Boats Designed for recreational rowers who want performance without intimidation
Find the rowing boat that is right for you
Why Choose Adirondack Boats. . .
- fast, stable, confidence inspiring boats
- works in chop, wakes, variable conditions
- rowing Fun
- Heritage story, HandCrafted
- Easy rowing quiet luxury
- Long-term heirloom boat
- excellent low impact fitness training
- Rowing heals the mind and strengthens the body!
Accessories for your rowing boat
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What OUR real Customers are saying
Ron Ricketts
I have owned my 14' Vermont Dory for 15 years - still loving it .. and every time I am out I think how lucky am I. Oh, btw, when other people see the boat they look at it like a piece of art ... 🙂
William Ray
There are simply not enough good things to be said about these folks and the boats they build. I have had my Solo Packboat for five seasons, and it seems to only get better with age. It rows beautifully regardless of the water conditions
Harvey Kerstein
My first Vermont Fishing Dory was and is so enjoyable that my wife and I fought over who got to enjoy it. I ultimately purchased two more. My wife uses a fixed seat configuration, and I use a sliding seat set up with feathering oars.
The Story Behind the Adirondack Guide Boat and Our Company
Rowboats for Recreational | Guide Boats | Fishing Boats | Packboats
Historically, the Adirondack Guideboat emerged in the 1840s as a specialized, lightweight, and fast rowing boat for Adirondack hunting and fishing guides. While the boats were developed in the mid-19th century, they peaked in popularity between 1880 and 1890.
For over 150 years, the Adirondack Guideboat has been regarded as one of the highest examples of the boatbuilder’s art. A fishing boat, a hunting boat, a hauling boat—it was a rowboat one man could carry for a mile or row for a week. Over time, the boats became lighter, faster, prettier, and easier to row.
The beauty and grace of the guide’s boat were a part of the wilderness experience. Professional guides were pursuing both game and customers. The stories a guide might tell, the game or fish his “sport” might bag, the meal he might cook, they were all part of what brought their “sport” back year after year.
The Adirondack Guideboat influenced commerce and culture and helped develop recreational rowing as a sport in the Lake Region of New York’s Adirondack Mountains. The boat was built with local pine, spruce, and cedar, and 8,000 tiny tacks and screws. With the advent of the automobile and the access roads, the Guideboat was no longer needed for regional transportation. But the boat's design was held in high esteem, and the Guideboat found a new place in recreational rowing.
Design
All Adirondack Guide Boat (AGB) hull designs are unique to our company. Each boat was designed, adapted, and created by Steve Kaulback, the company's founder, in 1996. His designs are an innovative blend of the Rushton and Grant lines, beautifully modernized using the cedar-strip epoxy-composite construction method. The result is an easy-to-use rowing boat, graceful, efficient, safe, and flexible, with a huge carrying capacity. AGB cedar Guideboats are available in lengths from 13 to 19 feet. Our composite boats are 15 feet.
The next innovations came with the evolution Kevlar®/GFP composites, providing exceptional weight and strength advantages. Our composite Guideboats are 15 feet.
The next boat in the AGB series was the 12-foot Vermont PackBoat, a small, lightweight boat perfect for rowing alone or with a friend. Steve designed a unique hull shape with a “hard chine” and concave turn to the flat bottom, creating a lightweight, agile, fast, safe, seaworthy boat that is, above all, easy to row. In 2013, the very popular ultra-light solo PackBoat was added to our fleet of small craft.
Our most popular AGB design is the 14-foot Vermont Fishing Dory. Steve enlarged his PackBoat design, creating an even more stable and fast boat that is excellent for recreational rowing, fishing, long-distance camp cruising, and daily fitness rowing. A fisherman can stand in the center of this Dory.
The Adirondack Guideboat Company Today
Adirondack Guide Boat is a Vermont-based builder of recreational rowboats located in North Ferrisburgh. Now, in our 30th year, our company has built over 95% of all Guideboats ever built—worldwide. Over the years, many hands have crafted these legendary boats, but those were different times and different technologies.
Our primary products are modern composite interpretations of traditional Adirondack-region boats, along with complementary original designs by Steve Kaulback. The company, founded by Kaulback in 1996, was acquired in 2012 by the Martin brothers, Justin and Ian, who were the company's primary boat-building employees.
Ian & Justin Martin
As the current owners of Adirondack Guideboat, brothers Justin and Ian Martin have over 40 years of combined experience building boats. Before buying the company in 2012, the Martin brothers worked for Adirondack Guideboat company founder, Steve Kaulback, and president, David Rosen, and Mad River Canoe. While they remain committed to the tradition of building wooden guideboats, Justin and Ian also use contemporary materials and tooling to create composite guideboats. They are both native Vermonters and continue to raise their families in Vermont today.
Erin Martin
Erin is the Adirondack Guideboat office manager, helping keep the administrative tasks of the company organized and running smoothly. She has known Justin and Ian since high school and married Justin in 2008. They have two wonderful children, Sadie and Maddox.
The company has always had a wood shop, producing Cedar Guide Boats, Cherry Oars, and many of the wooden components of the boat's structure. In recent years, AGB acquired a router-driven CNC machine and began producing oars for the trade, in-house production of all wooden parts, and custom wood parts for Hornbeck Canoes [https://hornbeckboats.com] and other boat-building companies.
THE ART OF THE BUILD
The Adirondack Guideboat Company has now built over 95% of all the Guideboats ever built!!!!
CALL JUSTIN OR IAN - THEY ARE ALWAYS HAPPY TO TALK ABOUT YOUR NEXT BOAT
+1 802-425-3926
Every Boat we build starts with a conversation
You’ll row with confidence. AGB boats are stable and comfortable. You’ll feel the smooth glide. You’ll love the ergonomics. And you won’t need a team of people to help you launch or retrieve your boat, because our hulls are a Kevlar®/GRP hybrid composite and are lightweight.
All AGB boats are designed for recreational rowers who want an easy-to-use rowboat that combines superior rowing performance with the craftsmanship and historical Adirondack lineage found only in our handcrafted boats
Handmade Row Boat Maintenance and Safety
- Remove the floor boards, center seat and the seat backs from the boat. Wash the boat, inside and out, with warm water and Dawn for Dishes. Give the boat a coating of good liquid wax and buff it off.
- Refresh the natural Cherry trim with a deep penetrating oil. If the wood is looking a bit gray, turn your boat upside down and tape the shear of the hull to protect the finish and then very lightly sand the wood. Sanding will remove most of the blemishes that occur in normal use.
- Wearing gloves and using a clean cotton cloth, apply a coating of teak oil and let it soak in for a few minutes then buff it. Turn the boat right side up and lightly sand and oil the gunnel trim. You can use the teak oil on the cane seats too.
Safety Tips
We believe in our boats because they are designed and built by hand to the highest standard. We know they are safe, secure, and sea-worthy. But, we still want to share how important it is for you and others on your boat, to be as safe as possible when you are on the water. To reinforce that idea, we thought we would share a few things we know about safety to keep you folks safe and secure.
First
Wear a life jacket. Always assume your boat is going to turn over, that everything’s going to get wet and that everything that can sink will sink. Since that is the case, make sure you have everything safely secured before you start out on your voyage to prevent the worst possible situation from happening.
When we go out, we leave our wallets under the seat of the car, and most of the time we do the same with our cell phones.
Second
This is more important than focusing on your material belongings, ALWAYS have non-swimmers or marginal swimmers securely wearing properly fitted life-jackets. The same applies to all children. ALWAYS have them wear a properly fitted life-jacket, (PFDs, personal flotation devices.) Little floaties or inner-tubes or water play toys are absolutely not acceptable.
Assume you and everyone else are going into the water and that you’ll need to get back to shore on your own power. That life-vest you left in the garage or in the car or on the floorboards of the boat ….don’t you wish you had it now?
For kids always go with the full life-jacket….such as the one shown to the left.
Swim-capable adults might like either of these next two PFDs. They are unobtrusive but will do the job. They inflate either automatically (with a CO2 cylinder) or by pulling on a rip-cord.
This is called a Stearns Inflata-Belt. It’s available lots of places online.
And this one is called SoSpenders. Also available thru an online search; it also inflates and like the one above, and it won’t get in the way while rowing.
One of our dealers, Rutabaga, in Madison, Wisconsin, has an extensive online store. Good prices too. Check them out at www.rutabaga.com
Third
As often as we’ve talked about the sea-worthiness of our boats, nearly 100% of the time, when there is a boating incident, in whatever kind of boat, it’s operator error. From the canoe with eight drunks to the Titanic, it’s always operator error. It’s somebody taking a boat into waters unsuitable for that particular boat or that particular day; or it’s the weather changing; or it’s someone loading a boat in an unsafe manner; or it’s too many people in the boat; or it’s alcohol; or a river changing from slow float to something out of Deliverance. We suggest the first time you go out in your boat that you do it solo. Make friends with the boat. Learn how to row it, learn how it feels and responds. Then go back for a passenger; or, perhaps let your passenger take the boat out solo too. Then both of you go out together. (Remember, if there are two adults in the boat….the center seat is empty). Always strive to have the boat sitting flat on the water. For whatever combination of kids, adults, dogs, and gear….you still want the boat flat on the water. Sometimes we achieve that through sandbags or 2-liter soda bottles filled with sand. (A woman, by the way, loves being told that she doesn’t weigh enough.) With practice and experience, you can modify these next recommendations, but it’s often a good idea if two people are going out to have the larger person get into the boat first, sit on the floor (not on the seat) somewhat nearer the middle of the boat. Then have the passenger get in and sit at the other end of the boat. Then the first person moves up to their seat.
Always strive to have the center of gravity low and near the center of the boat. Getting out should also be the reverse. A larger person sits on the floor, the second person gets out. Each person holds the boat secure for the other. Only one person moves at a time.
Standing in a small boat is always risky, even in our Vermont Fishing Dory, be careful, be cautious, assume the boat’s going to tip over.
Out in Washington State, it is a law that you have an emergency whistle on board. Every boat shop sells them. They also sell metal hand-mirrors for flashing at someone on shore. Good ideas. Both of them.
Secure gear into the boat. Put the things you want to be kept dry in bags that will keep them dry. Baggies are fine for keeping cookies dry….a waterproof bag is better for keeping that camera dry.
Be safe, have fun, assume the worst and you’ll probably never have to deal with anything more severe than too many laugh lines.
CONTACT US
Address:
9 Swan Lane
North Ferrisburgh, VT 05473
Email/Phone
guideboat@agbboats.com
Office +1 802-425-3926
Ian +1 802-318-7882
Justin +1 802-793-3285
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