January 1, 2007
-
More Boatbuilding Links — 2007
I see that I’m not the only one of the female gender, with no prior boat-building experience, who has pondered building a boat.
Excerpt from “Two Women and a Boat (to Say Nothing of
the Dog)“by Jane
Cates“. . . The first thing that Lily and I noticed was that the class was
composed of men: men in little canvas aprons with lots of pockets and
lots of tools; men with canvas bags with lots of pockets and lots of
tools. We put our Home Depot bags down on the workbench. We noticed
that no one else’s tools still had bar code stickers.There was lumber sufficient to make seven canoes. Now this is a lot
of lumber, none of it looking particularly like a canoe part. Bill
Thomas, the instructor, explained his policy of “no boat left behind”
and assured us that we would all be working together to make sure that
everyone progressed at the same pace and that we all would go home with
something closer to a boat than to a lumber pile. Why were all the guys
looking at us? Lily and I busily arranged out tools in neat rows and
plugged in the battery to our drill. We were all given sets of plans to
take home and study. Lily and I admired the blueprints and noted that
some of them looked like pictures of a boat. The instruction manual was
in a code which remains unbroken to this day.But here was Bill’s promise, a promise which was true: every task,
no matter how daunting it may seem, is just a series of small steps
which, done carefully and in the proper order, can be accomplished by
anyone who cares to try. Moreover, there are no insurmountable
problems, just challenges, which can be overcome. . . .”From a rather cool online magazine — Eclectica
http://www.eclectica.org/v10n1/cates.html
http://www.thewoodenboatschool.com/
