Why Wisper? It’s not a misspelling. She is modeled after an 18 foot Monk designed sloop that I restored from a derelict hull in the 1970s. The original boat was Wisp and the new boat is even more wisp-like hence, Wisper.
Wisp was traditionally built with a full keel and weighed over 3000 pounds. I spent three years rebuilding her. We sailed her throughout the Salish sea for several years until 18 feet was too small for two young children. Eventually, Wisp spent many years living in our yard under a succession of blue tarps. I loved that boat but in the end, I thought giving her away was the most humane thing to do.
After a couple of false starts, she was taken by a fellow who took the boat and said he would return later for her mast and boom. He never did. I lost his contact information and Wisp’s old-growth spruce mast and boom lay in our crawl space for over a decade.
So what to do with this beautiful mast? Taking a new granddaughter sailing was the inspiration to build a simple easy to rig trailerable sailboat all designed around using this mast. Wisper is strip planked red cedar sheathed with fiberglass. From the waterline up, she looks remarkably like the original Wisp. Below the waterline is a modern underbody with a ballasted high aspect ratio daggerboard and rudder. Instead of a motor, I built a pedal drive, which means she is R2AK ready, though probably for someone more ambitious than I. In the end, Wisper weighs only one-third that of her namesake and is fast, quick and a joy to sail.