Joe Dobler Designs

Joe Dobler

I'm not sure when I first became aware of Joe Dobler and his designs. In spite of the fact that he was an accomplished engineer and a pioneer of plywood stitch and glue small boat design, he never really hit the big time - if small boat designers ever do. What he did do was design several hundred boats from dinghies to 40 foot cruising trimarans.

Last summer, I went to San Diego to attend the ScuzBums Giant Five Day Messabout. There I met lots of nice folks including Tom Setum. Tom is Joe Dobler's son-in-law. and took possession of all of Joe's drawings after he passed away. Tom and I talked about Joe and his designs (he brought two to the messabout) and eventually had the idea that we would work together to make these plans available to the general public through this website. There is a lot of work to do and we will be posting the designs as we get them ready.

I should point out that these are modern, plywood stitch and glue boats unlike Wes Farmer's plans offered elsewhere in these pages, but like those older plans, the designer is no longer with us and so is not available to help the builder. We will do what we can to answer questions but you are really on your own. I should add that the building instructions are general. You will be building mainly from drawings and offsets. These plans are not recommended for first time builders.