Building Phil Bolger's Harbinger

Back in 2002, I received a request from a customer for a pretty Catboat. I can't remember the initial wish-list, but when I showed him Phil Bolger's Harbinger design, he was hooked. Harbinger is a Catboat of the New York model, rather than the better known Cape Cod model, and she has exceptionally fine and easy lines.



Fine lines




Easy bilges



Harbinger was designed with rowing as the primary source of auxilliary propulsion, and the New York model was much better suited to this than the more buxom Cape Cod hull-form. Phil had designed the boat to be built plank-on-frame carvel, but as the customer intended to leave the boat out of the water on a trailer, we had to come up with a different method of construction - carvel would open up when dry. The most obvious options were, glued strip-plank, glued lapstrake, and cold molded. I decided to go for strip-diagonal cold-molding, and wrote to Phil to get his permission. He was very happy with my construction plan, but indicated that he was frightened by the labour-intensive nature of the method.



The boat turned out to be very successful in construction and use, and I'd love to build one for my own use. Very briefly, here are the primary stages in construction: -



MDF Molds set-up.



7mm WRC strip Planking.

First of two layers of 3mm Hoop Pine diagonal planking.

Lots of staples needed in hollow sections - used a total of 18 thousand, put in individually and pulled out by hand.

Diagonal planking finished. Hull thickness 13mm (just over 1/2").

Shapely and massively strong hull.



Launching day.

First sail.

Phil Bolger's Harbinger

When I can get around to it, I'll put up a photo gallery showing the construction in more detail.