Hello my name is Dave, I have a shop in Northern California. My passion is building with wood and I love classic boats made from wood
This is a blog about building a 1913 classic yawl from scratch. For me, actually for anyone, this is a formidable project. While I’m not a green, first time boat builder and have built many complicated things over the last 40 or so years, there are many things about this build that will be challenging. So let me just say at the outset that I’m not trying to come off as a pro boat builder. I’m not formally trained as a shipwright and I haven’t been to any boat building classes. What I know I’ve learned on my own. But I have the shop, the time and tools and besides, someone once told me:
“When you get bored building things with square corners go find a boat”.
This is not a kit. (Nothing wrong with kits) There are no instructions. (missing those) And there is no help line. What I have to start with is an orderly jumble of lines, through which, if you look long and carefully, you can see the shape of a boat appear. Laying these lines down on the floor, full size, in three different views (lofting) was a most miraculous achievement, truly amazing. I am still marveling over the process. Entire books were written about it. I think I have them all and the pages are tattered.
So let me introduce this project. But first, I must say, perhaps as a warning, there are easier boats to build. This is not a first boat, unless you are like me and don’t mind in being overwhelmed. But Theresa ll is pretty special. She’s a design by Albert Strange, an English designer who lived at the turn of the last century. She’s a 2 masted, gaff rigged yawl 25½ feet on deck. What makes Theresa II so special is the fact that… well, most likely, there is not another one like her anywhere on the planet. She wasn’t designed with an engine. I plan to add one which will change the weight of the boat. She was designed with a cast iron ballast. I will change that to lead. These and a few other changes required some minor recalculations as they alter the basic distribution of weight on the boat. The boat as designed is just really beautiful and I’m not altering anything that will look or perform differently. But the plans leave off quite a bit of detail and so there has been a lot of head scratching going on lately.
So by this point you may be wondering, Why pick this boat of all the boat designs out there? In fact, why even build one? Why not just buy one? There are certainly plenty of really great boats with everything you could want already on them. Well, I’ve asked myself that question more than a few times and truthfully, I haven’t come up with a good answer. Except for 2 things: First, I feel this boat is a part of history and has a story that just has to be told. Albert Strange was an artist and it certainly shows in his designs. Small boats of this type, from this time of the early last century along the south coast of England spawned the whole idea of cruising in small boats for pleasure. This is where it started. Prior to this small boats were generally work boats or fishing boats and when they were worn out they were usually just pulled up on a mud flat and left to rot. Strange designed boats for the common folk so they could take off and explore the coast of Scotland or Ireland, places you could not get to otherwise. So there is a purpose in my efforts, perhaps a rebuff against a world of glitter and plastic.
The other reason I am building and not buying, and this I know is true for me. It’s really simple. Doingness is better than havingness. I know, that sounds way too Zen. But boat building is a Zen activity, being lost in the rhythm of tasks at hand. Anyone who has held a 100-year-old plane and sliced shavings so thin you can see through them will attest to that. Fun is in the creating of something not the having of it. I know everybody‘s not like that but for me it just is. To further make my point: If you go to any marina, you will see hundreds of boats just tied to the dock. Beautiful weekend, beautiful day, yet hundreds of boats. These boats were bought and there they sit. Anyone who owns one of these boats can tell you that the experiences of ownership are generally painful. Most people enter the boating cycle at the wrong point, having. They don’t know enough about the boat or the sea and every time they go out something breaks. And so there she sits.
I hope to enlighten and inspire someone to attempt a similar project. Almost all the barriers are only in your head. They are learning barriers. I think most people don’t build because either they don’t have the time, the space or the skill. Space can be found. But if you don’t have the time, wait and plan and the time will come. Or if you insist, make the time. But Learning? Learning requires three things, doing, persistence and patience. Learning from books, even with instruction will evaporate in no time. You have to DO, keep doing and not give up. Hard? Oh Man! I think plowing through confusion is the hardest thing there is. But luckily, there is a technique. Finding the one thing holding you back and what you do with it is the key to understanding. But that is the subject of a whole other post.
So, if you’d like to come along with me on this journey and think this may interest you, then you are welcome. I only ask a couple of things, that you ask questions and comment and if you are inspired, let me know.
And enough of this long-winded intro. I’d like to show you the boat, a glimpse of shop and catch you up on what has been done to this point.
Dave Ahrens
