The Story of AWOOGA
A big idea
in a little boat.
She’s 14 feet of marine plywood, epoxy and stubbornness — a mini tugboat with the heart and the voice of something ten times her size. Here’s how she came to be.
Ahoy! Meet the boat
What AWOOGA is
AWOOGA is a hand-built Berkeley Engineering CANDU E-Z — a 14′3″ mini tugboat made the honest way, from marine plywood, fiberglass cloth and epoxy. She cruises at a relaxed five miles per hour, sleeps two, and carries a crew of three to five who don’t mind a cozy cabin. She is small, she is charming, and she is unmistakably a tugboat.
- Length
- 14′3″
- Beam
- 7′0″
- Draft
- ~17″
- Power
- 20 HP
- Cruise
- ~5 mph
- Home Port
- Clinton, CT
- Crew
- 3–5 • sleeps 2
- Says
- AWOOGA!
The Inspiration
It started with TooT TooT
In 2010, at the Mystic WoodenBoat Show, Adam and Taylor met a charming little tugboat named TooT TooT. Taylor took one look and delivered the line that would change the next decade and a half: “You can build that next.”
Twelve years of planning later, in 2022, the first sheet of plywood was cut.
TooT TooT’s builder, Mike, stayed part of the story the whole way through — right down to the tip about redesigning the folding mast as a lever, and showing up in person on launch day.
TooT TooT, of course, had its own ancestors, who had ancestors, who had ancestors — it’s tugboats all the way down. Want to meet the whole salty family tree before AWOOGA shows up and embarrasses everyone at the reunion?
Trace the lineage →The builder story
Built by one stubborn human
AWOOGA was built largely solo, over three years, in the time between everything else life asks of you. The build has all the honesty of a first-time wooden boat: fiberglass that didn’t bond the first time and had to be sanded off and redone, stern pieces re-cut from templates when the plan measurements fought back, and the occasional “in retrospect, I should have…” The motto throughout: caulk and paint make it what it ain’t.
The full, photo-by-photo account — every win and every do-over — lives on the Build page.
See the full Build →How’d it get that name?
Small boat, enormous voice
The name comes straight from the sound. Imagine a giant, comical “BWAAAAA” erupting from a hull barely taller than a person. That delightful mismatch — a tiny boat with a foghorn voice — is the personality of the boat. So she became AWOOGA, and later earned a pair of perforated cartoon eyes and a bubble-blowing smoke stack to match the attitude.
The point of it all
Why she exists
This project exists because someone said “you can build that,” and someone else believed it enough to spend three years proving it. AWOOGA is part boat, part character, part love letter to small wooden craft and the people who build them.
Fifteen years, one little hull
The making of AWOOGA
One dare in 2010, a twelve-year daydream, three years of sawdust — and a 14-foot tug with a foghorn voice. Here’s the whole voyage on one timeline.
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2010 · Mystic, CT
“You can build that next.”
Adam and Taylor meet a garden-shed-sized tug named TooT TooT at the Mystic WoodenBoat Show. Five words land like a life sentence.
-
2010 – 2022
The twelve-year daydream
Plans studied, plywood priced and put back, napkins sketched at 2 a.m. “Someday” refuses to leave — until it finds a blueprint in the Berkeley CANDU E-Z.
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2022 · Field research
A perfectly innocent joyride
Mike takes the family out on TooT TooT while Adam stalks the dock with a camera — ~900 “reference” photos of every cleat, rivet and rub rail.
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September 2022
The first cut
The first sheet of marine plywood is scored and snapped. AWOOGA stops being an admirer and becomes a boat under construction in a two-car garage.
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2023
A hull takes shape
Bottom glassed, keel foam-filled, skins cut and the sides bonded on. By late 2023 the pile of plywood finally looks like a tugboat.
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2024
Glass, fair & paint
Cloth, endless fairing and Kirby marine paint — medium-blue hull, yellow cabin, russet gunwale. The cabin, helm and folding-mast lever go in.
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April 27, 2025 · Launch day
Splashdown at Clinton Harbor
Fresh decals, a custom Mystic Knotwork bow pudding, and Mike on the dock to watch. She floats. Of course she floats.
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July 2025
She makes the magazine
WoodenBoat runs AWOOGA in Launchings — “a formidable little workboat built with heart, heritage, and a horn that turns heads.”
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October 2025
A full boat profile
Small Boats (by WoodenBoat) publishes a full CANDU E-Z Boat Profile, written by Adam himself. Two times in print and counting.
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Now · To be continued
The line goes on
AWOOGA has founded a Fleet of sister tugs and is already making dock-dwellers say “you can build that.” Somewhere, Generation III is a sheet of plywood that doesn’t know yet.
David, meet Goliath
AWOOGA vs. a 6,770-horsepower giant
Meet the Gerard McAllister — the newest, brawniest tug in McAllister Towing’s fleet, fresh off the ways in 2025. On paper it is no contest. We ran the contest anyway. Spoiler: the 14-foot one out-tugs the 93-foot one in every category that actually matters.
Roughly to scale, same waterline. Yes, really — she’d fit on his foredeck with room for a picnic.
The draught gag
Gerard draws 17 feet; AWOOGA draws 17 inches. The part of Gerard that’s underwater is taller than AWOOGA is long. She just refuses to take it seriously.
She beat him to the water
AWOOGA splashed April 27, 2025. The mighty Gerard didn’t get wet until August 15. A 14-foot tug was throwing wakes for nearly four months before the flagship’s hull ever touched salt.
Horsepower isn’t everything
It would take 338 of AWOOGA’s outboards to match one Gerard. Sure. But all 6,770 of those horses can’t blow a single bubble or wiggle one eyebrow. Advantage: AWOOGA.
Final score: Gerard McAllister wins every fight you can measure with a scale. AWOOGA wins every one you can’t.
The Gerard McAllister’s figures are real — 6,770 HP, 84-ton bollard pull, 92′10″ LOA, launched 2025. Hat tip to the McAllister Towing fleet. No tugs were harmed; a few were gently out-tugged. Want the whole species ranked? Tug School’s strength ladder awaits →The Sonar Sweep
Who’s hearing the AWOOGA?
Every time someone loads a page on this site, AWOOGA lets out a tiny, completely silent awooga into the void — and the void pings back a glowing dot on the map.
Think of it as her sonar: a heat-bloom of every soul who’s drifted into the wake of a 14-foot tugboat with delusions of grandeur. No names, no IP addresses, no creepy business — just cities lit up like buoys at night. Pull up the chart and see how far one little foghorn carries.
- — Pings logged
- — Cities reached
- — Countries
Come find her
How far are you from AWOOGA?
She never leaves Clinton Harbor by much. Tap the compass and it'll draw the line straight from wherever you are to her slip — and tell you how long the trip would take at her honest 6-knot amble.
AWOOGA is tied up at Clinton Harbor, Connecticut — 41.27° N, 72.53° W, on the north shore of Long Island Sound. Want to know exactly how far that is from you?
🔒 Your location is read once, in your browser, to do the math — it's never sent anywhere or stored.
Taking a bearing…
from her slip
— · — as the gull flies
…
- Bearing to her—
- Sail time @ 6 kn—
AWOOGA lives at Clinton Harbor, Connecticut.
Asked at every dock
Frequently asked questions
The questions AWOOGA gets everywhere she goes — answered honestly, foghorn included.
What is a CANDU E-Z mini tugboat?
The CANDU E-Z is a mini tugboat designed by Berkeley Engineering and Research. AWOOGA is a hand-built CANDU E-Z — a 14′3″ wooden tugboat made from marine plywood, fiberglass and epoxy that cruises at about five miles per hour and sleeps two.
Who designed the AWOOGA mini tugboat plans?
AWOOGA was built from Berkeley Engineering CANDU E-Z plans, drawn by Berkeley Eastman in 1986 as his very first design. Berkeley Engineering’s website has since gone quiet, so we keep a lovingly preserved view of it in our Berkeley Engineering archive. Looking for plans of your own? Send Adam a message — he doesn’t sell anything, but he refuses to let a future tug die of a dead link, so together you’ll figure it out.
How big is the AWOOGA mini tugboat?
AWOOGA is 14 feet 3 inches long with a 7-foot beam and roughly 17 inches of draft, powered by a 20-hp Tohatsu outboard. The full breakdown lives on the Anatomy page.
How long did AWOOGA take to build?
Three years of building — the first sheet of plywood was cut in September 2022 and she launched into Clinton Harbor on April 27, 2025, built largely solo in a two-car garage. Counting from the day the idea struck at the 2010 Mystic WoodenBoat Show, it took fifteen.
How much did AWOOGA cost to build?
Every purchase was logged, and the complete itemized ledger — totals, categories, and the original receipts — is published on the Cost of AWOOGA page. Short version: more than planned, and worth every penny.
How many people can AWOOGA carry?
She passed her US Coast Guard Auxiliary safety check and is rated for 7 aboard, though 3 to 5 is the comfortable number. With a mattress in the cabin she sleeps two.
Why is she called AWOOGA?
She carries a foghorn wildly out of scale for a 14-foot hull — a giant BWAAAAA from a boat barely taller than a person. The name is the sound. (There’s a button further up this page if you’d like a demonstration.)
Can I build a CANDU E-Z myself?
Yes — the design is amateur-buildable from marine plywood, fiberglass and epoxy, and the roughly 65-page plan set is still sold by Berkeley Engineering and Research. Start with the honest build guide, then check the real numbers and price your own.
Keep exploring
Where to next?
Follow the build, ride along, or check the receipts.