Fundamentals of Boatbuilding and Advanced Fundamentals of Boatbuilding

Greg Rössel grew up cruising on the waters of New York Harbor and spending time in the boat yards on the south shore of Staten Island where economics (more than anything else) made wooden boats the craft of choice. He makes his home in Maine where he specializes in the construction and repair of small wooden boats. Since graduating at the top of his class in boatbuilding technology from Washington County Vocational Technical Institute, Greg has had a multifaceted career. For several years, he was an assistance restorer for a major private collection of antique runabouts and airplanes. Then he spent another couple of years as an instructor and assistant director at Maine Maritime Museum’s Apprenticeshop program. All the while, he was building his own shop at home in Troy, Maine, and tackling a wide variety of small-boat construction and restoration projects. For over 30 years, Greg has been able to work for himself full-time, aside from a few odd jobs like setting up a wooden Whitehall factory in Mexico, custom lines taking and documentation for museums and other customers, and writing over 200 articles for WoodenBoat, and other publications. He has also written and illustrated Building Small Boats, a book on carvel and traditional lapstrake boatbuilding, published by WoodenBoat Publications and The Boatbuilder’s Apprentice, which explores other styles of construction and techniques. Since 1987, Greg has been an instructor at WoodenBoat School in Brooklin, Maine, teaching lofting, skiff building and the “Fundamentals of Boatbuilding”. Also, for the past 21 years he has been producing a weekly two-hour radio program about world music (which mercifully) has nothing to do with boats.

Bruce MacKenzie is a shipwright, boatbuilder, and educator with 50+ years’ experience in all manner of woodworking, from basic carpentry to serving as Senior Shipwright on USS CONSTELLATION in Baltimore Harbor for 10 years. This culminated in building three of the replicas of the ship’s boats, built with participation by students from Baltimore City schools through a STEM-based program at the Living Classrooms Foundation. Bruce’s work as an educator began in 1978 when he founded the boatbuilding program at North Carolina’s Cape Fear Technical Institute, now Cape Fear Community College, where the program is ongoing. Bruce’s methods in teaching applied math through boatbuilding using proven, hands-on projects and exercises have been adopted by Building to Teach, a national program. A Maine native, Bruce learned and pursued his craft in many of Maine’s most prestigious yards, including Rockport Marine and Wayfarer Marine. He spent two years as Director of Philadelphia’s Workshop on the Water, the boatbuilding shop at Independence Seaport Museum. There he oversaw the building of two replica whaleboats for the CHARLES W. MORGAN—the last surviving whaler—for the National Whaleboat Project at Mystic Seaport. When not trying to figure out how things fit together, Bruce pursues sailing, diving, and playing blues harmonica in a band. These days, Bruce has set up an independent shop and chooses to work on projects that captivate his interests.

Despite an education and otherwise promising start in electronics manufacturing in Vermont, WADE SMITH couldn’t ignore the subversive call of the wooden boat in the back of his mind, and so left everything behind to study boatbuilding at the Apprenticeshop in Nobleboro, Maine. Rather than returning to the safety of a 9-to-5, Wade decided to follow his passion and continues to this day as a boatbuilder and boatbuilding instructor. Wade worked for Barry Thomas in the boatshop at Mystic Seaport, researching, documenting, and replicating historic watercraft from the museum’s collection, and learning every word of John Gardner’s famed Boatbuilding for Amateurs course. After Barry’s retirement, Wade continued on as the Director of the John Gardner Boat Shop for 11 years, during which time he helped to create, and subsequently oversaw, an exponential increase in boatbuilding-related courses, and assisted in setting up new boatbuilding programs from Maine to Honduras. After 15 years of working primarily as a teacher, Wade wanted to get back to building boats and was invited to join the crew at Taylor and Snediker Boatbuilding in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, whom he considers to be the most insanely multi-talented group of boatbuilders working anywhere today. Since then, he has been teaching boatbuilding for four weeks per year at WoodenBoat School and engaged in high-end commercial boatbuilding the rest of the year.

Warren Barker built his first boat, a Culler skiff, in 1976 after earning his B.A. at Williams College. He then studied at Hoosuck Design and Woodworking School before joining Murray Peterson Associates in Maine, where he helped to build a number of prams and spars, as well as the 42′ ketch NIA. For the next four years he worked as a project foreman at Eric Goetz Custom Sailboat Company, mostly building high-tech, one-off, cold-molded racing boats. Along the way, Warren has built or rebuilt a variety of small craft on his own. A two-and-a-half-year stint restoring the yawl COTTON BLOSSOM ended with his first commission in his new shop, a Haven 12½′. A Bridges Point 24 kept the doors open, followed by CURLEW, a reproduction of the Herreshoff Alerion. Immersed in the Herreshoff technique, he used their methods to produce a 26′ gig for Portsmouth Abbey School and a Columbia dinghy.  Having completed the 30′6″ William Garden–designed “Camilla” and the Herreshoff 12½′ “Crow Dancer” in his Westport, Massachusetts, shop, he took the position of senior instructor at IYRS mentoring the construction of Herreshoff designs from 12′ to 35′ and a smattering of other designers’ work.  Trying to stay ahead of the students, he is learning the ins and outs of GarWood and Chris-Craft boats.

Bob Fuller a third-generation boatbuilder and patternmaker with a commercial fishing background, grew up in Halifax, Massachusetts. He apprenticed with his father and grandfather, working in the family shop where he also learned the trade of designing and building traditional wooden ship’s steering wheels. Bob built his first wheel in 1976 at age 15. He enjoys building traditional small craft, including dories and Simmons Seaskiffs in his Plymouth, Massachusetts, shop. Recently, Bob has been teaching two apprentices the traditions of building ship’s steering wheels and wooden boats.

Thad Danielson felt a strong attraction to the ocean and boats at the age of nine on a liner voyage to East Africa with his family in 1954, reinforced over the next four years by having the Dar es Salaam waterfront as his playground. After high school in Rhode Island followed by college and graduate school, Thad got into sailing. Some years later, a chance look at one of the first sets of plans sold by WoodenBoat turned his interest from general woodworking and house building to wooden boats. He moved to Marblehead, Massachusetts, set up Redd’s Pond Boatworks, and was soon busy building and restoring a wide variety of traditional wooden boats. He recently retired from the shop but is still building boats. Thad is the North American Secretary of the Albert Strange Association.

Originally born in Minnesota, Pat Mahon grew up in Arizona, then moved to the Washington, D.C., area and eventually crossed paths with Bruce Nelson, a Maine-trained boatbuilder who took Pat under his wing. Working with Bruce rekindled a passion he had had for boats since his earliest years, building ships and boats from kits and reading everything he could find about ships and the sea. After a few years in D.C., Pat took off for England and was hired as an apprentice boatbuilder working on a 120′ wooden motoryacht. It was here that he learned what true craftsmanship could be. On returning to the U.S., he headed to Maine and helped build a variety of custom boats at yards in Boothbay Harbor, Camden, and Rockland. After 10 years, Pat moved to Port Townsend, Washington, with his wife Lisa. While there he worked with a large custom builder doing elegant interiors on megayachts, and ran his own boatbuilding and repair shop. For 10 years at the Northwest School of Wooden Boat Building he taught woodworking, boatbuilding, and the new Contemporary Wooden Boat Building and Yacht Interiors curriculum. Next came another adventure and move to Michigan where Pat became Director of the new Great Lakes Boat Building School. During his 10 years with GLBBS, he designed and taught a two-year boatbuilding course, and worked with the board to develop the school policies, budgets, marketing strategies, and everything else required to launch and sustain a successful educational nonprofit. In July 2017, he returned to Port Townsend and has been involved in a major restoration of the 1903 Morecombe Bay Prawner ZISKA. Pat also takes time to do marine surveys, and is one of the few on the West Coast with the knowledge to accurately appraise a wooden vessel.