Princess 15

Description

The Princess (often listed as Princess or Princess 15 Skiff) is a compact 15-foot plywood sailing skiff designed by Ken Swan (of Swan Boat Design, a small-scale plans provider focused on simple, home-buildable wooden boats, primarily in the Pacific Northwest tradition). It shares a common hull form with Ken Swan's other 15-foot designs like the Little Gem and Winter Hawk variants, but the Princess specifically features a lug rig (likely balanced or standing lug) and daggerboard for shallow draft and easy beaching/trailering. Inspired loosely by classic small skiffs (with comparisons drawn to William Atkin's "Alone" design scaled up to 15 feet), it emphasizes open cockpit space—the aft half clear for lounging, sleeping under a boom tent, or light camping—making it suitable as a daysailer, overnighter, or gunkholer on protected waters like lakes, rivers, or coastal inlets. Construction is stitch-and-glue or glued-lapstrake plywood for lightweight, low-cost amateur building (no large-scale production; plans sold directly via Swan's site or ads in WoodenBoat magazine, with limited but enthusiastic home-built examples from the 1990s–2000s onward). Owners and forum users praise its neat handling, simplicity, and versatility as a pocket cruiser alternative to more complex boats.