Benjamin Mendlowitz
The Swan Point Garvey is the culmination of Russ Manheimer’s years of dreaming about the perfect boat for day excursions in the coastal marshes of New Jersey. Doug Hylan designed the boat, and his shop, Hylan & Brown Boatbuilders of Brooklin, Maine, built it in time for an early June launching.
The daydream goes like this: It’s a beautiful but chilly fall day on upper Barnegat Bay in New Jersey. After being out all day in a dying, dry northeaster in our double-ended, lapstrake-planked 22' kosterboat SJOGIN (see WB No. 247) my wife, Julia, and I anchor off Reedy Creek, a mile from where she began her outing at David Beaton and Sons Boat Yard. After the stove has been banked in anticipation of a warm return, the tender is brought alongside. There’s an hour before sunset and just enough breeze for a quiet sail. As the breeze dies, the tender is rowed back to SJOGIN. The rig is put away and the tender drops aft. After a glance alow and aloft, the hatch is slid open and the warm cabin awaits.
I’ve had this recurring daydream for many years. All of our sailing in SJOGIN consists of daysails. Once in a while, however, the thought of anchoring out and having a small boat to go ashore or mess about in our remaining creeks and marshes has seemed appealing. I have spent many a watch below, thinking of a suitable tender.
Since my introduction to small sail-and-oar craft through John Gardner in National Fisherman in the 1970s, I’ve been attracted to traditional boats. My first was the conversion of an elderly 15' Charles Hankins Sea Bright beach skiff to a sprit-rigged sloop in the mid 1970s. After a few years with a hard-chined tabloid sloop, I’ve been lucky enough to be the steward of SJOGIN for the past 38 years. Though she is certainly traditional, her tradition lies about 3,800 miles to the east-northeast, in the Koster Islands on the North Sea coast of Sweden.