Customer Reviews

How to Build the Ocean Pointer: A Strip-Built 19'6" Outboard Skiff

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The book, which I own, is an excellent reference work on the woodstrip and epoxy method of building a small boat in the 19 or 20 foot size range, not only the Ocean Pointer. With that good skiff as example, it provides much information that will help anyone with common sense contemplating building a boat for power or sail of a size larger than the light pulling boats, canoes and kayaks on which the other woodstrip boat construction books concentrate. Furthermore, the Ocean Pointer is a well proven, very successful design and a useful adaptation of its respected, smaller, traditionally-built predecessor.

Incidentally, it's unfair and off the point to criticize Mr. Stimson's excellent book, as some others have done, just because it doesn't include the plans for the boat. The Ocean Pointer isn't some plywood "instant boat." The designer, whose Stimson Marine website is easily found on the internet, sells the plans, including full-sized patterns for the boat's molds and major parts, and reasonable consultation to help the builder goes with that purchase. You don't get that when you buy a book with plans in it, and anyway the patterns for Ocean Pointer are way too large to include in a book while ensuring accuracy in building the boat. Besides, it is after all a highly respected design with a venerable history. Mr. Stimson, as any designer does, deserves reasonable payment for his creativity, developmental work and consultation.

I am not, by the way, in any way related to David Stimson or his company, Stimson Marine, Inc.

I ordered this item for myself recently while doing a little "one for you, one for me" Christmas shopping. I've been reading it for a few evenings now. I feel a little misled, as neither the Amazon product description nor the Woodenboat catalog description mention that the book is useless without the plans - which will set you back another $104 on the author's website.

The book itself seems well-written, with small, easily digestible chapters covering specific steps in the process. While there are a few very small figures obviously taken from the plans, they are neither large enough nor complete enough to actually build the boat in question. In my opinion, the author has erred a bit too much on the side of "make it sound simple," leading to glossed-over construction details in many places where a good deal more detail would be appreciated by the types of readers likely to buy a "how-to-build" book.

If I give in and purchase the plans, I have no doubt that this book will successfully guide me through the construction process; however, judged solely on its own merits, I have to say I'm less than satisfied with this purchase.