Clam Girl’s Capability
Spring, 2025
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By Hugh Horton
She’s as tough as a sand barge, while light enough for octogenarians to haul her up
a beach. Epoxy is key.
“But, Meade,” I said in Cedar Key in 2016, “look at this model!” He’d been admiring the use of G/flex® on the house’s shower pan. The 2′ model was Clam Girl.
Clam Girl’s a sailing dinghy—ten feet four inches long, four feet six inches wide—just for the Cedar Keys, on the Florida Gulf Coast eighty miles north of Tampa. Her interior is open without a dagger or centerboard trunk. No thwarts.
She’s not like a windsurfer, meant to plane back and forth for the thrill of speed. Clam Girl is for the nuances of comfortable sailing in this unique area, most of which is within the Cedar Keys and Lower Suwannee National Wildlife Refuges.
Since I built her model from lofting back in 2013, I wanted to show it to Meade. Yes, convention says model first, then loft. I, however, had the luxury of a big, new plywood floor, and racked on a wall were my 20′ long (forty-year-old) fir battens. The lines drawing begged me to draw them full size.
As the 2017 Everglades Challenge approached, Meade found JF Bedard impressive. That year, the performance of RoG (JF’s 15′ micro expedition cruiser) confirmed Meade’s opinion. After the Challenge, Meade told me, “JF could speed up Clam Girl, get you going… .” I followed Meade’s advice.
Making Modifications
JF and Simon Lewandowski brought their computers and professional software to Cedar Key. On February 2, 2018, my friend Karen and I drove back from St. Pete with JF’s router-cut panels lashed to my Ford® Focus. I spent most of the month applying 105 Epoxy Resin® and 207 Special Clear Hardener® while also glassing selected panels.
We drilled 3/16″ holes along the edges of the panels 3″ to 4″ apart. On Zip Day, Feb 23, we threaded zip ties through adjacent panels, snugged the ties, and watched her shape resolve—the magic of stitch and glue.
Instead of using a strongback, we built her on a flat sheet of ¾” plywood. Before her chines hardened, I added a centerline string above her ends. I clamped on temporary gunnels and added five spacers across the sheer.
I checked and re-checked the shape, then “tacked” the seams with dabs of fillet mix. Because of my obsession with fairness, I made a final check, and then the hull’s shape was secured by filleting the inside seams. We faired and finished the seams with woven fiberglass tape, more 105 Epoxy Resin, and 207 Special Clear Hardener. The seats and mast box were zip-tied and glassed in.
Late May was rich with fragrant teak from half-inch strips ripped from an 8/4″ plank. Less patient builders than I could eliminate stages, but we fastened layer by layer, only with G/flex. (See “The Joy of Six10,” Epoxyworks 48).
The last time I saw Jan Gougeon (in 2012), he’d brought carbon cones he’d made for my Trinka 12 hull. Six years later, Simon Lewandowski molded two pairs for Clam Girl from Jan’s cones.
Prepare for Launch
September 13, 2018, Simon and Bill Ling followed me and Clam Girl on her trailer four miles to the Shell Mound ramp in the Lower Suwannee Refuge.
Within ten minutes of pushing off, reality whacked me a vicious backhand—she didn’t sound right. Instead of a light slapping-rippling from under her bow, it was a white noise of pushed, rushing water. I was glad it was just the three of us.
I know Jan would have frowned with empathy and commiserated, “Stuff happens.” Meade might’ve said, “And you thought superstition was only for baseball?”
Refine the Design
When meeting with JF and Simon, I forgot to add an inch or more of rocker to my initial design, even though I’d thought about it months before.
Bill and Simon helped add the rocker by gluing cheap foam to her bottom with construction adhesive. Simon hot-wire-cut it following longitudinal guides. It was two inches thick amidships, tapering to nothing at each end.
Ling, Simon, and I carefully placed her bare foam into calf-deep water. Displacement looked good.
We glued three millimeters of plywood on the foam and again heavily glassed her with 105 Epoxy Resin and 207 Special Clear Hardener.
The relaxed “Ah, yes,” launch was November 17th in Cedar Key. Friends carried her a few yards to the Faraway’s beach on G Street.
More Modifications:
The aluminum piece to be glued into the slot in the “toe” of the
leeboard, which hits the sea bottom first. After twenty years
of oyster-chewed leeboards, regardless of glass, Kevlar, and/or
carbon powder experiments, the aluminum inserts are the fix.
leeboard, which hits the sea bottom first. After twenty years
of oyster-chewed leeboards, regardless of glass, Kevlar, and/or
carbon powder experiments, the aluminum inserts are the fix.
The toe of a leeboard after the aluminum has been glued in
with G-flex.
with G-flex.
Kevlar in the outhaul system. The outhaul car is a Kevlar molding with a block for a double-purchase. The boom’s end fitting is Kevlar, eliminating a sheave and almost all metal, while reducing length and mass.
Close-up of boom end fitting.
Another angle of the boom.
Leeboard cone, molded off of ones originally built by Jan Gougeon.
Clam Girl cruising along comfortably.
Now, after four years and over 120 days at sea, with crew and solo, she and we are happy. She has navigated long stretches and ventured into open water and endured scrapes and bumps, lurching over bars and slipping into marshes. She wore out her first sail and has a beautiful new one, ten percent larger at 99 ft2.
Quoting Jan, about sailing canoes compared to all his other sailboats, he often said, with a grinning, happy head shake, “Low grief!”
That’s Clam Girl, too.
