Kevin Strong's Tolmanskiff Original

This is one of Renn Tolman's first boats that he built. Note that it is a flat bottomed boat and has a motorwell.

This boat is SOLD. http://anchorage.craigslist.org/boa/272043663.html

Renn says:

Hey Stephen

Nice of Kevin to send along the picture. . . A flood of memories, as they say. The basic story is in the intro to my first book, which I presume you're familiar with, but the essentials of which are that I designed and built this 20' x7' x5' skiff in 1980 in 12 working days. It was framed with a sawn chine and three stringers, not stitch-and-glue, but epoxy saturated with fiberglass below the waterline only. The engine (folks used 30-50 hp, mostly) was in a well. Quite frankly, the design was faulty in that the chine carried full-width too far forward, causing it to be squirrely in a following sea, and it would have benefitted from more upturn in the bottom, in the manner of Oregon dories. They were very popular, however, because they made wonderfully stabile fishing platforms, and we made about about 50 of them in lengths from 18-22 feet until 1986, when my vee bottom skiffs came on line. They typically cost between $3-4,000.

After my friend Tex sold it six or eight years down the line, another conscientious owner used it for fishing from the mouth of the Anchor River (18 miles north of Homer) until a couple of years ago, when Kevin bought it and fixed it up so nice. (It was always well maintained, but most importantly it had not been pounded and had its stringers broken, which is easily done in a flat bottomed skiff). . . Did Kevin send a picture of the beautiful young Aleutiq girl that did the logo? She's from Unalaska in the Aleutians and sports a traditional tattoo that crosses her face in a band that runs basically from ear to ear.

I hope it finds another good home, for it's a very safe, practical skiff requiring low power and able to pack huge loads. Many were used for commercial fishing. . Tex told about coming back from a spring bear hunt at the foot of the Kenai Peninsula (Tex used the meat to feed his family) with two bears and three hunters on board with all their camp in what he described as 10-foot seas. The hunters were terrorized, but they took on little if any water (these skiffs were very dry), a safe, if slow trip.

Renn