I was planning on being an artist. I took art classes during my last two years of high school, got my bachelor’s degree in art in 1975, and in the years that followed, continued drawing, and sculpted a couple of clay busts. Portraiture was the direction I was headed, but I got sidetracked by backpacking and bicycle touring. I eventually grew tired of lugging a heavy backpack and while on a bike tour from Seattle to Los Angeles and back, I got hit by a car in Salt Lake City and then repeatedly run off the road on California’s Pacific Coast Highway. That left boating—I wouldn’t have to carry anything, and the “roads” would be a lot wider. I read books on boatbuilding by John Gardner and Pete Culler and decided to build a Chamberlain-designed 14′ Marblehead dory skiff to cruise north along the Inside Passage. According to a note I made in a journal I was keeping at the time, I started construction on July 12, 1978. While the kayak was the first real boat I built and launched, it was just a warm-up to this Marblehead dory skiff. The book resting on the upturned bottom of the boat is a blank book I started in 1973, while an art student on exchange to Smith, an all-women’s college in Massachusetts, and stopped making entries in 1980. In that time my focus had shifted from art to boatbuilding.
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Great memories, Chris. How many boats do you reckon you’ve built since then?
I came up with a list of about 35 boats that I can remember.
Can you publish your list? It’d be great to see. Thanks
There are a few boats that I’d missed in my first count. There are 39 here, in no particular order:
Self-designed SOF kayak
SOF Greenland kayak
Chamberlain dory skiff GAMINE
Hooper Bay kayak
Gunning dory SECOND WIND
Swampscott dory
New York Whitehall
Livery Whitehall
6 rowing skiffs for a summer camp
Kodiak 2-hole kayak
Sneakbox cold-molded LUNA
Gokstad faering ROWENA
Lapstrake decked canoe
Caledonia yawl ALISON
Garvey camp cruiser self-designed HESPERIA
Folding coracle FAERIE
Traditional coracle
2 children’s SOF Greenland kayaks
Alaska retrieval kayak
3 Plywood Greenland kayaks
King Island kayak
Folding rolling Greenland kayak
Baidarka SOF
Greenland kayak for art installation
2 Greenland kayaks for my book
Annapolis Wherry from kit
2 Greenland kayaks on commission
Flat-bottomed rowing skiff
Escargot canal boat (built with son and his friend) BONZO
There were two boats that I made in the early ’70s that preceded my start as a boatbuilder in 1978: an umiak-like boat I made of alder saplings and covered with clear plastic sheeting, and a cattail reed boat—more like a surfboard, actually—that was inspired by Thor Heyerdahl’s RA.
I grew up with a similar motto, “never pay for anything you can do yourself.” The greatest satisfaction is sitting back and reflecting on the day’s progress, whether it be fixing an appliance or building a house. I can’t claim to have built 35 boats, perhaps about half that many, but I still call myself a “serial boatbuilder.” Your article brought back memories of building my first kayak. I would have been about 16 (well over 50 years ago). I built it out of plywood, launched it on January 1st on Vancouver’s English Bay, and it leaked like a sieve! When I got back to the beach, my legs were too numb to walk. Fortunately, my skill has improved a bit since then. Not to mention I discovered epoxy!
Seems that boat building just changed your focus in mediums, but not your career as an artist 🙂