In one of the do-it-yourself magazines I liked to read, I saw an ad for a bandsaw built from a kit. It had the necessary metal pieces; all I had to do was make the plywood and lumber frame. I mailed my order with a check for around $35 to Gilliom Manufacturing in St. Charles, Missouri; when the plans and parts arrived I built the frame, installed the metal parts, added a 1/3-hp electric motor, and I was in business. There was nothing fancy about the bare plywood bandsaw, but it got the dory project moving along at a satisfying pace and I began to enjoy the work. I finished the dory skiff and a few months later began building a second boat, a gunning dory.
When I decided to follow the route Nathaniel Bishop took from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to Cedar Key, Florida, in the winter of 1874–75, I chose not to build a replica of his CENTENNIAL REPUBLIC, the sneakbox at the heart of his book, Four Months in a Sneak-Box. I was drawn to build instead the Barnegat Bay sneakbox detailed in Chapelle’s American Small Sailing Craft because it had an intriguing feature: a daggerboard set 10″ to starboard, on the outside edge of the cockpit coaming. Bishop’s boat had its daggerboard just aft of the mast, on the centerline, where you’d expect it to be. Chapelle offered good reasons for moving the board to one side.
My son was late in arriving. Nine months came and went without any stirrings from him. Another week went by. Still nothing. Cindy and I had both taken leave from work and we had time on our hands, so we loaded up the lapstrake decked canoe I’d built and headed for the lake. We had paddled a mile or so and it was then that Nathan, as he would be named, made his move. Contractions had begun, and not long after putting the canoe back in the garage we were on our way to the hospital.
When I moved back home to Seattle and began building boats in 1978, there were three shops where I could buy new and used hardware and tools. There’s only one left now and its days are numbered. Hardwick’s Hardware was established in 1932 in the midst of the Great Depression by the current owner’s grandfather. The store has been in its current location since 1938. It’s a single-story building being engulfed by the construction of new, much taller buildings all around it.
The Gokstad faering I built for a 1,000-mile row up the Inside Passage of British Columbia and Alaska was a very well-mannered boat, but with two of us rowing I often found myself pulling harder on one side to maintain a straight course. It’s all too easy to assume it’s the other rower that’s making the corrections necessary, but leveling accusations against a partner isn’t good for crew morale. I made a small rudder especially for rowing and connected its tiller with two lines to a footboard tiller. That kept the peace aboard the boat and allowed both of us to row each in our own way without quarreling about someone putting uneven pressure on the oars.
The boat was a Herreshoff Amphi-craft, designed in 1935 by Sidney Herreshoff, Captain Nat’s eldest son. Dad had always been enamored of wooden boats. He grew up in Lowell, Massachusetts, and summered in Marblehead where he frequently sailed, MOLLY MAY, his father’s cutter and drove the harbor launch taking yachtsmen to and from their boats at anchor. He had also visited L. Francis Herreshoff, Sidney’s brother, in the Herreshoff Castle on the hill above the harbor. To find a Herreshoff dinghy on the West Coast must have seemed like kismet to Dad, and although he was supporting a family of five on a teacher’s salary, I think he would have paid anything to have it.
The feeling that led to me to turn tail was not new to me; I had just learned to give it the attention it deserved. Many years ago, I had set out to go kayaking on Puget Sound while there was a strong southwesterly blowing. The conditions were perfect for some exciting paddling and downwind surfing. I’d gone out many times in the same conditions, always thoroughly enjoyed them, and came back elated. This one time I was feeling a bit off as I paddled the mile and a half in the lee of West Point, just north of downtown Seattle. As I drew near the end of the point I could see the waves tumbling by just beyond the lighthouse. The conditions were perfect.
To the west, 50 yards away across a flat plain of tawny salt-marsh grass, we spotted a man in a plaid shirt and a green baseball cap walking toward us. His conversation with us had apparently started well before we could hear his voice, and by the time we shook hands with him and introduced ourselves he was well into the story of his life and how he came to be here in the middle of a coastal marsh. This was Arthur Dennan. He was 61, but his weather-creased face and silvery beard made him look a decade older.
This year I revived the idea a sheltered helm. I put three large forward-facing windows in the front of the cabin, reinstalled the rudder and kill-switch lines, and added a pair of lines to control the throttle. A stick clamped to the outboard’s bracket holds the tiller upright, and a yoke pressed on the throttle provides some leverage and finer control. Taking out two of the sleeping platform panels and replacing them with short seats provides a footwell for comfortable upright seating.
Several years ago, I had toyed with the idea of using an inflatable boat fender as a roller. The type of fender with a hole down the middle makes it possible to skewer one with a steel rod for an axle. The roller cart I made worked, but I didn’t really need it because I could just as easily carry a kayak on my shoulder. If I made a cart for the canoe with a larger fender, I thought I might have an easier time launching my canoe. Fenders are quite expensive, but I’ve had the good fortune to live by a mile-long lake almost completely hemmed in by marinas and there are a lot of runaway fenders. Just this fall I found five tucked under wharves and in the brambles.
