The building of Lafitte Skiff Marlaine

Marlaine on the hard, showing the classic lines of a Lafitte Skiff. Photo courtesy David Sharp

May 2023

By David Sharp

The design of the Lafitte Skiff needs no introduction among boaters in south Louisiana, but here’s a brief one for the rest of the country. These skiffs are native to south Louisiana and are primarily designed for fishing and especially shrimping. They are usually under 30-feet long and their main attributes are: 1) an afterdeck that extends a couple of feet aft over the transom to prevent a trawl from fouling the prop; 2) a shoal-draft hull with a flared, deep-V bow tapering to a flat bottom aft; and 3) a very large engine. The flat after-body gets the skiffs up on a plane while the flared bow cuts right through heavy chop for a dry ride. This hull shape, combined with a big engine, gives the skiffs lots of speed for getting to shrimping grounds and returning before the ice melts. The broad, flat afterdeck is a good working platform for fishing or landing and sorting shrimp.

In 1962 my father, David “Jack” Sharp, commissioned Emile “Bill” Dufrene of Lafitte, Louisiana, to build him a Lafitte Skiff. Mr. Dufrene was the most famous of the early builders of Lafitte Skiffs, and some claim he invented the design. What is not in dispute is that most of the skiffs Dufrene built over the years incorporated a v-bottom, which was an improvement over the original flat-bottom design.

Dad was retiring, and his new boat was to be used for fishing and trawling for shrimp on Lake Pontchartrain and in the Gulf. Dad gave Mr. Dufrene some very basic requirements for his boat, and I think that small piece of notepaper was the only documentation involved in the boat’s design and construction. The boat was to be about 27-feet long, with an open cockpit for fishing and the typical aft overhang. Dad wanted a small, basic cuddy cabin forward with a v-berth, but no frills. The rest of the boat’s design and construction was left up to Bill Dufrene. The agreed-on price for the boat was $2,775, with Dad supplying the 383 cubic inch, 305 h.p. Chrysler V8 engine (tame for a Lafitte Skiff this size).

Mr. Dufrene had a long waiting list, and he built boats one or maybe two at a time, so it was almost two years before our boat was launched. In the meantime, Dad decided to name her Marlaine after my sisters, Margaret and Elaine. When Emile was ready to start on the boat, Dad and I went down to Lafitte to meet with him. Mr. Dufrene had a keel timber sitting on sawhorses, and he gave Dad a pencil telling him to mark on the plank how long he wanted the boat. Thus started the build process that went along without a scrap of paper that I know of. Most Lafitte Skiffs are fiberglass today, but, as was typical of Dufrene’s building methods, Marlaine’s hull was cypress planked over heavy sawn frames with marine plywood decks and cabin.

Dad and I made several trips to Dufrene’s shop during Marlaine’s construction. Despite his heavy Cajun accent, we got to know Mr. Dufrene quite well. Bill always seemed very friendly and laidback, but thoughtful and deliberate, and he had a great sense of humor. As my pictures show, Dufrene’s boat shop was not a model of organization, but it worked for him, and his finished products looked like they had been built in a pristine setting. Mr. Dufrene would have been about 54 at the time, and he told us that his son was more interested in city life in New Orleans than carrying on the boatbuilding trade down in the remote bayou country.

When Marlaine was completed, our family attended the launching ceremony that included, at Emile’s insistence, a Catholic priest blessing the boat. Marlaine was a handsome sight sitting on the bayou with her white hull and traditional teal-colored decks. She floated on her lines right off with hardly a drop of water coming through her new planked hull. After stowing some gear and a quick sea trial, Dad and I drove Marlaine to her home port of Slidell. Dad had a bit of a learning curve handling the single inboard, and it was a little dicey transiting the locks to cross the Mississippi River among a fleet of tugs and barges. But Dad soon got the hang of it, and we discovered that Marlaine could really move. She got up on a plane quickly and could go through the steep chop in Lake Pontchartrain at full throttle with spray flying out off her flared bow, but with her decks staying dry.

Dad kept Marlaine at our family’s dock off Palm Bayou in Slidell, and he soon installed a tubular steel towing frame amidships so he could easily steer while towing a shrimp trawl. Dad recruited me as a deck hand for shrimping during summers when I wasn’t in college or working elsewhere – but that’s another story! Dad used Marlaine for many years, trawling, fishing and even for family pleasure cruises with my mother (yet another story!).

My parents’ interests eventually turned to land cruising with a travel trailer, and they sold their Lafitte Skiff to the owner of a local seafood store for use as a commercial fishing boat. Dad died in 1983, and I know Marlaine gave him a lot of pleasure while he owned her.

Mr. Emile “Bill” Dufrene died in 1992 at the age of 82.

David Sharp is a retired ocean engineer living in Newport, R.I. He started boating as a child and has owned over 20 boats. David and his partner, Nancy Grinnell, currently day sail their Pearson Ensign and cruise New England aboard Carry On, a 2001 Cape Classic trawler.