Backyard boatbuilding, a lonely craft

The author’s 1929 Crosby Cruisette. Photo courtesy Mike Martel.

Spring 2023

By Capt. Michael L. Martel

I was asked to pen an article for our yacht club’s newsletter, the topic being “Why do people build their own boats?” My editor probably asked me because she knows that I have built and refurbished a couple of boats myself over the years. That notwithstanding, I confess that there is no simple or easy answer; in fact, it begs the question, “Does anyone actually build their own boat anymore?” The surprising answer is “why, yes, indeed, they do.”

There are many reasons, actually, why someone would want to build their own boat rather than purchase one already built. I’m not talking about commercial builders who construct multiple boats for sale, but rather the solitary, individual backyard boat builder. Someone with a moderate skill level, plenty of time available and the ability to purchase the necessary tools and materials to get the job done.

It isn’t profitable, really. You end up working for perhaps 25 cents an hour (or less) by the time the project is all done, and you’ve invested plenty in hardware and materials in addition to your time.

When we talk about home-built boats, we are generally referring to small boats, power, and sail, in the 8-foot to 20-foot range. They are usually made of wood (plywood and mahogany, for example) with fiberglass or synthetic cloth and epoxy, powered by oars, sail, or a small motor. Such boats are almost always built of new materials and usually from a set of plans.

Someone might be building a boat for a son or daughter to use; at the other end of the spectrum, we might find a skilled craftsman building a one-design racing sailboat in a particular class, one that must conform to specific rules and materials in its construction in order to legally compete, remembering (as I do) yesterday’s Lightning and Thistle-class sailboats. Once upon a time, yacht clubs had fleets of these and other similar classes of small, fast sailboats competing in weekend races. Many were simply hard-chine designs built of plywood.

Individually home-building boats is time-consuming, difficult and exacting work. And yet, often enough, when one is completed it isn’t long before another begins to take shape on the same set of supports that the last one was built upon.

Why is this so?

“Passion,” explains my friend Caesar DaPonte, a local boatbuilder whose father, José, founded C&C Marine, a well-known Bristol boatbuilder. Although C&C boats are built of fiberglass, their layers of glass cloth and resin are “hand-laid up,” Caesar says, keeping a certain level of craftsmanship involved in the manufacture, whereas most fiberglass boat hulls are simply “molded.” But you wouldn’t attempt to hand-lay a multilayer fiberglass hull in your own garage; it’s a specialized skill, Caesar explains, not typically the realm of the backyard boatbuilder, but rather, a professional skill developed over time.

Arguably, the tradition of building one’s own boats can be said to have started here in Bristol, R.I., back in the 1860s when two brothers, Nathanael Greene Herreshoff, and John Brown Herreshoff, began building boats for profit on the Bristol harbor waterfront. “Captain Nat” was a brilliant engineer and naval architect, “J.B.,” though blind, equally so, and a good businessman.

They were passionate about design, speed and the dynamics of sailing and went on to find a dynasty of America’s Cup defenders built upon highly advanced yacht designs that were decades ahead of their time. Perhaps we can wonder if their example inspired so many others down through the years to attempt to do the same thing, i.e., design and build good, even great, boats on their own.

The standard-bearer in boatbuilding guides and resources has for many years been “Wooden Boat” magazine, published in Brooklin, Maine. That magazine has essentially fed two very lively (and passionate) communities of boatbuilders in the U.S., one in Maine and the other in Port Townsend, Washington, on the West Coast. Of course, there are other small “pocket” communities of boatbuilders in Canada, across the pond and really around the world as well.

The global COVID pandemic actually sparked a “wave” of personal boatbuilding. Some of it was because people now had the time to engage in such projects, and in part, because having a small boat gave people the freedom to get out on the water where there was perceived to be greater safety, fresh air, and certainly, far fewer restrictions.

My late-grandfather – Andrew Dunbar home-built boats, and he built boats as part of the boatbuilding team at the Herreshoff Manufacturing Company here in Bristol during the early years of the last century. During the ‘40s, they built PT (Patrol Torpedo) boats as part of the war effort. But at his home in nearby Warren, R.I., I recall him building small dinghies in his basement.

On one occasion, there was a very heated debate between him and my grandmother as to whether or not an already-completed pram would actually fit up through the bulkhead entrance to the basement. After all, one reason is that it is probably easier to remove part of the structure of a shed than it is to remove part of a foundation. In the end, it did fit, after removal (and later replacement) of a couple of rub rails, but after that, grandfather was admonished to take his measurements and calculations more carefully prior to driving the first screw.

Building a new boat from scratch (and plans) is a project. I built a 13-foot plywood and mahogany skiff (Sharpie) from plans in my basement. It was a Ken Swan design, and I built it for my son, Kevin. I barely got it out of the basement, but it lasted 25 years and has been towed, as a dinghy, all over Narragansett Bay – and even to Nantucket.

But it’s easier to refurbish or repair an existing boat, and many who want to own and enjoy a boat follow that route. It makes sense: It’s more often less costly than building new – and to an extent – easier. Every piece of damaged wood that must be replaced is, in itself, a template for the new plank or piece. Trace it out against a new piece of wood, cut, and shape, fasten in place and you’re on your way. I learned this approach, and it made the greatest sense to me from a past steward at the Bristol Yacht Club many years ago and adopted it myself. As he explained, you purchase a small boat that needs repair, fix it up, enjoy it for a year and then sell it. The money becomes “working capital” that you use to purchase another project boat – larger perhaps – and then follow the formula until you have the boat of your dreams: each successive wreck purchased with the money from selling the previous project boat. Following this formula, I began with a 16-foot abandoned Sea Skiff. Its transom was rotted, so I took a chainsaw to the last 6 inches of the boat, and it became the world’s first 15.5-foot Sea Skiff. I then moved on (or up?) to a 33-foot 1952 Richardson Cabin Cruiser, which I chose for reasons that I will describe.

Boatbuilding and wooden boat restorations quite often begin with a dream – a dream that becomes powerful and driving over time. Developing and pushing the project well past a point where it might have sensibly ended. Where the angel whispering good counsel is saying, “quit now and cut your losses.”

But it is never the good angel that the backyard boatbuilder is listening to. I have perched on an upper rung of a ladder leaning precariously against the side of a boat in disrepair, daydreaming images of the boat slicing through the lovely sun-dappled waters of Narragansett Bay, all the while hacking away at a piece of rotten planking with a firmer chisel and mallet. The daydream fuels and drives the project; it is a means to an end.

I don’t know why I chose an old 1952 cabin cruiser . . . probably because it was similar to the types of boats that my grandfather owned in his later years. Once, having traveled to Newport, R.I. for the folk festival in my 15.5-foot Sea Skiff and having a rough ride of it on a blustery day, I saw a big old wooden cabin cruiser anchored inshore with a group of friends aboard having a party and listening to the festival. It had an aft cockpit deck, certainly a head or toilet down below, bunks, a cooler for beer and chairs on the little deck. A door that one could literally walk through led from the aft deck into the main cabin, where there was probably food as well. Its age and state of partial disrepair were evident. The people aboard were sitting in their folding chairs in the aft cockpit, laughing and drinking and having a good time. That’s what I want, I told myself, a boat like that. And eventually, that’s what I found, rebuilt and launched.

I even removed her engines, twin 1951 Chrysler Crown flathead 6-cylinder gasoline engines, and towed them in a U-Haul over the Berkshires to Buffalo, N.Y., to be rebuilt by a specialist, then back in a lake-effect blizzard. But that is in itself another story. One does these things, like driving through blizzards with engines in tow, not because one has to but because one wants to. That is the life of the backyard boatbuilder!

There have been two more projects since then: a fiberglass Gulfstar 44 center-cockpit sloop and a 1930 Alden gaff yawl, 44-foot long, a major project that took eight years to complete. But those are stories in themselves that could be the basis, indeed, for a book.

Much is learned by doing, and the wise man pays a skilled professional, such as a marine electrician, for example, to do what he or she cannot do safely or competently. In the end, the more of the work that you farm out to professionals, however, the more the project costs, to the point where you may not be able to complete it. No one can be a master of all trades, and one is bound to make mistakes. I made many but grew better at what I was doing. The more I did myself, the more I studied, and the more that I listened to more knowledgeable people than I, the better my work became.

The fellow to whom I sold my Richardson attempted some electrical re-wiring on his own and almost set the boat on fire. He could have called me, but I had done a few things haphazardly as well, and thus, it would have been a case of the blind leading the blind.

All boats, excepting the Gulfstar, were wooden, and when I was finished with each restoration, I had a sturdy boat. Although I made mistakes along the way, none were serious enough to cause me to get wet. What I liked about this fixer-upper approach, which ultimately involved more than 20 years of my time and effort, was the learning process involved in the repair and rebuilding of these boats.

Equally as important as basic woodworking instincts and developing skills are quality tools – hand tools as well as power tools. All tools cost money, of course, and when I was first married, and our children were young, I had no money: at least none to spare on hobbies and woodworking. So, we made it a point to spend some time on the weekends scouring flea markets and yard sales.

I often found quality old tools such as Witherby chisels for cheap money, and they were of better metal and higher quality than costly new ones in the hardware stores. I invested in a sharpening stone system and a water wheel. A friend of mine, Paul, had an equally ingenious system for stuffing his tool chest. At the time, Sears & Roebuck had a policy of free replacement of any Craftsman hand tool that was broken or chipped. Paul would snap up broken Craftsman screwdrivers at the flea markets for pennies. “Are you sure you want that?” the seller would ask. “It’s chipped.” “No problem,” Paul would answer and settle for paying 25 cents for it. Later in the week, he would drive to the Sears store locally and trade the tool for a brand-new screwdriver worth considerably more. This is how we built our tool inventories so that we could fix up boats. Eventually, old worn-out power tools such as sanders and drills gave way to new tools and well-stocked workshops.

Getting older does find one slowing down a bit. What used to take only five times longer than expected to, say, replace a plank now requires nearly double that time for the backyard boatbuilder. But the dream never fades. A couple of years ago, during a February storm with hurricane-force winds, my antique gaff yawl was knocked over by another boat in the boatyard where it was being stored and, after inspection, was deemed a total loss.

Her proud old wooden hull was wracked; only a total rebuild would work. It was a fitting end, perhaps, better than sinking or burning, and this time I could not save her. Insurance paid me more than I could have obtained by selling her. It could be argued that she had become too much for me to sail by myself – too large, too many lines to pull on, too many sails (4) to tend alone if the wind came up. So, she was broken up, and I salvaged what I could.

I was not to be without a boat, however, but for a short time. While searching for a replacement, I happened upon an advertisement for a 1929 32-foot powerboat in much need of repair, and after bargaining with the owner, purchased her and brought her home to my backyard. Here I was, starting all over again with a wooden hull and a box of screws. Old wooden boat romantics like me are hopeless. We will cease our efforts when we die. I re-named the boat Anna Mary after our first grandchild. Work has begun, albeit at a slower pace than in former years, to repair her and restore her, and there is much to do. But I recall the words of Captain Joshua Slocum when he began rebuilding the wreck of the derelict 36-foot oyster dredge Spray, which he later went on to circumnavigate the globe in 1895. To onlookers, rebuilding this tired, derelict boat in a front yard in Fairhaven was a futile waste of effort. “But will it pay?” they asked Slocum. “I replied that I would make it pay,” Slocum said.

And that’s ultimately is the best that a backyard boatbuilder can hope for.

Capt. Mike Martel sails out of Bristol, R.I., holds a 100-ton master’s license and is a lifelong boating and marine industry enthusiast. He enjoys delivering boats to destinations along the U.S. east coast and in the Caribbean and writing about his experiences on the water and other marine topics.