Jay Benford - Cruising Designs

These catboat designs are wonderful small cruising boats, suitable for a couple to enjoy weekends and vacations aboard. There are both centerboard and keel boats included, simple chine hulls and round bilged hulls. They all have good sitting headroom in the cabins, and the largest has standing headroom.

The book features detailed drawings of these designs, showing how they are built, rigged and outfitted. The photos In the book show boats built by both amateurs and professionals.

Jay Benford designs fascinating anachronisms for people who spurn the world of plastics and mass production!.

Jay Benford is one of those freethinking designers who is just as happy working on a 14ft (4.27m) worldgirdler as a 131ft (40m) luxury cruiser. His magic is such that he can make both boats, and those in between, individual, attractive and practical.

Jay Benford is a widely known yacht designer with a far-ranging imagination and great versatility, unbound by prejudices on materials or methods of construction.

The designs of Jay R. Benford are usually easy to recognize but difficult to describe precisely. They definitely have a traditional look about them yet dont resemble any particular type of traditional craft. Often they look like caricatures of boats the kind of boats you see in childrens books.

No insult is intended. On the contrary, Benfords boats all seem to have some sort of magical quality, a unique character all their own that defies definition.

let me say that I have spent hours perusing Small Shipsto my utter delight. Here is Benford at his best with an infinite variety of arrangements and layouts on several series of working craft hulls including hie Florida Bay Coaster 40, 50, and 65 footers built by Reuben Trane.

The varieties are endless, and if one of these doesnt start you dreaming of retiring to a life of floating luxury with your beloved, youre reading the wrong magazine.

original, fun, and thought provoking which is what makes this book worth owning, not just reading. Its a book which will be referred to again and again.

It was while working on the first Mariners Catalog a period of nautical despair for those who liked traditional boats made of traditional materials that we first encountered the design works of J. Benford Associates. We could not believe it, a firm devoted almost exclusively to boats so salty that they made our eyes rust. So, like the girl who dreamed away childhood over knights on white chargers and screamed rape when one finally showed up, we didnt list them. Peculiar the human mind.

The Benford 30 shows what a clever and uninhibited designer can do in a relatively small boat (indeed, the smallest one in this book).

Jay Benford was taken sailing before he could walk, by parents unconcerned about the impressions being made on the youth. He was several years old before he determined that this might not have been perfectly normal procedure on the part of his parents. By then, of course, it was too late for he had become hooked on cruising. His school teachers pointed remarks about the lack of variety on his book reports (always nautical books) seem to have been of no concern to him. His two years at the University of Michigan led to a much better knowledge of the location of the nautical sections of the libraries than the locations of his classrooms.

He says the best parts of his education were his apprenticeship with John Atkin and the subsequent jobs with a number of boatbuilding firms. After seven years of working for others, he opened his own yacht design office full time in the spring of 1969. Shortly thereafter he got a series of instructive lessons from his accountant in the use of red ink.

He has lived aboard for well over a decade, living on both sail and power boats, and brings this experience to all his design work. His recent design work varies from small craft to freighter yachts to a 40 meter (131) ketch. When not off cruising, he can be found in his St. Michaels, Maryland, office working on one of his dozen or so current design projects.

With thanks for taking me sailing to
Margaret Baily Benford (1914-2000)
James R. Benford (1913-2001)

C RUISING B OATS , S AIL & P OWER, 4 editions in 1968, 1969, 1970 & 1971. Design catalog and article reprints. OP*

P RACTICAL F ERRO -C EMENT B OATBUILDING, with Herman Husen, 3 editions in 1970, 1971 & 1972. Best-selling construction handbook, a how-to on ferro-cement. OP*

D ESIGNS & S ERVICES, 7 editions, 1971, 1972, 1987, 1988, 1990, 1993 & 1996. Catalog of plans & services of our firm.

B OATBUILDING & D ESIGN F ORUM , 1973. A monthly newsletter with more information on ferro-cement boatbuilding & other boatbuilding information. OP*

T HE B ENFORD 30, 3 editions in 1975, 1976 & 1977. An exposition on the virtues of this design and general philosophy on choosing a cruising boat. OP*

C RUISING D ESIGNS. 4 editions in 1975, 1976, 1993 & 1996. A catalog of plans and services and information about boats and equipment.

D ESIGN D EVELOPMENT OF A 40 METER S AILING Y ACHT, 1981. A technical paper presented to the Society of Naval Architects & Marine Engineers, at the fifth Chesapeake Sailing Yacht Symposium, and in the bound transactions of that meeting.

C RUISING Y ACHTS, 1983. A hard cover book with a selection of Benford designs covered in detail, including several complete sets of plans, a lot of information about the boats and how they came to be. Eight pages of color photos. OP*

T HE F LORIDA B AY COASTERS, A F AMILY OF S MALL S HIPS, 1988. A book of study plans of these Benford designed freighter yachts. OP*

S MALL C RAFT P LANS, 2 printings in 1990 and 1991. Revised edition 1997. A book with fifteen sets of full plans for 7-3 to 18-0 dinghies and tenders.

S MALL S HIPS , 5 editions, 1990, 1992, 1995, 1997 & 2002. A book of study plans for Benford designs for tugs, freighters (like the Florida Bay Coasters), ferries, excursion boats, trawler yachts, houseboats & fishing vessels. Ten pages of color photos.

P OCKET C RUISERS & T ABLOID Y ACHTS. Volume 1, 1992. Revised edition 1996. A book with 6 complete sets of plans (11 boats including the different versions) for boats from 14 to 25, including 14 & 20 Tug Yachts, 17 & 25 Fantail Steam Launches, a 14 Sloop, a 20 Catboat, and 20 Supply Boat & Cruiser.