It’s not about the boats

One of Deborah Simmons’ calling cards reads: “Deborah Simmons, Ed. D., Music Professional, Artist, Boat Builder,” which begs two questions: Who is Deborah Simmons? And why is she important to Points East?

If you’d asked the first question right after we’d first met her, we would have answered, “She’s a Force-4 breath – no, refreshing gust – of fresh air, with a passion for life.” If you’d asked the second question, we might have responded: “Because she builds boats.”

But both of these responses would only have scratched the surface of this creative being, because, with Deborah Simmons, it is not all about the boats. It is, rather, about people and places, and if there is one thing we like to say here at Points East, it’s that we’re as much about people and places as we are about boats.

Early this summer, at the WoodenBoat Show in Mystic, Conn., the Glastonbury resident was exhibiting a 20-foot Renn Tolman-designed Alaskan skiff she built during 2015-2016. The V-bottom design was built by the stitch-and-glue method, using marine plywood, fiberglass and epoxy.

She was named Mende Liberté – literally, “Mende free.” A rice farmer named Singbe-Pieh (also known as Cinque), the leader of 53 captive Africans aboard the slave schooner Amistad, was of the Mende people — one of two large ethnic groups in Sierra Leone. On July 2, 1839, the prisoners overpowered their captors and took over the ship. Deborah’s stout little vessel – designed for Alaskan waters — incorporates symbolism, designs, script, and materials that honor the Amistad Slave Rebellion, 177 years ago.

A précis of the building project (seen to Deborah’s right in the photo, on the cabin bulkhead) is mounted on iroko from Sierra Leone and South Carolina. “These scraps were a gift from the construction of an updated version of the Amistad, built between 1998 and 2000 at Mystic Seaport,” Deborah said.

Sierra Leone Kente-cloth patterns decorate the companionway trim and forward-rails stanchions. An African narrative cosmogram is mounted on the forward hatch. “This represents the journey of the Amistad captives, fraught with danger, from their homeland, and their strength that enabled them to return to it,” said Deborah.

Various asymmetric design aspects of Mende Liberté also have significance: “One traditional belief is to present asymmetrical patterns to ward off negative spirits,” she said.

The sides of the cabin trunk are adorned with what appear to be hieroglyphics, but they are characters of a Mende language called Kikakui. They recite Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly in Paris in 1948: “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.”

Mende Liberté was not Deborah’s first crack at boatbuilding: She won two awards in the 2015 I Built It Myself category – First Place Judge’s Choice and First Place Sailing Dinghy – for her 12-foot Chesapeake Light Craft Passagemaker sloop. And herein lies the delicious conundrum.

Deborah Annette Simmons, Ed. D., is professor of Music at Manchester Community College, in Manchester, Conn. She grew up in a musical family in Greenville, N.C., and learned to play piano, and brass, woodwind and string instruments. She earned a masters and a doctorate in Music Education at Columbia University. So, we asked her, what is the connection between music and boats? Well, the answer, as you might imagine, was not the rhumb line from Point A to Point B. For Deborah, there was no rhapsody of wind in the rigging, no concerto of booming bow waves and sizzling wakes, no sonata of whale-song and seabird cries. Instead there was this:

“I am a serious visual artist,” she said. “Five years ago, I did some two-dimensional, multimedia work based on navigation charts in the Connecticut River. I went to the WoodenBoat Show, saw an Adirondack Guide Boat, and discovered Chesapeake Light Craft.” She was inspired, and a boatbuilder was born.

And what about the Tolman Alaskan Skiff she built with such great passion and commitment: Did Mende Liberté win an award? “No, she didn’t,” said Deborah, so joyfully you’d have thought she’d garnered all the hardware. “But I didn’t expect her to.”

We parted with Dr. Deborah Simmons convinced that, for her, it’s never just about the boats.