by John G. Hanna
Almost everyone knows nowadays that "amigo" is a Spanish word translated “friend” in the dictionaries. As used in an informal way by our Southern neighbors, however, it often carries the meaning of our “pal” or “chum.” It is in the latter sense I have applied the name to this design.. Its a simple, informal, friendly, dependable little boat in which Pa, Ma, and the kids,. or a bunch of young fellows, can put out for a week-end, or a longer vacation, of real fun and no worries. It distinctly isn’t the boat for the show-offs who want the fastest, and therefore necessarily the lightest possible, crate in which to go tearing about a crowded harbor at 17 miles (always described by the owner as 22½.) And it isn’t the most utterly simplified, angular box that can be knocked together in a hurry. Sailors in any port in the world will admire its truly thoroughbred lines. Yet it is by no means hard or expensive to build. In many ways that 30 years of boat building experience have taught me, I have taken most of the trouble and hard jobs out of the design. Actually, it should not cost more than $30 to $45 more material, and ten days more work, to build Amigo than the 24-foot Dorothy, simplified to the last possible limit, which I designed some years ago. Knowing the- amateur boat building public as thoroughly as I do, I know right here a lot of you who have been admiring the boat -will turn pale and back up and gasp, “Oh, but it’s a round bilge hull, with steam bent frames—so terribly hard to build! I never could do it!” That is pure essence of bunk. There are (or were, pre-war) about 50,000 boat building shops in this country. I have visited a lot of them. In every case where the builder had experience with both types, he declared the round was much the easiest and quickest and therefore cheapest, to build. And 50,000 boat builders can’t be wrong about their own business!
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