Testimonials

"I LOVE my 19 ft Workskiff. I bought it in 1992 and it has been the perfect tool for everything from limnological sampling to hydroacoustics surveys. And, it's grad-student-proof!"

"The 19 foot boat is fantastic. We've used it for 12 years to commute to our remote Alaska homestead and haul every kind of supply in often choppy seas.

I once accidentally dropped a 55 gallon steel oil drum full of fuel oil from a height of at least four feet directly onto the forward deck. The corner of the drum crumpled, but there was not so much as a mark nor sign of a dent in the deck plates of the skiff. I once hit a mostly submerged log at least a foot in diameter, full tilt boogie. I heard a loud bang! on the hull and my 90 hp merc flew out of the water into the "raised" position. No damage to the hull that I can find.

We don't have a dock at the island, so we always load and off-load directly on the beach... sometimes in 2 or 3 foot "surf". I suppose there are a few scratches from the rocks, but no dents. Normally we run without the plug in the self-bailing bilge, due to often taking spray in the commonly heavy chop and rain. This works fine with the normal load of my wife and I, fuel, two dogs, and groceries. One day I had a heavy load, so I put the plug in for the trip from town and then forgot to remove it. I tied the boat to the anchor bouy at the island as usual. That night a huge wind and rain storm rolled in. We had five inches of rain, and 6 foot seas or better. The boat normally swings at that anchor in storms just fine. In the morning I discovered that, with the heavy rain, the boat had swamped at anchor. But she did not capsize! Full of water, and swinging on short anchor in 6-foot seas, every few waves the rail would dip underwater, then she would roll level again. Full of water, she was perfectly balanced fore to aft, so the outboard was still high and dry. I paddled out in a rubber raft, reached down and pulled the plug and sat on the high side to keep the rail from going under.... and she bailed herself in 15 or 20 minutes... no harm done, except that I was sea sick by then. In case you don't catch the significance of this incident, boats normally roll inverted when they swamp. I saw the neighbor's fiberglass boat upside down from similar causes as well as standard aluminum skiffs.

So yes. We are enjoying the boat."

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