Cape George sailboats: a Port Townsend cutter built the same way, one boat at a time
Cape George is a small, semi-custom builder in Port Townsend, Washington, tracing a single design lineage back to one man's idea of a strong cruising cutter. Every hull is hand-laid fiberglass, and every deck, bulkhead, and interior is wood. That approach has carried the brand through a change of ownership and the addition of a second, unrelated design line built alongside the original.
Origins and ownership
In 1974, New Zealander Cecil Lange started a boatyard on Cape George Road outside Port Townsend. His goal was to build a strong cruising boat modeled after William Atkin's 34-foot Tally Ho Major, and he enlisted Seattle designer Ed Monk to adapt that design for fiberglass construction. That first fiberglass design became the Cape George 36. Over the years Lange developed 31-, 34-, 38-, 40.5-, and 45-foot versions of the same basic cutter -- the 38 styled by Lange himself, again after the Tally Ho Major. Every boat was custom-built and sold at any stage of completion, from a bare hull to a finished yacht.
In 2000 Lange retired and the yard went largely fallow. Four years later, Todd Uecker -- who had started at Lange's shop in 1990 -- and his brother Tim bought the operation and reopened it as Cape George Marine Works. Uecker has described the yard as a small niche builder producing one or two boats a year, not looking to build thirty.
The brand's best-known boat carries that lineage into open-ocean racing: a William Atkin-inspired Cape George 36 was sailed to victory in the Golden Globe Race by South African Kirsten Neuschaefer, making her the first woman to win a singlehanded round-the-world race. The hull she sailed was laid up by laminator Larry Grobe in 1988, in an era when owners could still order a bare hull and finish it themselves as a DIY project. Grobe still works at the yard Uecker and his brother renamed Cape George Marine Works, once known as Cecil Lange & Son.
Cape George Marine Works later added a second design line to its shop. After the Sam L. Morse Co. closed, Cape George bought the molds for that builder's Bristol Channel Cutter and Falmouth Cutter. Uecker has said the high price of the 28-foot Bristol Channel Cutter was a contributing factor in Sam L. Morse's demise. Under two owners, Sam L. Morse had built 126 Bristol Channel Cutters and 41 Falmouth Cutters; the hulls and decks were originally molded by Crystaliner Corp. of Costa Mesa, California, the same company that molded the Westsail 32's hulls during that design's first four years of production.
The designers
William Atkin and his son John created more than 300 small-boat designs during the mid-1900s, most of them featured in their monthly column in Motor Boating magazine. Lange chose Atkin's Tally Ho Major -- a scaled-up version of Atkin's own Tally Ho, about four feet longer -- as his design ideal for the yard's first boat. Atkin himself described the Tally Ho Major's lines as showing an easily driven hull, with a wholesome underwater profile, reasonable forefoot depth, slight tumblehome, and a rather straight sheer. When Ed Monk modified that design for fiberglass, the cutter grew another two feet to 36 and the beam grew eight inches to 10 feet 6 inches, becoming the Cape George 36 that anchors the rest of the line.
The Bristol Channel Cutter and Falmouth Cutter that Cape George also builds came from a separate design office: Lyle Hess, working from the wooden boats of author-cruisers Lin and Larry Pardey rather than from Atkin's work.
Construction through the eras
Cape George hulls are one-piece, hand-laid fiberglass moldings, using vinylester-based resins according to the yard's own account and, per Good Old Boat, vinylester- and polyester-based resins with biaxial glass fabrics, rovings, and mat. Nominal thickness runs about 1/2 inch at the bulwarks, increasing to 1 inch at the keel. Deck beams and carlins are laminated Port Orford Cedar, chosen for its decay resistance, and the plywood used elsewhere is BS 1088 marine grade, a combination of Sapele, Jequitiba, and Douglas Fir. None of the models has molds for the deck and cabintop "lid" -- every one is made from wood and built by hand. That same custom approach extends to how boats are sold: buyers can order anything from a bare hull or a kit to a complete yacht.
The Bristol Channel Cutter and Falmouth Cutter share that same fiberglass-hull, wood-deck construction, according to Uecker -- like the Sam L. Morse boats they descend from. What differs is who does the lamination: Cape George molds those hulls itself, where Sam L. Morse had contracted the work out.
Lines and generations
The Cape George Cutter line -- 31, 34, 36, 38, 40.5, and 45 feet -- all shares the Atkin-to-Monk design lineage that began with the 36. The Bristol Channel Cutter and Falmouth Cutter form a separate line entirely: Lyle Hess's designs, acquired by mold purchase rather than developed in-house, built by the same small yard but tracing back to a different designer and a different original builder.
Who Cape George is for
Cape George suits buyers drawn to a semi-custom, traditionally built cruising cutter over a mass-production yacht -- people willing to buy from a yard that, by its own owner's account, builds only one or two boats a year. The brand's association with Kirsten Neuschaefer's Golden Globe Race win gives that traditional approach a proven bluewater credential, while the Bristol Channel Cutter and Falmouth Cutter lines offer the same small-yard philosophy applied to a different, Pardey-inspired design pedigree.
