beachbights
PEOPLE | CULTURE | HAPPENINGS | TRENDS
The Yarest
Pea-Quod
by MARIMAR McNAUGHTON
photography by ALLISON POTTER
dory – a small, shallow-draft boat, about 16 to 23 feet long with high
sides, a flat bottom and sharp bows. For centuries, dories have been used
as traditional fishing boats, both in coastal waters and in the open sea.
Used for lobstering, clamming and
hand line fishing, the Pea Pod, a
double-ended lapstrake convertible
rowing canoe and sailboat, caught
Bryan Humphrey’s eye while visiting a friend in
Rockland, Massachusetts in the 1990s.
“It was the perfect design; it was like an egg,”
Humphrey says. “You couldn’t add anything to it;
you couldn’t take anything away from it. When
you’re rowing it, you can row forward or you can
turn around and row the other way without chang-ing
your seat, you can push row. It’s just so boaty.”
Dusting off some back issues of WoodenBoat
magazine, Humphrey found the pattern for the
Pea Pod named the Beach Pea by its designer and
with it the instructions for building his own Pea
Pod three years ago. Under the attached shed
behind his Pine Street boatbuilding shop are the
plywood templates he cut to mold the Pea-Quod.
With Joe Hammett, a cabinet maker with whom
Humphrey — an architect and general contractor
— has worked side by side, and Al Winters for
whom Humphrey designed and built a home
on Whiskey Creek, the trio completed the boat
during the winter of 2011. They bought enough
plywood to build three Beach Peas. The second is
almost complete.
“It wouldn’t have been as much fun without
Al Winters and Joe Hammett, who are soon to
have boats of their own,” Humphrey says.
With 40 years of woodworking skills under his
belt, Humphrey circumnavigated the design more
than once, altering the centerboard to a dagger
board and the gaff rig to a spritsail.
“It’s a little bit different than some of the other
boats I’ve built,” Humphrey says.
His fleet includes wooden surfboards, a wooden
kayak, an Optimist sailing dinghy, a Simmons Sea
Skiff currently under restoration and an Emerson
Willard Crown Point Dory in maintenance.
Humphrey keeps the Pea-Quod at the Carolina
Yacht Club in Wrightsville Beach where he uses a
wooden dolly for easing the dory into the water.
He carries the oars, also made of fir. All of the
boat’s pieces fit snugly inside the hull.
“It was really fun to figure out how to make it
sail well,” he says. “We added a curved boom to it
so it held the sail shape better.”
Bryan Humphrey rows the Pea-Quod in Banks Channel.
14 july 2013
WBM