Wooden Boats: In Pursuit of the Perfect Craft at an American Boatyard

Wooden Boats: In Pursuit of the Perfect Craft at an American Boatyard

A celebration of the craftsmanship, creativity, and artistry of wooden boatbuilding There are fewer than 10,000 wooden boats in America, but the circulation of WoodenBoat magazine exceeds 180,000. What is it about these boats that has captured the popular imagination? With his "lively blend of reportage [and] reflection" ( Los Angeles Times ), Michael Ruhlman sets off for a renowned boatyard in Martha's Vineyard to follow the construction of two boats—Rebecca, a 60-foot modern pleasure schooner, and Elisa Lee, a 32-foot powerboat. Filled with exquisite details and stories of the sea, this exciting exploration of a nearly forgotten craft and the colorful personalities involved will enthrall wooden boat owners as well as craftspeople of every stripe, nature enthusiasts, and fans of compelling nonfiction. "Wooden Boats describes in loving detail how these vessels are made. . . . Mr. Ruhlman consistently comes through with touching lyricism." —The Wall Street Journal "Ruhlman's deft blending of boatbuilding description and seagoing lore will satisfy even the fussiest of wooden-boat enthusiasts." —WoodenBoat magazine Michael Ruhlman is the author of The Making of a Chef , The Soul of a Chef , and Charcuterie . He has also collaborated with Thomas Keller on two cookbooks, The French Laundry Cookbook and Bouchon . Additionally, Ruhlman has written for The New York Times , Gourmet , Saveur , and Food Arts magazine, as well as being featured on the PBS series Cooking Under Fire .   Wooden Boats In Pursuit of the Perfect Craft at an American Boatyard By Michael Ruhlman Penguin Books Copyright © 2002 Michael Ruhlman All right reserved. ISBN: 014200121X Chapter One Boatstruck : there could be no other explanation for the impulsetoward Rebecca . The man was boatstruck. Some people becomeboat smart; others are simply struck. Something happensto certain men when they see a boat, and they become crazy. A man,or the occasional woman (women seem to be less frequently disturbed),who is boatstruck shows no easily discernible outward signs of the illness.On the contrary, the boatstruck look more than reasonable. Theyare successful people. They are not easily carried away. They have accumulatedif not substantial wealth, then at least significant disposableincome. They are smart, cool, self-possessed, and they are pretty goodon the water. They brim with a free and adventurous spirit. You tendto like these people?they can be inexplicably magnetic. But a manwho is boatstruck often has an unrealistic understanding of his cashsituation. And cash is the fulcrum on which a boatstruck life teetersbetween bliss and ruin. Boats require plenty of cash.     And yet there is something exquisite about the condition of beingboatstruck. An ecstasy runs through it, compulsive and contagious.You can see it, sense this delight, even if you happen to be free of theaffliction yourself or don't sail or even if you don't particularly care forboats. Sometimes a beautiful boat is simply worthy of devotion, reverence,and awe, and no one doubts it. A beautiful boat is as obviouslyinvaluable as a Leonardo sketch or Monet's water lilies. The boat canbe a magnificent structure. And the boat most likely to be deemed so issurely the wooden boat. Many groan at the thought of such boats, recallingsome youthful foolishness that resulted in much maintenanceand repair and not a single second of actual sailing. That's a woodenboat, all right, but that boat is not magnificent. We are not talking hereabout the wreck, that piece of shit on the farthest mooring, built in thefifties and uncared for almost from its launching; we are talking ratherabout the well-built, meticulously crafted, lovingly cared for, continuallysailed, plank-on-frame, gaff-rigged vessel. That boat inspires. It canbe 20 feet or 80, and it is the same thing?it's a form that you know atyour core. The perfect wooden sailboat. Such a product of man's mindand labor?a series of pieces of wood bent around frames?is worthyof even the most peculiar fetish of man, of adoration, is worthy perhapseven of lunacy.     In 1995, in Vineyard Haven, Massachusetts, a boatstruck man answereda question posed by a boatbuilder. It may have been one of themost common of all dialogues between the boatstruck and the boatbuilder,but on this occasion something substantial would be born fromit, born of all this, all that wooden boats were and are, all that theyattract?this adoration, this reverence, this innate sense of truth, this want , this insanity, this intelligence, this capacity to imagine beauty anddraw its design so that it will move through water with grace andpower, be drawn through it by wind?a boat born ultimately of a deepknowledge of how wood on water works, knowledge earned overmany thousands of miles on the earth's oceans, many decades buildingboats, and long study of a five-thousand-year-old practice, and born,too, of a sense of all that the boat might b