A school for boatbuilders

Career World, Oct, 2004 by Charles Piddock

Wood, glue, metal, and paint: Give those things to an ordinary person, such as a writer for Career World, and you'll most likely end up with a big, goopy mess. But give them to a skilled boatbuilder, and you'll have not only a beautifully made craft that wilt glide through the waves but also an enduring work of art.

Building wooden boats is an ancient craft that is alive and thriving today--and it just might be a career for you if an you enjoy working with your hands and get pleasure from making an object both useful and beautiful.

You don't need a college degree to become a skilled boatbuilder. What you really need is a love of boats, a high school degree, a capacity for hard work, and a strong desire to team a craft.

THE LANDING SCHOOL OF BOATBUILDING

Career World visited one of the best-known schools of boatbuilding, the Landing School of Boatbuilding and Design, in Arundel, Maine. The school is situated inside a group of low-slung buildings that were once part of a farm. At the time we visited, the school had 68 students: older men and women who wanted to change careers and younger students not Long out of high school.

The mission of the Landing School, according to its director, Doug Dickey, is "to provide educational programs that serve as a gateway to the marine industry." In addition to teaching boatbuilding, the school also teaches boat design and marine systems technology. Dickeys own background is in education, not boatbuilding, but he knows his boatbuilding essentials cold and showed us around the school, with the pride of a captain showing off a top-of-the-line sailing ship and its well-trained crew. "Our graduates are in demand throughout the marine industry." said Dickey. Students at the Landing School work hard, but no one complains and everyone goes about his or her job with a kind of happy concentration. "Students come hers to pursue a passion for boats," Dickey told Career World. "For them, this is a dream fulfilled."

One of those students is Patrick Dole, 19. Dole, who sports neat blond dreadlocks, is originally from New Jersey.

He left high school during his senior year to join Ocean Classroom, a program in which students learn not only sailing but also traditional school subjects white cruising at sea. Dole joined one of the ships as part of the maintenance crew and sailed south to Venezuela and back. After he returned. Dole went back to high school and graduated, but a love of ships and the ocean stayed with him. He left for Massachusetts to work in a boatyard. Then he signed on as a deckhand and carpenter on a large sailing ship and spent seven months on the high seas. He was hooked. Once back on land, Dole applied to the Landing School to study boatbuilding in depth. What will he do when he graduates? "My dream," he says, "is to build a 150-foot schooner and sail around the world."

The boatbuilding course at the Landing School lasts 11 months. Students choose between two courses: the small-boats course and the cruising-boats course.

BUILDING BOATS

Students in the small-boats course begin by working in teams of three or four to build a 13-foot beach peapod. Peapods got their name because the elegant curved boats Look like peapods, pointed at both ends and wide in the middle. By the end of the 1800s, peapods were the favorite boat of fishermen and lobstermen along the New England coast. The boats were very stable and could be sailed or rowed with equal ease in deep water and around ledges and shallow areas where larger boats couldn't go.

Working in teams under a master builder students in the small-boats course learn everything from how to accurately measure and shape a peapod to how to make a rudder and tiller, install, floorboards, put on rail caps, finish sand and varnish, and make a mast and rigging. Teams begin their peapods in September and finish them in January. They then move on to an even more challenging task: building a daysailer, a round-bottomed sailboat of 16 to 21 feet. Daysailers are more complex to build than peapods. In the spring, on Launching Day, student teams put their boats into the ocean for a maiden voyage.

The other section of the boatbuilding course is the cruising-boat section. Cruising boats are sailing vessels or powerboats of up to 30 feet long. In addition to learning how to make a seaworthy cruising boat, students learn how to install simple electrical and mechanical systems to propel the boat.

A WORLD OF OPPORTUNITIES

Most of the graduates of the Landing School gain the confidence and skills to obtain a job in the boating industry, which is booming. Boat ownership is at an all-time high: More than 578,000 recreational boats were sold in the United States in 2001, According to a 2002 Coast Guard report. Americans spent more than $30 billion on boats and boating equipment.

Not all graduates of the Landing School go into the marine industry. The skills they gain at the school, have helped some get other jobs in skilled carpentry. "The skills our graduates have equip them for any number of jobs," said Roger Hellyar-Brook, program manager of marine systems at the Landing School. "Although almost all of the graduates go into the marine industry, others go into fine cabinetwork, historic house restoration and building fine new houses."