White Cap 13.5

Description

The White Cap 13.5 (also known as the Old Town Whitecap) is a classic American wooden sailing dinghy built by the Old Town Canoe Company of Old Town, Maine, as a traditional lapstrake (clinker-built) daysailer/rowboat with a centerboard or drop keel. Introduced in the 1950s (with examples documented from the early 1950s through the 1960s), it features all-wood construction (typically cedar planking on oak frames with copper or bronze fastenings), a simple Bermuda (Marconi) sloop rig, and a conservative sail plan for easy, stable handling in protected or coastal waters—ideal as a family daysailer, yacht tender, or training boat. The design gained modest fame when one example, extensively modified by Robert Manry with a small cabin, became the famous Tinkerbelle, in which he completed a solo Atlantic crossing in 1965 (78 days from Massachusetts to England). Production numbers are low and undocumented precisely (likely dozens to low hundreds across the run), with surviving boats now prized as vintage wooden classics often requiring restoration.