The skiff is a small boat traditionally used in coastal or river craft used for leisure or fishing and have a one-person or small crew. Many children living on the Bay developed their fledgling boating sails rowing around the Chesapeake in skiffs, spending summers fishing and crabbing. Skiffs were also used by watermen to get to areas unassailable by larger ships because they were too narrow and/or shallow.
My skiff models are all rather simple; they are all built to the same 1:12 scale and can be completed in 2-3 days. For an example of a more detailed skiff, please see the ‘Other Boats’ page of this site.
I built a couple of skiffs for a guy living on the west coast who grew up here in Southern Maryland. He has fond memories of the summer days he and his brother spent on the water in a wooden skiff rented from Quade’s store in Bushwood, MD.
Upon receiving the models, he had this to say:
“They are well beyond my fondest hopes and bring a golden age before my very eyes.”
Cheaspeake Workboat Modeling 
I was so very privileged to have spent beautiful summer vacations at the farm just next to Bushwood Wharf, where with my cousins, I learned to fish on the sturdy skiffs my great aunts rented from Quade’s Store for my numerous cousins and friends. It is my dream to have a similar skiff to those at Bushwood, so that I might again have fried fish for breakfast, with small biscuits, taught to me by sisters Alice Chris and Dorothy, who lived their lives along that shore, lovingly caring for us with flour and Clabber Girl baking powder from the marvelous Quade country store. I am proud to say that I am very much the richer for having closely witnessed the superb, and loving service that the Quade family maintained there. I loved dearly Mrs. Quade and her son George, and his family. Mrs. Quade’s husband, that I sadly never knew, was once in the Oyster Business with my great-grandfather. Those were the days of tobacco and steamships on the beautiful Wicomico at beautiful Bushwood. May the Quade family forever be happy and prosperous.
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