Eastman Living Online Magazine

Article By John Larrabee
Photos By Fred Orkin, Maynard Wheeler, and Deborah Chambers

“I feel there is something almost sacred about building a boat. . . like creating a living being, a boat seems to have a soul and character all her own. . . it requires more thought to give a boat a good name, than it does a child.” (John Guzzwell, Trekka Round the World)

The Idea

Charlie Taber from the ECA Recreation staff approaches me while I’m cleaning up a Youth Conservation Corps project behind South Cove with a query: Would I be interested in building a boat with some students during winter break? “Would I?” I thought. He must be pulling my leg. I would love to. I went home and talked it up with my wife, Deborah. I would meet with Charlie and discuss the voyage.

In the spring of 2001, while working my way toward retirement, teaching 7th and 8th graders in a rural middle school in Maine, I became aware that many students were dropping out of school by the time they were 16 to work in a local paper mill. I pondered, “Was there anything I could do to help prevent this?” If these students could see the connection between classroom learning and real-life application maybe they would stay on to graduate. I wrote a dropout prevention grant for materials and we built several picnic tables in my math classroom (no shop in this school), using the geometry textbook and some basic carpenters’ tools. We sold the tables and made some money. I took the money and bought a wooden kit to build a small rowboat. We built it outside on sawhorses and stored it in an old shed for the summer. In September, we hauled the boat out to sand and paint. After the World Trade Center in New York City was destroyed on September 11, the students named the boat “Miss America.” By Christmas, a three-car garage was donated and erected on the playground and an after-school boat building program was launched. We built and restored many boats and kayaks over the next four years and raffled each off to fund the next project. Would I want to work with students building a boat? You bet, Charlie.

Charting the Course

Charlie and I met, created the project title, developed the student application, and selected a boat to build—a Bevin’s Skiff, a 12’ rowboat, capable of carrying 450 pounds or three adults was chosen. It is a popular boat with family boat building programs and it goes together rather quickly. I was very familiar with the vessel and modified the plans to teach more skills than the original plan required. I wrote a syllabus with a brief overview of the project, including a list of boat building and nautical terms.

Funding and Support

Christopher Columbus would never have left the dock if Ferdinand and Isabella hadn’t dug deep into their pockets. Charlie applied for funding from the Eastman Charitable Foundation that granted funds for the materials. Marine mahogany is essential for constructing a lasting wood vessel, whether a kayak or a World Cup contender. New Hampshire Boat Museum in Wolfeboro provided the wood at a reduced cost.

Where would we build it? The shop would have to be heated or heatable as February is no time to be cutting, gluing and fastening outside. Mike Gornnert, Eastman’s Chief Maintenance Officer, and his crew provided a bay in the old Eastman firehouse. We had a little clean-up, made some benches, and got some sawhorses and work lights loaned from Habitat for Humanity. We made a day trip for the wood and another day trip for the marine paint, fasteners, and hardware. Then all we needed to do was to find a work crew.

Avast, Ye Mateys

Charlie Taber placed an announcement in Eastman Highlights to entice teenagers to put their cellphones down and spend their school vacation building a real boat. Students needn’t have any woodworking skills. A positive attitude, good listening skills and the ability to work safely in a team were all that was necessary. Boat builders needed to be at least 12 years old, and the crew would be limited to eight. Bob Katz, an able seaman and woodcrafter, was drafted to help guide the boat builders. In accordance with the teenager-mediation-of-time-phenomenon, most of the crew signed on at, or beyond the deadline. The applications were well written and the applicants were well-known to us, so Charlie and I decided to forgo the interview process and sally forth. We distributed the syllabus and class schedule to the students/boat builders.

The Build

Jack Chase, Eric Gessner, Andrew Han, Anna Hill, Shaun Kronenwetter, and Andrew Wilson showed up on Day 1 with energy, enthusiasm, and their lunches. There were many questions about what we were going to build, how we were going to do it, and such. Bob and I gave them an overview of the project, reviewed the tools and how they would be used, reviewed a rough schedule of the steps in the process, and most importantly, discussed shop safety. We looked at photos of a completed Bevin’s Skiff and explained that no one would be expected to go beyond their comfort level during the construction process. The build was on.

MURPHY’S LAW: If anything can go wrong, it will go wrong.
FITZPATRICK’S LAW: Murphy was an optimist.

Much of the morning of Day 1 was spent re-measuring and re-cutting mahogany to follow the Bevin’s Skiff plan. By day’s end, the boat builders had fastened the side planks to the stem, which is the bow or pointy end, with silicon bronze screws and epoxy and managed to set the center frame to give the boat its initial shape. More importantly, they knew why they used the materials and skills they used and, for the most part, were becoming familiar with terms such as Spanish
windlass, low angle block plane, countersink, and Cabosil, an epoxy thickener. Some of crew stayed longer to review the next day’s plan and to clean the shop.

Applying the Three Rs

I think some of the essential tools in the education process are reflection, review, and repetition. Especially when taking academic information and translating it to real life skills, it is important to remind the crew of the connections of the plank’s shape to science and math in the plan’s drawing, connecting it as well to what they did yesterday or what they learned so far, and how that all comes together. Goal setting and goal adjusting, problem-solving, especially as a group process, and learning from mistakes help to give students a stronger sense of purpose, and to feed their values and reason for learning. The epiphany—the light bulb going on—when a student puts all that knowledge to work in the practical setting is wondrous and powerful.

Challenges were met with solutions when ideas came from the group. Setting up a team of pilot hole drillers, epoxy mixers and appliers, and screw gun operators to fasten the transom (stern piece) to the planks and the chine log to the planks made the construction efficient and smooth. It took virtually all of the boat builders and all of the spring clamps to bend in the chine logs without breaking them. By the end of Day 3, the hull had its fair shape, the bottom was fastened, and the boat was ready for its frames (a/k/a ribs). During a break in the work, the builders who were now a team, devised a system for each member to weigh-in on a possible name for the skiff. They developed charts and tallied the votes. However, they agreed that no decision would be made until the spring vacation crew, who would do the sanding and painting, weighed-in on the choices

Fiber-glassing the bottom was not called for in the plans, but would provide a sturdier vessel, more capable of taking a beating on the shores of Eastman Lake. It would also provide exposure to yet another boatbuilding skill. After cleaning the boat bottom, stretching the cloth, cutting on the bias around corners for strength, spreading epoxy, and filling the weave with a squeegee, the crew stepped back from their work with an audible, collective sigh of completion and pride.

By Day 5 the boat builders had created a water-tight craft capable of carrying her passengers safely. As the last boat builder left the shop that Friday, the mass of mahogany now looked like a streamlined boat hull, ready for sanding and paint, although there were still 42-odd spring clamps arranged around her gunnels.

April Break and the Finish

Bob and I made a few adjustments to the boat before the spring break, when Anna, Andrew Wilson, Jack Chase and his friend, Andy Stanford joined us in the shop for the finishing. There would be sanding, sanding, sanding, and more sanding. Nothing builds character like sanding. The weather was beautiful for the whole week so we were able to move the boat outside or at least to open all the doors and windows.

Once the boat was sanded and wiped down with solvent, the team primed it inside and out, sanded it again and wiped it down again. Marine paint is slow to dry, but it does the job. They learned a lot about drips, curtains, and clean-up. We divided jobs into a varnish crew for the thwarts, or seats, and a paint crew. Since accurate taping is necessary to keep the paint lines fair and gentle on the eye, we chose a traditional work-boat color scheme, which is easier to maintain and repaint. We also used an environmentally safe bottom paint.

Anna Hill had volunteered early on to stitch leather strips on new oars for the skiff. Bound to see the job through, she had done her homework on the baseball stitch, the method of fastening the wear-protecting and sound-dampening
leathers to the oars. Equipped with a sailor’s palm, Anna set herself to the task at hand, from measuring to piercing, then lacing, with a finishing coat of protective neatsfoot oil. Her pleasure with a job-well done was unfettered.

Jack, Anna, Bob, and I looked at the finished boat. She is a thing of quality, this boat. She has characteristics which make her good, not the least of which is the work of the boat builders that went into her. She is simple and will be a long-standing memory for her makers. They’ll remember the tasks, the conversations, the camaraderie, and the creation of a craft pleasing to the eye.

She is Loon-I-See and joined the fleet at South Cove following a launching ceremony, as yet another way for boaters to enjoy solitude and reflection on the waters of Eastman Lake.

“Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing—absolutely nothing—half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.” Water Rat to Mole in Kenneth Grahame’s classic The Wind in the Willows.

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