New Dark Harbor 20s

The Dark Harbor class on Islesboro has carefully put forth specs for new composite hulls so wooden and fiberglass boats can race side-by-side. Photo by Tricia Ladd

Under contract from Pendleton Yacht Yard on Islesboro, Lyman-Morse Boatbuilding’s composites shop in Thomaston has molded three fiberglass hulls and decks for the island’s racing fleet of Dark Harbor 20s. 

Parts and pieces, particularly lead keels, were brought over from the island and installed on the laminated hulls once they were removed from the mold. The first of this new batch was finished off by Pendleton Yacht Yard and raced last summer. Finishing off, by the way, in this case involves moving as many parts as possible from an owner’s original boat. Doing that is to a very small degree an effort toward cost saving. Mast, boom, rigging, and attractive bronze fittings do add up. But it’s almost equally an example of nautical nostalgia, in the same way that rare elements of the backbone of the USS Constitution still remain, or the cornerstone of an iconic historic building is repurposed.

Pendleton Yacht Yard has been for many years a popular storage and maintenance facility for the Dark Harbor 20 fleet. According to Christian Zimmerman, service manager there, Stan Pendleton was heavily involved in discussions about how to preserve a fleet of lightly built, single-planked boats during a time when customers expressed increased concern about maintenance challenges with boats that were, in some cases, six or seven decades old. Pendleton collaborated with new ideas that suggested a switch to fiberglass hulls, and helped define the methods to basically recycle old boats into new. 

The remaining two hulls from Lyman-Morse haven’t yet been spoken for. They will have cabins, coamings, seats, toe rails, etc. installed this winter. The Pendleton yard had obtained and stored three old champions and carefully preserved them inside cold-storage buildings over earth floors that help prevent wood parts from becoming damaged. Elements of these three will be fitted onto the recently arrived hulls and keels. It deserves mention and appreciation that the Pendleton yard ordered three fiberglass hulls when only one was needed. This is the kind of foresight and commitment that preserves communities, and racing fleets. 

Previously, four new fiberglass hulls were laminated by Shaw Yachts in Thomaston, where the molds were built. Those first four hulls had new woodwork done there on the mainland. A fifth fiberglass hull was built by Pendleton after the molds were moved to the island. 

At this juncture, the active racing fleet of Dark Harbor 20s consists of about half fiberglass boats and half original wooden ones, and one experimental boat that was double-planked using epoxy glues. The original Dark Harbors were built long ago at George Lawley & Sons, in Boston, and later by S. B. Norton’s yard on 700 Acre Island, now Dark Harbor Boat Yard. 

This current partial recycling method to keep the fleet alive is not your everyday scenario, but it is particularly appropriate to this hallowed racing fleet. The Dark Harbor 20s are historically important American nautical artifacts. They were designed in 1937 by the upstart Olin Stephens, the first small daysailer he attempted. He employed some of his breakthrough concepts, including the outgrowth of something new—tank testing of a recreational boat—on this design. As on Dorade, the yawl he won the Transatlantic Race and the Fastnet with, the Dark Harbor 20 features a Marconi rig rather than gaff, with the advantage of a permanently fixed backstay. 

Stevens worked somewhat in collaboration with the then-commodore of Islesboro’s Tarratine Yacht Club, Clinton Crane, himself a talented designer. 

At Lyman-Morse’s shop in Thomaston, a Dark Harbor hull is finished, with its recycled keel from Islesboro attached. Photo courtesy of Lyman-Morse

Just large enough to master the choppy waters off Islesboro and to feature a reasonable cabin for a day boat, it was a tremendous success from the start. For unknowable reasons, despite being one of the most beautiful one-design keelboats ever—and way ahead of its time—the class did not spread elsewhere. I’m not sure the Tarratine Yacht Club was upset by that. To this day, the island community seems very proud to claim this treasure as entirely its own. 

There is a beautifully written and photographed article by Tricia Ladd from the July/August 2022 issue of this magazine, which places particular emphasis upon the extreme efforts that were made to insure that more easily maintained building methods didn’t render the original plank-on-frame boats obsolete. In 2003, Sparkman and Stephens was hired to redesign the fiberglass version to exacting specifications so that both versions would prove equal in performance. This ultimately included actual on-water speed trials, switching boats and skippers, and subsequent adjustments. 

When I spoke with Mike Nile, who oversaw the fiberglass work at Lyman-Morse, he explained that there was careful weighing and placement of laminate cloth. The company’s composites division is capable of creating very light and strong molded structures, but those abilities were downplayed for the Dark Harbor hulls and decks. In fact, about the only discernable difference between the new products and the old wooden boats is a white gelcoat hull surface and molded-in nonskid of a traditional buff color on the decks. Altogether this is the most extreme, and thus correct, way to keep one-design sailboats one-design. 

There are plentiful examples among one-design classes where less diligence has left competitors unsatisfied, leading to the demise of entire fleets. In this case, in 2018 Mystic Seaport Museum honored the Dark Harbor effort with the William Avery Baker Award for preservation of one-design classes. Selection of this specific traditional racing sloop, the Dark Harbor 20, is closely akin to a nautical nomination to the National Register of Historic Places. 

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Dark Harbor 20 Specifications

LOA: 30' ½"
LWL: 20'
Beam: 6' 8"
Draft: 4' 1¼"
Displ.: 5,200 lb.
Ballast: 2,620 lb.
Sail Area: 357 sq. ft.

Designer: 
Olin Stephens

Builders:
Lyman-Morse
lymanmorse.com
207-354-6904

Pendleton Yacht Yard
pendletonyachtyard.com
207-734-6728

Contributing editor Art Paine is a boat designer, artist, and writer who lives in Bernard, Maine.