14' Penobscot 14 Daysailer (2017) - SWEET DREAMS

The classic good looks of the Penobscot 14 captured my heart immediately. Thousands of hours — and ten and a half years later — I launched Sweet Dreams on July 29, 2017 on Lake Julian in Asheville NC. Since then she and I have shared many adventures, including trips to Florida, Illinois, St Michaels, Maryland (where we came in first in our category at the Mid-Atlantic Small Craft Festival in the fall of 2017) and Wilmington, NC in March 2022 where we came in first at the Cape Fear Community College Boat Show.

The best journey of all was an epic 3-week road trip to Eggemoggin Reach, Maine in the summer of 2018 where a fellow Penobscot 14 boatbuilder, Vince Bobrosky, and I culminated a long-held dream by sailing from Naskeag Point to the heart of the boat building universe: Center Harbor!

CONSTRUCTION NOTES:
Sweet Dreams is built of 1/4″ marine ply with cypress stringers, cypress stem, sassafras keel and a sandwiched transom of walnut on the inside and quarter sawn sycamore outside.
Breasthook, knees, quarter knees, and rudder housing are cherry.
Rudder and centerboard are white oak, while the tiller is ash and mahogany.
Spars are cypress and the mast was made hollow through birdsmouth construction and weighs only 13 pounds.
The seats are cypress with walnut accents.
Walnut is also used to reinforce the mast partner, and for the transom badge, centerboard case accents, fore and aft badges and cap rails.
Interior modifications were extensive from Arch Davis’ original plans and included: removing one athwartship seat and reinforcing the centerboard case with three 1/2″ marine ply bulkheads; mast partner was lowered and incorporated into the forward seat and reinforced; the centerboard is raised and lowered through a pulley system led aft through the case, and was trimmed and reshaped to not protrude through the centerboard case and a walnut/cypress cover was added; the tiller was made to tilt up by altering the rudder housing and lengthening the tiller itself.
The oars are made from sassafras, cut in half for storage and carbon fiber ferrules added for quick reassembly, and a removable cypress/walnut foot brace was added summer 2020 for rowing. (Which I do a lot of on Lake Julian — one mile from my house — on windless mornings throughout the year.)

EP CARRY ELECTRIC MOTOR added summer 2021:
Adding the small, removable, yet powerful, battery-powered, electric EP Carry motor to the transom transformed my relationship with Sweet Dreams!
It’s so much fun to head out knowing I don’t have to rely solely on sailing or rowing to reach a particular destination.
The motor has increased my range so much (5.5 miles in 75 minutes at full throttle on a fully charged battery) that I’ve been able to explore the far reaches of lakes I’ve never been to before — including the stunningly gorgeous Lake Jocassee in the mountains of South Carolina — as well as easily motoring to the ramp while towing my friend Vince and his Penobscot 14 when the wind died!

VIDEO NOTES:
Filmed on four different lakes:
Evergreen Lake, Illinois, sailing in company with my friend Vince Bobrosky and his Penobscot 14, E-z Duzit (also on exhibit here in the Classic Boat Show),
Lakes Keowee and Jocassee in upstate South Carolina, and
My home waters of Lake Julian in Asheville, NC.