Phil Bolger

Philip C. Bolger (December 3, 1927 – May 24, 2009) was a prolific American boat designer, who was born and lived in Gloucester, Massachusetts.

He began work full-time as a draftsman for boat designers Lindsay Lord and then John Hacker in the early 1950s.

Bolger's first boat design was a 32-foot (9.75 m) sportfisherman published in the January 1952 issue of Yachting magazine.

He subsequently designed more than 668 different boats, from a 114-foot-10-inch (35 m) replica of an eighteenth-century naval warship, the frigate Surprise (ex-Rose), to the 6-foot-5-inch (1.96 m) plywood box-like dinghy Tortoise.

Although his designs ranged through the full spectrum of boat types, Bolger tended to favor simplicity over complexity.

Many of his hulls are made from sheet materials — typically plywood — and have hard chines.

A subclass of these designed in association with Harold Payson called Instant Boats were so named because they were intended to be easily built by amateurs out of commonly available materials.

Bolger also advocated the use of traditional sailing rigs and leeboards.

As far back as 1957 he designed "Poohsticks" as a small plywood rowing skiff to be simply and economically built at home (originally by his brother).

From this simple start he went on to develop a large number of designs for small- and medium-sized craft using plywood as a material for one-off construction at home or by small boatyards.

In the 1970s, Phil Bolger began a long and successful collaboration with Harold 'Dynamite' Payson with Bolger designing the boats and Payson building them as well as selling plans and writing books about how to do it.

'Dynamite' called the first series of easy-to-build plywood boats "Instant Boats".

Unlike traditional boat construction which involves building of jig and full size lofting of the shape of the hull prior to construction, the Instant Boat method uses shaped plywood panels on pre-shaped frames made of plywood and standard dimensional lumberyard wood.

This results in quick construction and less requirement for skilled craftsmanship, and has proved appealing to amateur boat builders as well as many later designers who have followed in his footsteps, albeit much less prolifically.

Following articles in WoodenBoat magazine, Dynamite Payson published Instant Boats (1979, 152 pages, 7" × 10", 48 illustrations).

It describes the original "Instant Boat" technique.

Generically known as the "chine log method" or "simplified chine log method" the technique consists of (i) cutting body panels to a predetermined shape as given on the plans, (ii) wrapping them around frames or bulkheads, (iii) adding chines (small section planks of lumberyard wood) along the joints (either internally or externally) and fastening them together using glue and mechanical fasteners (nails or screws).

The book described all the basic techniques (gluing, nailing and screwing with some fiberglass) to produce five designs: 12' Teal, 7'9" Elegant Punt, 12' Kayak, 31' Folding Schooner, 15'6" Surf, and 20'9" Zephyr. All these boats have single chines (i.e. have a bottom panel and two sides) and have their shape limited by the bevels given to the chines. The boats in Paysons book were designed for use on protected waters and none was self-bailing or designed to self-recover in case of capsize. However, Bolger designed many other boats using this building technique, including the ocean crossing AS-39 (or Loose Moose II) as well as a significant number of other boats.

Bolger's first generation of "chine log instant boats" for home building was followed by a generation of "stitch and glue" (aka "tack and tape") boats.

This technique was made possible by the evolution of glues and the massification of polyester and epoxy resins combined with fiberglass tape.

The new technique basically did away with the chine logs and mechanical fasteners and all the problems associated with their use (mainly the limitation of shape in the design phase, the carpentry challenge in the construction phase and damp/rot in the medium to long term).

Instead of using a chine to join the precut panels, in stitch and glue, the preshaped panels are wrapped around bulkheads and/or frames in the same way as before.

However, the panels are only temporarily held in place using nails, duct tape, cable ties, masking tape, wire or other mechanical means, while the seams are filled (both inside and outside the hull) with a resin and filler paste covered in one or more layers of fiberglass cloth or tape which in turn is saturated in resin.

Once the resin hardens, the mechanical joint is stronger than the joined plywood and therefore structurally sound.

Payson again popularised the technique in his book Build the New Instant Boats (1984, 160 pages, 8" × 11", 110 illustrations - Also still in print).

In this book Payson introduces what he termed "Tack and tape" to the greater American public.

The book includes plans for Gypsy (15' sail/oar/outboard), Nymph (7'9" dinghy with sail option), Diablo (15' motor boat for up to 25 HP outboard) as well as 8 more "traditional instant boats" using the chine log method: 16' Lug-rigger Windsprint, 6'5" Tortoise, 8' Skimmer, Dynamite Sailboard, 16'June Bug, Madeline a 19'6" Pedal-driven sidewheeler and the 23'6" Light Schooner.

From the 1990s, Phil Bolger teamed with his wife Susanne Altenburger, designing boats under the name Phil Bolger & Friends Inc. During this time, they emphasized the design of sustainable and fuel-efficient boats for the fishing industry.

Also, they participated in a large military commission with the Naval Sea Systems Command on new designs for military landing craft utility boats.

Bolger was a prolific writer and wrote many books, the last being Boats with an Open Mind, as well as hundreds of magazine articles on small craft designs, chiefly in Woodenboat, Small Boat Journal and Messing About in Boats.

In 2007 Payson published his last book Instant Boatbuilding with Dynamite Payson which basically explains both techniques in less detail than the previous books and presents complete plans for 15 boats by Bolger.

These are: Stitch and Glue: Payson's Pirogue (13' - canoe), Cartopper (11'6" - sail/oar), Sweet Pea (15' - sail/oar), Ruben's Nymph (7'9" - identical to Nymph but 1' wider - sail/oar), Diablo Grande (18' - power), Catfish (15' - sail/outboard) and Chebacco (19'8" - sail/outboard). The

Bolger put a lot of thought into relatively cheap, high-performance boats.

He is well known for designing a series of single chine sharpies, typically long and narrow with a flat bottom.

According to Bolger, sailing sharpies give good performance for the amount of sail they carry because of low to moderate displacement and light weight.

In his opinion, the sharpie shape provides a simple construction in the plywood era with the added benefit that sailing sharpies extend the waterline as they heel, thereby effectively increasing the hull speed.

Power sharpies can use low-horsepower motors (see, for example, the Bolger Tennessee, and Sneakeasy designs) yet reach planing speeds in sheltered waters.

Bolger died on May 24, 2009, of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

His wife explained that "[h]is mind had slipped in the last several months, and he wanted to control the end of his life while he was still able."

Phil Bolger was unconventional in many ways and, among many large boats, yachts and custom designs, took an interest in what he termed "evolving crafty ways of building boats".