Two years ago I started a project to build a boat and at the same time started a blog to record the process – at both boat building and blogging I was a complete beginner. Building a boat was a lifelong dream - not as a way to get a boat, it would be less expensive and certainly quicker to buy a boat, but the dream was to have the experience of creating a boat. The idea for the blog was to let my family in Scotland keep up with progress and share the experience.
I settled on a design by a Scottish designer Iain Oughtred - a Tammie Norrie. The first step is to order the plans. A boat is an amazingly 3D form - it is not made of straight lines. I came to have great respect for the designer, and the accuracy of his drawings that had worked out the assembly and building processes.
Building a boat is like a poem composed of a series of tasks. Each task has associations and special skills attached. Whether it is making and shaping the stem, or making spars; there is a connection to traditional skills and materials and proven ways of doing things to meet the challenges of the particular task. You feel you are tapping into the continuum of craft understanding. There is a lot of plain hard work in between too! It is good to switch your mind off and immerse yourself in the sensory pleasures of the materials, the smell, the look but mainly the feel of the wood. You come to understand its springiness, and the curvy shapes it makes. There is a muscle memory and feedback that you get from your body rather instead of your brain.
Over time you come to a compromise over the skill / quality equation. The craftsmanship you hope for takes years to develop, so there are compromises between what you can live with and the need to get on. The epoxy and plywood technique is forgiving; joints don't have to be just perfect, you can fill the gap with epoxy glue. Some problems can be solved by going out and spending money on tools - but the ratio of tools bought to progress made has to be kept under control to avoid questions being raised.
Writing the blog was also an interesting experience: Typically I would spend a weekend working on the boat and then on Sunday evening, write something about the stage we had reached and the progress made. It started as a way for my family in Scotland to follow along but I soon realized that other people were reading it. When I went alone into the garage, perhaps with my dog, I began to feel the presence of a "cloud of witnesses" in there too, watching me, waiting for me to make a mistake. There's a community of supportive people who share a passion for boatbuilding. They make friendly, encouraging comments on each other's blogs and pass on experience and wisdom on what works well to accomplish various tasks - the general consensus is that "traditional ways are best". I was amazed at the numbers of people reading the blog - 22,000 views total with 234 views on the busiest day, and it is still going.