One boat has been preserved in the Woodman Institute Museum in Dover, New Hampshire. Maine is home to many and the West Coast has its share. But after 50 years many of the boats built in the 1950s and 60s are still sailing and racing in New Hampshire’s Great Bay and far beyond. Planked and decked with thin plywood, the wooden MerryMacs were intended to have a limited life span. He also made the mold for a fiberglass version that was locally produced in small numbers. The MerryMac, simple enough for beginners but with enough performance thrills for dinghy racers, caught on with local sailors and by the mid-1960s McIntosh had built 200 copies. To keep the boat simple to sail, light, and inexpensive, he decided on a single triangular sail and plywood construction. For ease of building his mind turned to a hard-chined, shallow-V, sharpie hull with no skeg. For safety he designed his boat with a broad beam, high topsides and decks. With the MerryMac McIntosh gave the New Hampshire sailing community a basic sailboat at a price of $449. Mahogany stringers set under the plywood frames stiffen the bottom panels. The club became a place where sailors could not only race but also pack a picnic lunch, load the family in their MerryMacs, and explore the wooded coves and islands of Great Bay. Meetings at each other’s homes provided the sailing instruction and social atmosphere for the growing membership. By 1955 MerryMac sailors had formed the Great Bay Yacht Club, and held races every Sunday.

Soon there were more and more orders, and “McIntosh Custom Boats” was born. The two-boat fleet gained momentum when a friend’s cocktail party generated orders for six more MerryMacs. I was happy with the performance of MerryMac number 1 and was encouraged when my friend Phil wanted me to build number 2 so we could race.” Sailing seemed a smart choice here in the seacoast of New Hampshire. “People weren’t rich, but they sure had a lot more money to spend than they had had for the previous 25 years, and they wanted fun family activities. He says that in the early 1950s family life was returning to normal following WW II. Is it easy to build? Is it strong? Is it versatile? Is it fast? Is it fun? Can I repair it easily? Can I sell enough to make a living? What do folks want in a boat? What can they afford? What’s the best shallow-water design?” You know what works and what doesn’t, not only performance-wise, but other issues as well. When you sail many different boats, you become quite a critic. I was 37 years old and had been building boats and sailing them for 27 of them. “I launched the first MerryMac on Thanksgiving day,” he recalls. With its 90-sq-ft sail the MerryMac can make way in a whisper of a breeze. It was the simplicity of those boats and the fun of the evening competition that came to mind when McIntosh conceived a boat for dinghy adventuring and racing in Great Bay. In Panama the two men built their own small sloops to race after work. Once back in New England, he began building cruising yachts with his older brother Bud on the banks of the Piscataqua River.ĭuring his years in Panama, McIntosh had made friends with boatbuilder and designer Clark Mills, the creator of the Optimist pram. government and later did a stint as captain on a fishing boat working between the Galapagos and Puerto Rico. During World War II he was in Panama building and repairing wooden boats for the U.S.

The origins of this swift little cat-rigged sharpie started in New Hampshire in the barn/boatshop of the farmhouse that McIntosh has called home since his birth there. The simple rig is well suited to first-time sailors. Now he’s 98, and he and his MerryMac are still actively sailing in the waters off his winter base, a simple cottage called Termite Terrace that he shares with his wife Terry on Guana Cay. “You wanna race, Cap?” called her skipper, a senior citizen in a long-billed cap, denim shirt and double-patched, paint-stained khakis.įor the next hour McIntosh led me on a spritely chase that had us charging among the moored and anchored cruising boats in the settlement harbor. I was half-lost in a sailor’s daydream, running before a warm, 12-knot southerly when a blue, hard-chined catboat came surfing up behind me and surged past on a plane. I first met the boat and the man 16 years ago while sailing a little cutter in the lee of Great Guana Cay, Abaco, Bahamas.

And MerryMac lovers will tell you that the sense of adventure and challenge are rooted in both the boat itself and her designer/builder Ned “Mac” McIntosh. Its owners claim that it has always been so since the first of about 200 MerryMacs sprouted wings on the banks of New Hampshire’s Great Bay back in the early 1950s. The MerryMac catboat tends to make the blood hum with a sense of adventure and challenge.

Tim clark pocket for mac