Reviving the Art of Wooden-Boat Building

Eight Orange County men spent $450 each and took a week off from work to build a small wooden boat, using only hand tools and following a centuries-old Viking boat pattern.

But students in this boat-building class did not get to keep the boat after they built it. Still, all agree the project represents money and time well spent.

The class, taught by Simon Watts, a nationally known boat-builder, was sponsored by the Newport Harbor Nautical Museum. The student-built boat will go on display there beginning Monday.

Watts, an English-born former cabinetmaker who lives in San Francisco, conducts wooden boat-building classes throughout the United States, Canada and British Columbia. Right now, he is averaging about one class a month. It’s a hectic schedule, but Watts doesn’t seem to mind. “The classes combine three things I love to do--woodworking, boat building and teaching,” he says.

Watts’ classes are so popular that workshops must be booked months ahead. The next Orange County class is tentatively set for November, according to Russ Behrens, the museum member who helped put together the recent workshops, held in February. Behrens, an Orange County attorney, traveled to San Francisco to participate in one of Watts’ workshops last April.

“When you build a boat, you have done something a cut above what most other people do,” Behrens says. “If I die tomorrow, I know I have done something I always wanted to do--build a boat.”

Although Watts is pleased that people want to take his class, he’s also a little puzzled. “I cannot tell you why people want to build a boat,” he says. “It seems to be a basic human need.”

Building boats from wood is a dying art, according to Watts, who learned the techniques in Nova Scotia in the days before fiberglass. Now, with most new boats being built of fiberglass, fewer craftsmen specialize in wooden boat building, he says.

“Building a boat is a work of art--a work of art you can get in and go somewhere,” says Watts, a former editor of “Fine Woodworking Magazine” and author of a book entitled “Building a Houseful of Furniture.”

The eight men in the recent Orange County class built a 12-foot boat called a Sea Urchin. For 72-year-old Thayer Crispin, the class combined two favorite hobbies--woodworking and boats. “Most of us in this class like wooden boats,” he says, “and most of us have worked in wood. Our objective was to build a boat the way they used to, in the old traditional ways.”

Robert D. Jensen, chancellor of Rancho Santiago Community College, says he took a week’s vacation so he could participate in the workshop. “In my work I deal mostly in the abstract,” he says. “I wanted to do something with my hands.”

Jensen’s biggest challenge was learning to use a rabbet plane, a little-known hand tool used to notch wood. “Just finding a rabbet plane to use in the class was tough,” he says.

Students have to furnish their tools from a list prepared by Watts, and the sponsor of the class provides the materials. The finished boat, which is worth between $2,500 and $3,000, becomes the property of the workshop sponsor, Watts says.

Behrens would like to see the workshop, the first of its kind held in the county, become a regular part of the local nautical environment.

“There is no facility in Newport Harbor for this type of thing,” he says, “yet there is a lot of nautical history here. My goal is to get some interest in maintaining our heritage. So much of the harbor here is being converted to higher end uses. The boat yards are disappearing. The way it is going, one day when you come to the harbor to eat at a restaurant you are going to look out the window and all you’ll see is another restaurant.”

Visually, a boat-building workshop held along the waterfront would be a lot more interesting, Behrens says, and would be similar to workshops held in Mystic, Conn., a nautical village and tourist attraction featuring displays and demonstrations of seafaring skills.

“If you could get people in workshops like this, it would provide an attraction here,” Behrens says. “People would like to see it.”

Shearlean Duke is a regular contributor to Orange County Life. On the Waterfront appears each Saturday, covering boating life styles as well as ocean-related activities along the county’s 42-mile coastline.