RIGHT TOP TO BOTTOM— Lichen 20 scow sailboat; a drawing of the Lit’l Coot full keel motorsailer; and Sam’s first boat design, the 14’-3” Egret sailboat.
Did the Egret immediately launch your career as a design-
er-builder, or did it take awhile before you started thinking of boatbuilding as your new career?
I didn’t think there was any way to make a living building wooden boats, but still wanted to work in that direction. I built three small dinghies on spec and sold them through clas- sified ads in the local paper. During the late winter of 1977, in order to support my boatbuilding urges, I bought a one-way ticket to Alaska that spring and immediately got a job on a crab boat out of Kodiak. At that time the crabbing industry was getting ramped up to start making some big money. We did a four-day trip and returned to town to offload and work on the boat. Without a place to stay, one of the deckhands offered to let me stay a few days in an abandoned school bus in his backyard. Aſter sleeping for about 24 hours—having just worked virtually nonstop the previous four days—we got up, and while having breakfast, started talking about Alaska and life. It turned out he had a young family, wanted to stay in Kodiak and would need a little sailboat to help him explore local waters. I sketched up the boat and with the $1,500 deposit check bought a return ticket to Oregon and started building him a little 20-foot boat. And the next 41 years could be summed up as me never quite catching up with a backlog of boatbuilding commitments.
When did you first start thinking of yourself as a designer, and what was the turning point?
I guess I’ve always thought of myself as a designer, but it was probably in the early 1980s when we started to get some at- tention from the public and boating publications started to notice what we were doing. It took awhile, but I gradually re- alized that the design side—versus just boatbuilding—might be where I’d develop a bit of a legacy.
Did you have some formal training, or did boat design just emerge from your experience boatbuilding?
No training at all, but I’ve literally spent my life looking at boats, trying to appreciate what works in them for me, or how I might reinterpret them if I was asked. I am a firm believer in the adage that, “If it looks right it most likely is right.” Boats are nothing more than vehicles transporting us to our inner sense of whimsy, and the best designs shoot straight into the veins of the most addicted boat lovers. Many of us feel this way about the little boats we love to play with.
Did particular designers provide inspiration during your formative years? Has that list changed or expanded over the years?
I remember running across a little yawl in Alaska designed by Jay Benford that, at the time, epitomized what I thought a small and smart little sailboat should be like. Jay certainly has
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