All right, “What is this nonsense about a Black Brant III and why the new design?” In order to properly understand the way life goes out here in Devlin Boat Land, you must first of all take a long distance view of the operation with enough time factor thrown in to really view the scene in geological perspective. Over the twenty some years that I have been designing and building hunting boats, there has been a lot of time and years with which to evolve more than a couple of designs. My Dad says that I am an almost constant “tinkerer”, which is probably a nice way to say that, while I think my designs are the best available and I believe in them without reservations, that I am also aware that nothing in life is perfect and that the way to Nirvana is to continually strive to do better. All this might just be the internal conflict with a Protestant work ethic or some other type of spiritual psycho-babble but the bottom line is that many of our designs get changed, little by little, until they reach a better plateau of use.

But in some cases the new design, while it has its strengths, doesn’t in a definitive way do the job that much better than the preceding design. In the case of our Black Brant designs, I already had a boat that did its job very well. That job was to allow two to three hunters to safely and efficiently hunt. But along came the desire of some of us to travel faster under power in less draft of water, thus was born the new design – the Black Brant III. This boat is simply a shallower draft and faster speed version of the Black Brant design, and if that is what you need, then this is the boat for you. But the difficulty of replacing the Black Brant was not simple because it also did its job extremely efficiently. So if you find that most of your hunting is in open water and you really aren’t traveling more than a couple of miles from ramp to your hunting area, then the Black Brant design is the best for your purposes. She is quite a bit deeper and a reasonable amount slower than the Black Brant III.

But if you are finding that you need to operate in shallower water and are traveling quite a distance from launch-ramp to the hunting area and a couple of inches more of sitting blind height doesn’t hurt, then by all means choose the Black Brant III. In both cases, these boats are about as thoroughbred of hunting boats as you are going to find and both have undergone trial by fire for more than a few hunting seasons. I hope you can make up your mind as to which is the best for you. — Sam Devlin

The Black Brant III 15 is available in study and construction plans.  Plans have both imperial and metric dimensions! 

LOA     14′-3″     4.34m     Beam     5’6″     1.66m      Draft     7.5″   190mm     Weight dry     225lbs.    102kg.

Depth Combing to floorboards    14.75″        Depth Keel to top of Coaming    21.25″

Width of Cockpit     3′-10.5″          Length of Cockpit     7′-8″              Max HP        30 HP    short or long shaft

The Devlin Bluebill 12 is available in study and construction plans.     

LOA   12′-3/4″   3.68m     Beam   4′-11″   1.5m     Draft   7.25″    182mm     Weight dry   145lbs.    65.77kg

Depth coaming to floorboards:  12″      Depth keel to top of combing:   15.5″

Width of cockpit:   3′-1.5″     Length of cockpit:    6′-11.5″        Max HP    20hp.   short shaft

Bluebill 12 Design Notes

One of my favorite customers is a fellow from Idaho that has had one of my Broadbill sneakboxes for many years. He called up one day and said that his Broadbill had met a unfortunate fate, falling off the top of his truck going down the freeway at better than 70 miles per hour. The Broadbill did a couple of cartwheels and ended up sliding to a stop on the asphalt upside down. Ron slammed on his brakes and ran back to the suffering boat and I believe (even though he won’t admit it) that there were tears running down his cheeks while looking down at his wounded little boat. I told Ron to bring the boat as quickly as possible to my shop so we could see if she could be saved and in just a couple of days, a truck drove into our driveway with the mangled boat.

Like a coroner, I dove into the post-mortem. There was a hole in the deck where the oarlock block had punched its way through the decking, the motor bracket was pretty much scrubbed off from abrasion where it had extended up beyond the stern decking, and there was one small crack and hole in the bottom of the boat (probably from the initial impact). Other than that damage, the boat looked remarkably intact and, in fact, you could have launched it and no water would have come into the boat itself. I immediately started working on an estimate sheet for the repair and after adding it all up, I told Ron that the truth was that it would almost be cheaper to build him a new boat than to fix up this one. Ron seized on the opportunity to have us build him boat that was just a bit bigger, one that could haul and hunt two hunters (instead of the Broadbill’s single hunter capacity) and one that had the latest evolution of our outboard well configuration. The major advantage of the outboard well is that it allows a proper horsepower outboard to be carried on the boat without it sticking out away from the stern outline of the boat. My theory is that late in the hunting season when the birds have been shot at a bit and carry the wealth (and perhaps sting) of experience that an older-wiser bird might have, the ducks actually start to look at the engines hanging off of boats as indicators of pain. In other words, if there is one common trait to all good hunting boats (except for some of my boats), it’s that damn outboard which is not very concealable and certainly not as hide-able as a boat without the outboard-wart hanging off the ass end of the boat.

The other advantage of the outboard well is that the operator of the outboard is further forward in the boat and if you are using the boat alone, the boat is more even on her keel in relationship to the water. The Bluebill is the result of that designing and building process and Ron is building on a relationship with this new boat. He reminded me of something he said the other day. “Some of us end up getting married twice (or more) in our lives and just because you might love the new wife, it doesn’t take away from the good memories of the old wife. Just don’t let the new one know that you have such thoughts!” — Sam Devlin

Linach 15 information and plans here.

We now have taken another step forward on the design as our first Surf Scoter 24 kit has been completed. Full kit building plans are included. The Surf Scoters have proven to be a popular design all over the world as they can handle a variety of waters quite well. If this new offering interests you contact Sam at:    sam@devlinboat.com    or    give us a call at 360-866-0164.

The main feature and advantage of the Linach 15 is the transportation and storing ease of a two part boat.

The Linach 15 is featured in WoodenBoat magazine’s May/June 2022 edition and was designed in collaboration with a client in Utah, who wanted a large two piece “nesting” rowing, sailing, and fishing dinghy for Utah’s mountain lakes.  The design goal was to create the largest possible dinghy that could easily be transported inside any large SUV, minivan, or pickup truck capable of carrying a standard 4’ x 8’ sheet of plywood, with each hull section therefore being slightly less than 8’ long.  The nesting concept offered several advantages.  The client wouldn’t need to buy a large trailer to transport the boat, long road trips to various lakes in other states would be simplified, and parking is much easier without having to tow a long trailer.  In addition, the two parts of the dinghy would easily store against the inside walls of his garage during the winter season.  The dinghy would have to row and sail well, carry at least two adults and two children, and be relatively simple and fast to build while still having an attractive hull shape.  This design would be be quite suitable for a pleasant day’s fishing on a local lake.  No other designs on the market met the client’s requirements–either they were too beamy to fit inside his vehicle, or they lacked the length and passenger carrying capability he needed.  A final design criteria was that the dinghy needed to be safe to operate in cold water, with large built-in buoyancy tanks and additional removable foam floatation panels.

Note: This is the first construction plan offered by Devlin Boat that is not a stitch and glue construction build.  Instead, this dinghy is built using the older stringer-frame (or stringer-bulkhead) construction method, which is an alternative method of plywood and cold molded wooden construction that has been used since World War II, not only in the United States, but also in the United Kingdom, Europe, Australia and New Zealand.  Numerous different designs and thousands of wooden boats of all sizes have been built using the stringer-frame process, especially in conjunction with marine grade plywood. The Linach 15’s building process has now been further simplified by extensively using epoxy resins and fiberglass tape, especially for tying the bulkheads to the hull and in installing later components such as the seats, buoyancy tanks and daggerboard case.  This part of the build is very similar to typical stitch and glue procedures.  The result is a hybridized system that is easy for a solo builder to manage and offers the advantages of both methods.  Most importantly it results in a “fair” and nicely shaped hull shape, especially at the critical hull junction.  The study plans give a detailed overview of the process.

A new 6 minute video shows the new lug rig sailing version of the Linach 15 and takes you from off-loading the boat from an SUV, assembling it, and setting off first for a row and then for a sail.

A just finished 2 minute video shows the ease of righting the boat in case of capsize while sailing.

We offer study plans and construction plans for this design and present them in a new format for us.

The study plans have just recently been updated to reflect the simplified building process and now consist of 11 pages that may be printed out on letter size paper.  It includes numerous photos and detailed text with sample pages and construction drawings from the building guide. Edition 2 of the full construction plans is now available for purchase. Those plans include an expanded 245 page (letter size) detailed building guide and a separate table of offsets which give the dimensions for the overall hull shape as well as the bulkheads, temporary molds, stem and transom.  These dimensions assist the builder in creating the stringer bulkhead framework, to which the plywood hull panels are then attached.