To build a boat
With apologies to Jack London
By Ed Lange
When you were a kid, did you ever build a boat? Odds are better than even that you did. Not necessarily a full-size boat that you could actually climb into, but dollars to doughnuts, you built a toy boat of some kind. It might have been nothing more than half a walnut shell with a twig for a mast and a maple leaf for a sail. Or you might have been more advanced and sawed a pointed bow on one end of an old pine board and then nailed smaller pieces of wood on top to build a superstructure. Or you might have gone the commercial route and built a wooden or plastic boat from a kit. Or maybe you even went for the whole hog and built a real boat with your father or a scout troop. But I’ll bet you built a boat, because we love to see things float.
Why? You don’t expect me to have an answer for that, do you? I have no idea why. We just do. Go with it. Did you ever toss a snowball into a pond? A stick into a stream? Ever watch a beach ball skitter merrily across a pool pushed by a puff of wind? If someone lets go of a helium balloon, do you watch it? Did you ever float a pie pan in dishwater? We love the water and we love to watch things float. Maybe it has something to do with a sense of freedom. Or a desire to be effortlessly buoyed, cradled and gently rocked. I think it’s in our DNA. I’ll bet even Cro-Magnon people, right after they discovered that rocks sink, tossed pieces of wood into rivers and streams to watch them float. Well, at least inquisitive little Cro-Magnon kids who weren’t out hunting wooly mammoths.
I’m with them, and probably with you. I love to watch things float on the water or in the air. As a kid, I built dozens of boats, including all the aforementioned and some others that were less successful. Such as the log raft I built in our backyard that was far too heavy to transport anywhere near any water, but that’s another embarrassing story. This story is about the non-embarrassing, successful building of a pretty doggone good rowing/sailing dinghy. You see, some of us never outgrow the desire to build boats. So, I built a boat. And completely usurped our entire garage in the process.
Out there in the intergalactic internet universe, one can find boat-building planets orbiting among millions of websites. I discovered several and landed on a benign-looking one that offered, not boat kits, but construction plans for lots of different boats that inspire imagination and initiative. Once the decision was made to actually do it, the buying began. I bought the plans for the 10-foot dinghy. I bought the mahogany plywood, the fiberglass, the epoxy resin, the wood flour, the latex gloves, the paint, the brushes and rollers, the hardware and fittings, the wood for the mast, and the sail kit.
Did I say sail “kit”? Yes. Despite my many years of sailing, I didn’t have a clue how to build a sail. Sails aren’t merely flat pieces of cloth, but are precisely designed with subtly curved shapes and fittings to suit a particular rig. Even with the sail kit custom-designed to my little boat’s specifications, I had to rely on my wife, Linda’s, sewing expertise to actually stitch the darn Dacron thing together. (I don’t have a clue how to sew, either.)
Except for the wonderfully skilled craftsmen who still build boats the traditional way: individual piece by individual piece, the method by which most home-built boats are constructed today is commonly known as “composite stitch-and-glue”. But they aren’t really stitched and they aren’t really glued. Though they are a composite of wood, fiberglass and epoxy.
The process can best be compared with the making of a moccasin, where several panels of leather are cut to shape, holes are pierced along the edges of the panels, and then the leather panels are stitched together. In building a boat, several panels of plywood are cut to shape, holes are drilled along the edges of the panels and then the panels are stitched together with plastic cable ties or wire. It is then that the “composite” part of the process comes into play. All of the seams where the panels meet are sealed, secured and made watertight with strips of fiberglass cloth and epoxy. When the fabric fiberglass and the liquid epoxy cure together, they form a very solid and strong bond. This is the essential step that creates a monocoque (single shell) structure and gives the boat its strength and durability and allows it to—hallelujah—float!
Careful details are what set apart any one thing from any similar thing—from a suit of clothes, to furniture, to a home. And so, I became finicky about the finishing touches. Although I followed the boat’s basic construction plans carefully, I chose to make some personal modifications in seating, storage and other non-critical details. The little boat is also fitted with brass and bronze hardware, a contrasting paint scheme, a hand-carved nameplate and even four hand-carved mahogany belaying pins for the sail controls.
Our little boat is named Maiden, for a number of etymological reasons, although we briefly considered Handmaiden, and Linda thought we should add our hailing port to the transom so that it would read, “Handmaiden, Delmar, NY” as a tip-of-the-hat to my late father’s love of bad puns. But after a laugh and a groan, we stuck with Maiden, period.
Out there in that boat-building universe is an array of plans for very simple little boats that can be built from one single sheet of plywood to large, complicated cruisers. Maiden happens to have a v-bottom that required compound curves and a sailing rig, but plans are available for much easier flat-bottomed boats, such as sharpies or punts and others without sailing rigs. Given the proper tools, even the Cro-Magnon man could have gone fishing in his own little boat rather than risking his life hunting those hairy betusked behemoths.
Ed Lange is the former Artistic Director for NYSTI in Troy. Three of his plays were finalists for national Audie Awards, one in which he won an award. His articles have appeared multiple times in national magazines: Sail, Soundings, American Theatre and Dramatics.