The Traditional Small Craft Association: A Community for Small Boat Enthusiasts
Why Wooden Boat Lovers Should Check Out the TSCA
Anyone who enjoys building and using small boats knows it is as much about the people as it is about the wood, epoxy, and varnish. The Traditional Small Craft Association, better known as TSCA, has quietly built one of the friendliest and most engaged communities in the small boat world. If you like small wooden boats—traditional and otherwise—you should join!
TSCA’s mission is to celebrate traditional small craft and connect enthusiasts of every skill level. The TSCA organizes or participates in many small boat events across the US. One of the most prominent is the Mid-Atlantic Small Craft Festival, which they co-sponsor. This annual fall gathering is held at the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum in St. Michael's, and we’ve been fortunate to be part of it since the 1994.
If small boats are your thing, check out TSCA’s national chapters list, a useful way to find like-minded people wherever you drop anchor. Their events calendar is full of festivals, workshops, and regattas.
Here are some useful links:
• TSCA Website: tsca.net
• Become a member of TSCA: tsca.net/join
• Find a nearby TSCA chapter — Chapter locator map
• Events | TSCA — Small boat events happening across the country
• Members receive TSCA's quarterly magazine, The ASH BREEZE.
Andy Wolfe, the Editor of The Ash Breeze, writes:
The Traditional Small Craft Association grew out of the Small Craft Workshop at Mystic Seaport Museum. The first workshop, a real gathering of small-boat owners and builders, was held in 1970. The workshop quickly became very popular, and hundreds of small-boat nuts flocked to the Seaport for a weekend of everything small-wooden-boat.
In the Summer 2025 issue of The Ash Breeze, David Cockey related the founding story of the TSCA: "At the 1975 Small Craft Workshop, concern was focused on the need to spare traditional small craft designs from new Coast Guard design regulations. The proposed regulation would have used the Boston Whaler (whose ads claimed it was unsinkable) as the standard for small-boat buoyancy. This, in effect, meant that historic designs such as dories, Whitehalls, Maine peapods, Adirondack Guideboats, and so on had to be half-full of flotation foam to be legal. The leading lights in the world of traditional small boat preservation formed a loose collective, the TSCA, to have a voice in the development of sensible recreational boat safety regulations. [Editor's note: John Harris wrote about the design and testing of small boats according to USCG regs, here.]
"Thanks to the work of TSCA's early leaders, the buoyancy rules for small craft are smart, safe, and practical. Today, the Traditional Small Craft Association remains an active leader in the small-boat world, publishing The Ash Breeze magazine, sponsoring and promoting small craft events, and inspiring the construction of small boat designs that predate the advent of the marine gasoline engine. The Small Craft Workshop, now in its 56th year, is held at Mystic Seaport Museum in connection with the WoodenBoat Show. Everyone is welcome to bring their boat and participate."
Andy Wolfe became the editor of The Ash Breeze in 2012.
Recently, one of the TSCA's 37 chapters organized this small boat rendezvous on Mobjack Bay, in Virginia. Sponsoring "messabouts" for lovers of small wooden boats is at the core of the TSCA's mission. Image Credit: Matt Jensen Young