I completed “My Boat” April 2011. My Boat was named by one of my granddaughters when she was two. We were camping on a local lake when a storm came up suddenly. She said, “Pappaw, a storm is coming. Save My Boat.”
After hours of searching the internet, I was unable to find plans for a drift boat that could be rowed and motored. I then discovered Montana Boatbuilders, Inc., now Cajune Boats, website and found plans for a rowed skiff. I bought the plans, which gave me the design ideas for the seats, pedestals and sidedecks. I designed the hull for a powered skiff that could also be rowed and that you could walk through from front to rear.
My Boat was built with wood and composite construction. The bottom is a lightweight poly propylene honeycomb sandwiched between layers of Kevlar and fiberglass cloth attached to 3/8″ scarfed Okume marine plywood with fiberglass fillets. System 3 Silvertip epoxy was used throughout. All chines of the boat are further reinforced with biaxial cloth and epoxy. The inside and bottom is sprayed with truck bed liner. My Boat is used almost exclusively in slow and fast moving rivers where the bottom takes regular strikes and abrasions from rocks, gravel, sand and tree limbs, etc. The gunnels are mahogany and the seats and center seat frame are white oak. Mesquite was used in the transom and oarlock bracing.
My wife and I currently fly fish in Texas in the spring and Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, and Washington in the summer and fall. To date, we have used My Boat on 37 rivers and 10 lakes in 13 states. My Boat is towed on a tilt trailer, built by Sleeping Giant Manufacturing, which really makes it easy to launch.
Our most memorable trip in My Boat was fly fishing the Colorado river below Glen Canyon Dam in Arizona. We launched at Lee’s Ferry and motored upriver 10 miles to the Horseshoe Bend area and fished around Duck Island and the riffles and shallow runs back downriver. We caught and released over 80 rainbow trout in this magnificent canyon area!