23' Gartside Casco Bay Beach Ketch (2025) - BEEGEE

Casco Bay Beach Ketch
In the fall of 2025, apprentices in our traditional boatbuilding program had the uncommon opportunity to deliver—by sail—the boat that they began lofting one year earlier. The crew set off from the Apprenticeshop dock in BeeGee, a Casco Bay Beach Ketch, for a multi-day journey to its homeport on Chebeague Island. On the way, BeeGee met up with Pollux, another Ashop-built open boat, full of apprentices who had departed a few days earlier on their semiannual expedition. The two boats sailed in tandem from Penobscot to Casco Bay, anchoring off islands overnight. On Chebeague, apprentices left BeeGee in the hands of her eager owner, Jeff Uhr, and sailed back up the coast in Pollux.

Jeff had been dreaming for years of a boat that he could single-hand and pull up onto beaches in Casco Bay. He admired the Crotch Island Pinky referenced in Chapelle’s “American Small Sailing Craft” but knew that his intentions for enjoying the bay would require auxiliary power. That led him to connect with Paul Gartside in the hopes of creating a custom design based on the Pinky but with an inboard engine. The addition of an engine would require significant modifications to the hull, including redesign of the stern sections to accommodate for the engine, drive shaft, and propeller.

BeeGee is lapstrake cedar planking on white oak frames.