Samual Devlin

About the Author

SAM DEVLIN earned his degree in biology and geology from the University of Oregon, but the ink had barely dried on his diploma when he got himself deeply and permanently bewitched by boats. He veered into a career as a designer and builder, and over the next 45 years his shop in Olympia, Washington produced more than 400 custom boats. His design catalog now includes some 160 oar, sail, motor and solar-electric watercraft from 6½ to 62 feet in length. Many of these are available as plans for amateur builders.

Devlin is both an incurable romantic and an analytic thinker, and a designer who takes as much interest in his customers as in his boats. He’s been known to check in on blogs by amateurs building his boats and make calls to warn them off the shoals of an impending mistake. He’s a teacher, offering a course each summer at the WoodenBoat School in Brooklin, Maine. And he is a writer. Devlin’s Boat Building, the first edition of his manual on the Stitch-and-Glue method of construction, has sold 70,000 copies. He’s written articles and columns for numerous boating magazines including WoodenBoat, Sailing, Pacific Yachting, Passagemaker, and Professional Boatbuilder.

In 2012 WoodenBoat magazine and the Northwest Maritime Center honored Devlin with their annual Lifetime Achievement Award. And, no surprise—he’s an avid boater himself with a U.S. Coast Guard 100-ton Master’s License. He cruises in Josephine, his classic 1934 salmon troller, or goes daysailing in a 20-foot sloop of his own design.

But it’s likely that his most enduring accomplishment has been to perfect a remarkably accessible method of construction enabling thousands of amateurs to build boats themselves in their garages and backyards.

“Building a boat is a complicated thing to do emotionally,” he has said. “I’ve always tried to be honest with people about what an incredible journey, what an emotional roller coaster, it is. It’s gigantic. I don’t think anyone can predict how they’re going to react. But this is what I know: I think building a boat is a noble thing to do. And of all the things I could have chosen to do, that could possibly have inspired people or brought joy to their lives, this is one that matters the most.”