"Patience", a Sam Rabl-designed Picaroon II

by Burton Blais
(Kemptville, Ontario, Canada)

I recently acquired a Sam Rabl-designed Picaroon II sailboat built by Jamie Little (launched in 2006) of St. John, New Brunswick.

She is built almost entirely to the designer's specs (right down to the clever sliding companion way door windows as illustrated in "Boat building in your own backyard").

She is built of eastern white cedar strip planking and tamarack frames, coated in epoxy inside and out.

The deck is built of tamarack planking, and the cabin sports round portholes (a small deviation from the elongated ports shown in the Picaroon plans - the round ports are much saltier looking to my mind).

She carries a gaff main and a small jib, with beautiful wood blocks.

Her cabin is cozy but plenty spacious for two adults to go on extended cruises.

She needs plenty of wind to get going, but when she does, she seems to perform quite well on all points of sail (though so far my experience sailing her is limited).

She is amazingly stable, and feels like a much larger keelboat both underway and when walking about her decks at anchor.

I plan to spend the winter months in 2010-2011 restoring her (her varnished decks and cabin sides are in desperate need of refinishing, and a few areas of water damage in the cockpit require attention).

For auxiliary power she has a sweet little re-built Farymann 8 HP diesel which pushes her along just tickity tackity...

Her new home waters will be in the Thousand Islands region of the St. Lawrence River (I found her in the Northumberland Strait and trailered her home to Ontario).

Now that I have brought her home to live in a freshwater realm, I am quite concerned about the possibility of rot in the bilges.


Burton Blais, Kemptville, Ontario, Canada.