Thomas E. Colvin

A designer of rugged, amateur-buildable offshore cruisers — often junk- or gaff-rigged, often in steel — whose gaff schooners still turn up on San Francisco Bay in hulls forty years apart.

Career

Merchant Marine in WWII; senior designer at Newport News Shipbuilding from 1952; consultant to Kaiser Aluminum; then his own yard at Miles, Virginia

Book

Steel Boatbuilding: From Plans to Launching — the standard reference

• —Gazelle — junk-rigged steel schooner, widely amateur-built
• —K'ung Fu-Tse — his own Chinese junk; he lived aboard 16 years
• —Schooners to 100 ft — in wood, steel and aluminium