorway.
That enabled him to build the 70’ Rage, designed by the Bay Area’s Tom Wylie and launched in 1993 with 13′ beam, and 10’ draft–later increased to 13’. In racing trim, it displaced 21,000 pounds almost half of that in the fin keel with a pronounced bulb. Rage was conceived to break records off the West Coast in style and raced regularly in the Pacific Cup or Transpac, where it proved that a long, light boat built with the COVE system could be fairly affordable and still break records in the right conditions. In its first West Marine Pacific Cup, Steve knocked seven hours off the 1986 record set by Bill Lee’s legendary fiberglass sled Merlin.
In 1998, Rage had her fastest trip to Hawaii at an amazing 6 days and 19 hours for the 2,070 miles. (The boat also appears to still hold the obscure title of the biggest racing boat ever to sport a tiller…) Wylie partnered with Steve on a second long, slender racer, the 77′ Jelik, built in 1997-98 with an unusual full-length wooden box-girder on the center line. The boat won the China Sea Race for its owner Frank Pong of Hong Kong. (I wrote a full story on that project for Professional Boatbuilder magazine–still one of my best technical articles.)
The Open 60 Ocean Planet and the Vendee Globe
The third member of this elite trio of ultra-light keelboats was the Open 60 Ocean Planet for Bruce Schwab—an experienced Californian sailor with the dream of breaking into the solo professional sailing circuit. The unique design was again by Tom Wylie, who I got to meet several times during this period. He and Bruce had some long discussions on Bruce’s goal of combining the proven easily-driven hull shape of Rage and Jelik with the unstayed catboat rig that Wylie had used in a range of small keelboats called “Wyliecats.”
The result was a unique design that went in a completely different direction from the ever-wider French 60’s that were dubbed “aircraft carriers” by some English commentators. It was built in Schooner Creek’s new premises on Hayden Island, after a second move that gave the business plenty of room to grow. Under a lease agreement, the property’s owner—local sailor Kevin Flanigan—began working with Steve and developed the property to accommodate the growing business (most notably adding the pilings, and ways and docks for the Travelift).
Schwab did not find a title sponsor, but was able to keep the project going, albeit slowly, with companies’ donations of materials and equipment in return for advertising rights. Kevin Flanigan was impressed by this radical 60-footer with its ambitious skipper, narrow beam, deep fixed keel, and seawater ballast-tanks. He provided some private sponsorship in return for Bruce giving the campaign a greater awareness of ocean ecology and naming the boat “Ocean Planet.”
There have been other narrow Open 60s, but this is the only boat ever to successfully race through the stormy Southern Ocean without shrouds—twice. The rig was a lofty 80-foot unstayed, rotating, tapered, carbon fiber spar and unusual boom with a vang on top, both built in New England by Composite Engineering using its proprietary tri-axial braiding process. Bruce did extensive testing of the boat out of San Francisco and eventually entered the 2002-2003 Around Alone race (formerly the BOC Challenge) run in four legs with official stops in South Africa, New Zealand, and Brazil. He made it to the finish in Newport, Rhode Island, after 159 days at sea, despite breaking his boom twice, and flooding the cabin when a seal broke on a ballast tank.
He wasn’t satisfied with that performance and decided to try again in the “major league” French event: the non-stop Vendee Globe solo race in 2004-2005. He had to modify the boat to meet the new stability and technical standards of the International Monohull Open Class Association (IMOCA), which he did from his new base in Maine. When he reached the start in Les Sables d’Olonne, in northwest France, he was celebrated as the daring, guitar-playing amateur in the wooden boat from the USA!
His ride certainly stood out against the latest 60s with 50 percent more beam, huge high-tension rigs, and canting keels. The second time was a charm for Bruce, and Ocean Planet finished the Vendee Globe on February 25, 2005 in 109 days. Along the entire 26,000-mile route, he used the boat as an educational tool and reached thousands of students through a non-profit foundation.
Americans in the Vendee Globe 1990-2017
In its 30-year history, there have only been three Americans who have succeeded in sailing the entire course. This is such an enormous achievement that it would be negligent if I did not mention all of them:
• In 1990-91, Mike Plant was disqualified from the first Vendee Globe after receiving assistance on Campbell Island, New Zealand when his anchor dragged. He continued racing and finished the race in 135 days, bettering Dodge Morgan’s record time of 150 days set in 1985.
• In 2004-05, Bruce Schwab was the first American to officially finish the race in 109 days in ninth place.
• In 2008-09, Rich Wilson also finished in ninth place after 121 days at sea in a ten-year old boat. He had a professional web-based education program for schools.
In 2016-17 Wilson returned to France at the age of 66 and recorded a time of 107 days for the 27,440-mile course–a new U.S. record—in a 2006 design. The winner was Armel Le Cleac’h in a world record time of 74 days.
(In 2013, I spotted the Ocean Planet in La Rochelle, France, moored next to the famous “Red Cigar” —a narrow ketch that was a veteran of numerous world circuits. They were among a group of vintage 60s that offered charter trips in the summer.)
The 44’ Ocelot Was a “Pocket Rocket”
Watching Schwab’s adventure develop, another Bay Area sailor decided he could participate in West Coast races in a smaller version of Wylie’s flyers—a mid-size “Fast is Fun” type of boat. This resulted in another Wylie/Rander project. The result was a 43-foot, ultra-light cat design that provided big-boat performance in a low-cost package. The boat’s most visible feature was its unstayed, carbon fiber mast and wishbone boom, but the deck layout was designed for a full crew to have plenty of room in round-the-buoy events.
“The design was conceived to allow two people to handle the sails with ease, but there’s room for a dozen in the cockpit, if that many show up!” explained Steve. The highly engineered, lightweight hull was built with a resin-infused carbon fiber-foam laminate. The keel was 10 feet deep, had a total weight 4,800 pounds, and was engineered for easy removal for trailering or shipping. With performance paramount, the freeboard was kept low, beam a moderate 10′ 6″, and maximum headroom in the cabin a mere 5′ 6.” The accommodations slept six including settees and quarter berths, with a basic galley and navigation station.
A few days after it was launched in the Columbia River, the prototype named C2 set off on what was to be her first shake-down sail—the 2004 Pacific Cup from San Francisco to Hawaii. After five Pacific Cups on Rage, Steve came aboard C2 as sailing master to test this radical design. For this race, the five-man crew set an asymmetrical spinnaker on a 20′ carbon pole and easily kept pace with the biggest yachts, often reaching speeds closer to those of the 70-foot sleds. Unfortunately, the C2’s mast failed 400 miles from the finish. The crew was able to easily re-step the broken spar, re-hoist a spinnaker, and sail across the line in style, still finishing in front of some of the 50-footers.
There was also a problem with the prototype’s hull showing signs of delamination. When it returned to Portland, Kevinpurchased the boat and re-engineered it with a double V-berth in the forepeak and additional stringers to increase stiffness. He re-rigged it as a conventional sloop with stays, and called the boat Ocelot and the design the Fox 44.
“Ocelot was a great race boat. We won many races including the Windjammers to Santa Cruz in 2007. We won the Offshore Series in 2010,” he recalled. “I raced her to Puerto Vallarta in 2012, finishing third overall. I learned offshore racing and how to manage a crew. It was a life- changing experience! I donated the boat to the Skiff Sailing Foundation in 2014.”
Catamarans Take Over
By 2000, the multihull movement had really picked up speed and cruising catamarans were being mass-produced all over the world. However, to carry passengers in U.S. waters, a boat must be U.S.-built and C.G.-inspected. (The rulebook makes 65’ the size limit before a design has to meet ship-type regulations.) Schooner Creek got its start on big fiberglass catamarans at that time with Kai Oli Oli, a 61′ power catamaran, also designed by Kurt Hughes, and built for Ocean Joy Cruises of Honolulu.
When the owner discovered the high cost of shipping the boat to Hawaii, Rander offered to deliver it himself. Recruiting some sailing pals, he loaded the deck with fuel drums and departed Astoria right after the first snow fall. They succeeded in dodging a series of storms and reached San Francisco in under two days. From there, it took less than a week to reach Honolulu at an average speed of 13 knots.
That was followed by Kiapa, a 52′ fast cruising yacht designed by Morelli & Melvin who were the leading racing boat designers on the West Coast. Schooner Creek was invited to bid on the project, and Rander created some test panels to demonstrate the remarkable qualities of the COVE system. Testing by an independent laboratory showed that the wood panel was 1.5 times stiffer than a standard glassfiber/Kevlar cored panel of similar weight. The clients went with Rander’s strip plank sandwich method.
The simple mold was assembled from inexpensive particle board frames to support the inner skin of 1/4″ cedar strip planking that is practically self-faring and also forms an attractive interior surface. Next came a layer of 5/8″ Divinycell foam vacuum-bagged, followed by an outer layer of cedar. Uni-directional fiberglass cloth was laminated to both sides of the hull at right angles to the wood grain to add strength, provide a barrier against abrasion. (Kiapa has a Facebook page that reports it is now based in Australia.)
In 2007-8, Bob Chambers, owner of Maui Dive Shop, and his general manager Jeff Strahn were planning to replace the original Alii Nui–a 60’ catamaran built in 1975 and based in Maalea harbor. They studied the Hawaiian charter fleet, inspected several boats designed by Seattle architect Kurt Hughes, and commissioned him to design a new 65’ x 36’ Alii Nui. They came to Schooner Creek to discuss building the boat, and Chambers explained to Steve Rander that in Hawaiian. “Alii Nui” means “the highest nobility” or “the best of the best,” and that was the standard he wanted the boat built to.
Schooner Creek employed traditional craftsmanship to build a wooden hull mold, and for the hulls chose modern materials like vinylester resin, uni and bi-directional fiberglass fabrics and a Divinycell foam core, which were vacuum-bagged to produce a lightweight, very strong fiberglass composite laminate. This luxurious vessel was engineered to withstand daily service off Maui’s south coast and was to set a new standard in construction, accommodations and finish for a vessel of this type. The high-gloss finish is a combination of gelcoat and Awlgrip. “It’s not often that a charter boat is finished like a yacht, with sparkling paint, polished stainless steel, and lavish teak trim,” Rander pointed out.
The next was the Trilogy II for Trilogy Excursions–the seventh boat built by Trilogy Excursions, the oldest family-owned and operated sailing business on Maui. It marked a return to the yard’s origins with its Constant Camber laminated plywood-strip construction method from John Marples’ Searunner Multihulls of Penobscot, Maine. With 32’ beam, it is a narrower platform than the latest boats, and a very seaworthy-looking boat. The narrower deckhouse makes clever use of the curved panels to give it a surprisingly rounded profile. On the inside, all the support structure was visible—just like a traditional wooden boat.
The hull is laminated from five layers of vertical strips of 1/4” marine plywood, backed up by four full-length stringers and several heavy ring frames. A shallow keel runs the full length of each hull, offering protection from abrasion when beaching, as well as to prevent damage to the propellers and spade rudders, while providing lateral resistance when sailing into the wind. When it was launched, I asked the owners, Jim and Rand Coon, why they chose to use wood in the 21st century. They answered very succinctly: because their harbor is not well protected from the trade winds and often has a lot of swell bouncing their fleet around. In some tests, wood is still proven to be the best material to withstand constant impacts or cyclical stresses.
However, that argument doesn’t seem to have much appeal for the great majority of Hawaiian operators, who were all going to Morelli & Melvin (M&M) for their new boat designs. The next was the Holokai—a 45-foot “beach cat” that they designed to run directly onto the beach for passenger boarding in Waikiki, Oahu. This model was built with the full use of the latest materials and techniques—fully vacuum-infused hull and the open deck from a temporary mold. Power is by twin Honda 50 hp outboards on special retractable mounts. Sail trimming winches and deck hardware are all from Harken. The tall railings were fabricated of 316 stainless steel in Schooner Creek’s own metal shop.
A Change of Watch
In 2015, change came once again to Schooner Creek when Kevin and Shauna Flanigan purchased the company from Steve and Nancy Rander after 15 years of close association with the business. While officially retired, Steve still does some consulting for the company. By this time, he could count a total of 24 crossings to Hawaii, all but one in boats he built and owned.
The Flanigans saw the demand for M & M designs continuing, which would likely require a more durable 65’ split mold with a modern reverse bow. Having a standard hull design speeds up the building process and reduces the cost, but the deck and interior layout is still custom. This investment has paid off by encouraging more operators to consider a new state-of-the-art vessel.
Three Cats from the Same Mold
The last three 65’catamarans have come from the same mold; one for O’Neill Sea Odyssey of Santa Cruz, California, and for Teralani, a charter company in Lahaina, Maui, that has been offering daytime and sunset cruises for over 25 years. O’Neill Sea Odyssey of Santa Cruz, California was founded by surf pioneer Jack O’Neill, Since 1996, when he started a marine education program for school kids and community groups, more than 100,000 kids have gotten onto the water thanks to the program. Jack O’Neill — who passed at the age of 94 in 2017 — called the Sea Odyssey his “greatest accomplishment.”
The organization wanted a new boat that could fill dual roles as an educational platform for school trips and a conventional cruise provider in the evenings and weekends.Team O’Neill was specifically designed for two types of trips on Monterey Bay’s National Marine Sanctuary.The construction was fiberglass sandwich with a foam core in the hulls, deck and cabin—all resin-infused vinyl ester resin. The accommodation is intended to meet the boat’s dual uses, with space for examining sea creatures and a complete galley and entertainment system.
Mechanical propulsion is provided by twin 125 h.p. John Deere auxiliary engines, and all deck equipment is chosen for durability and ease of operation. Onboard there is a closed cabin with indoor seating, a kitchen/bar, four bathrooms, and two bedrooms. On deck there are two trampolines, access to crew quarters, and an aft salon with additional seating. At the end of 2018, the Team O’Neill was delivered to Santa Cruz.
When the crew left for San Francisco Bay, Kevin Flanigan decided to join them to really see how the new boat handled. “We had a calm delivery of Team O’Neill, motoring most of the way,” he told me. “It was a real sense of accomplishment to drive a boat we built. The owner, Tim, was happy with it too. I enjoyed the night watch knowing I was delivering my first build. Constant checks for anything going wrong or coming loose filled our time. Arriving in Santa Cruz was a great relief.”
Like other vessels in the company’s fleet, Teralani 4 pulls right up to the beach, so clients staying in the Kaanapali area can simply stroll along the sand to the loading zone, take a few steps into the ocean, and walk up the secure ramp that is lowered from the foredeck.
Compared to Teralani 2 and 3, the new vessel is distinctly different in appearance and amenities, with an attractive upscale finish in the open cabin, wrap-around seating, two spacious restrooms in the center of each hull, and a full bar. The high quality of finish work was evident to me at the dock in Portland even while work was ongoing for the full electric galley and entertainment system. The hulls are fairly wide to handle the weight of a full load of passengers, and that means there is plenty of room in each engine room.
According to Mike Kelley, president of Teralani Sailing Adventures. “Teralani 4 has seating and individual tables for all 49 passengers, and it has a built-in barbecue grill,” Kelley said. “It also features exclusive helm seating, which allows guests to sit comfortably on either side of the captain’s helm station, plus seating in the far rear, facing backward.” Kelley is already looking forward to the arrival of Teralani 5, which is identical and was nearing completion during my last visit to the yard in November.
Maui’s northwest coastline has a marine sanctuary that makes it an outstanding destination for whale-watching excursions, which are offered from mid-December to mid-April. Each year the Pacific humpback whales migrate from Alaska to the coastal waters off Maui. Being on board a spacious sailing catamaran is certainly the best way to experience these giants of the sea and the surrounding beautiful West Maui scenery. Teralani 4 has a marine naturalist on board each trip, and underwater hydrophone that can pick up the whale songs.
Durability of Wood Composite