The Woodenboat School: A Summer Camp for Old Guys

I am attending the Woodenboat School, a school for amateur wooden boat enthusiasts operated by WoodenBoat Magazine here in Brooklin Maine. Brooklin is a small village tucked into a small sound dotted with many little isles on the Maine coast. The village of 700 consists of a general store, a small café, post office, and a small hotel that boasts an Irish pub and public dining room. Along the narrow lanes there is a mix of small white clapboard cottages and larger estates of quite large homes some of which date back to the 1850. I was surprised to see that many of these homes were for sale and I suspect that many of these houses are vacation homes.

Downtown Brooklin

There is not much industry here, but there is a good sized boat yard in the central marina and a mix of pleasure and work boats in the harbor. Lobster boats mostly. WoodenBoat Magazine has their offices here, and they hire local folks to cook and clean and keep after the students at the boat school. Most of the faculty seem to live elsewhere living in at the school when they teach.

The Farm House

The school is located on an old “saltwater” farm about a mile or so outside of Brooklin. Our accommodation is in an old two story farm house which seems to have some 7 or 8 rooms equipped to board two per room on twin beds and twin dressers. The bathroom is down the hall. There is a living room lined with easy chairs and a large bookshelf crammed with books and magazines related to boats and boatbuilding. Outside there is a covered porch with wooden anarandac chairs which we use to relax in and drink our beers after class and before dinner. There is additional accommodation at the Inn in Brooklin, a large campground on the school site and in the Boat House next to the marina.

The boat shop is an old brick stable building with a slate tile roof. In the peak of the gable, there are two rows of niches with a narrow shelf in front that are suppose to attract birds for nesting. The building has essentially three wings used for classrooms and assorted nooks and crannies for tools, paint, hardware, and other sundry items. There is a machine shop for milling metal, and a wood shop for the large stationary woodworking machines. In the back of the building are stacks of wood drying in the sun, green wood buried in sawdust to be steam bent, and wood storage sheds to keep dried wood planks out of the weather.
The classrooms are mostly taken up with boats under construction.  In my classroom there are four boats that we are working on. Once the boats are finished, They are sold to any student that might want one for roughly the cost of the materials that went into them. A pretty good deal, but they do come unpainted, so there is still work to be done on them.

The students are mostly guys of a certain age. Most are retired or getting close to it, but there is a smattering of younger guys and a few women. We come from all over the country, but predominately from the east coast. Some have woodworking experience, one guy is a shop teacher, but others have a more limited knowledge of wood working, but just like boats.

In the class next door, every one of them is building a Greenlander kayak , a very slender craft covered in a waterproof nylon fabric. All of these folks must be avid kayakers, as they are so long and narrow I don’t see how they can be maneuvered and still remain upright. Having been a kayak class dropout I have an appreciation as to how hard it is to stay afloat and not flip over.

There is another class in the machine shop and these guys are building ceremonial bronze cannons. They are made from marine propeller shafts and are about a foot long. They load them with some kind of explosive and light them off with a match and a fuse. They just go BANG! No miniature cannon balls are fired through the air. Most of the guys in this class seem to be from the south.

We all eat communally in a facility that used to be a bed and breakfast, that is located in the heart of Brooklin. We can walk, bike or hitch a ride to town for breakfast and dinner. Lunch is brought out to the school. The meals are surprisingly good! We have been served some really good fish chowders, fresh veggies and salads. Tonight we had a tasty meat loaf, potatoes, squash and peapods. I brought a
bottle of red from the general store to drink and share with my mates. On Fridays they have a lobster and mussels, all you can eat.

My class is called “Fundamentals of Boat building” taught by Greg Rössel (pronounced Russel; why doesn’t he just spell it that way?) who has been a popular boat builder/ writer for Wooden Boat for many years. He has published a couple of books on building small boats and is an excellent teacher. He has a great sense of humor, does impressions, tells long shaggy dog stories, and really enjoys teaching people about boats. He is a lean lanky fellow with an Amish beard, and looks like an “old salt” with jaunty denim sailor cap. He looks like he is a home grown down east Mainer, but he hails from New York City.

 We are learning all aspects of small wooden boat construction, how to build stems, keels, transoms, planking, decks and such. We are also learning how to read boat plans and loft them into full size drawings should we want to build the boat. In addition, we are regaled with humorous stories about boat builders and boat building.  Greg often says, “I know this would never happen to you, but so in so did this and it turned out all wrong, but I know this would never happen to you.”

My classmates are a diverse lot, nine guys and one gal. Three of the guys are in their late twenties the rest of us are retired or soon to be retired, and the gal is a thirty something waif/gypsy who kind of flits in and out of class as she pleases. She is angling for a mess mate job on one of the “tall ships” that ply these waters with tourists for three and four day cruises. We have been paired up at random both in our dorm assignments and work teams. Some of us get on better together than others. After the first week there seems to be a lot of mix and matching of work groups as some people work better together and others are best left working alone. I think this is just natural anytime you bring a bunch of strangers together to live and work in close quarters. I experienced the same dynamics at the YMCA summer camp when I was 12.

There are certain activities that attract everyone to work together like steam bending ribs into a hull. Lots of activity and excitement as the steaming hot wooden ribs emerge from the steam box, its bearers running through the shop to bend the rib into the hull before the wood stiffens again. Others help by screwing down the ends of the ribs in place while others help bend the rib into the planks securing it with copper rivets and clamping it at the shear. Working fast is the key as the wood stiffens in just 3 to four minutes, after which it will snap if you try to force additional bend in the wood.

 Other jobs like sanding and caulking are not so popular, but have to be done, and some have an uncanny way of avoiding those tasks by starting something new that is more fun, but probably not as necessary as finishing up on the boats that need to be caulked and faired.


After class we would generally retire to our porch in the Farmhouse drink a beer or two before dinner, tell stories and brag about our accomplishments. A bit of rough humor is in evidence as the days’ screw ups in the shop are reviewed by our peers. On a couple of evenings I was able to go sailing during the beer and braggadocio hour .

 The school maintains a fleet of small wooden boats 12 to 18ft which can be sailed for a couple of hours provided the winds are light to moderate. I became particularly impressed with a 16 ft Herreschoff boat designed in 1914. The one we sailed was built in 1938, but I’m sure was restored by WoodenBoat for service in the schools fleet. The boat has 600 lbs of lead in its keel which makes it feel very steady, yet nimble to the tiller. A really fun boat to sail.

On our weekend off we hit the trail to the used tool shops to see what deals could be had for planes, chisels, old hand drills and the like. The Maine coast seems to be full of these shops as well as shops that sell all kinds of old junk they must have found in their attics and basements.

The map of where to find the tool shops.

While not visiting used tool shops we visited some of the small villages where one can find: an old British fort, reversing rapids, (due to tidal changes) lobster boats, old Baptist churches, lighthouses, flea markets and other exciting venues for the Maine tourist.

Lighthouse in Castine, Maine

The second week of class was much like the first, learning new aspects of boat building and working on planking, stems, keels, transoms, knees and breasthooks. I realized that I had to get some exercise due to the volume of food and beer I was consuming, so I started walking the mile and half to breakfast every morning. I’m sure I am still getting fat, but the walk made me feel somewhat less of the gluttonous slob that I feel I am becoming.

Friday was graduation day and we felt pretty good about that. We spent a good part of the day working together as a class to install the steamed ribs into a boat as I mentioned earlier. We had an extended chips and beer hour where we regaled on our experiences of the last two weeks how much we learned and how much fun we had. Greg handed out our certificates and thanked each and every one of us for attending the class. He signed our books that he authored with gracious citations. And then we went off to the waterfront to eat lobster and mussels!

Saturday morning was “Goodbye” day. We exchanged cards, email addresses said we would keep in touch, or maybe see each other in a class next year. It was not a particularly poignant parting as people come and go in our lives on a regular basis now more than ever, but we did come together from being total strangers to each other to a bunch of guys building boats and drinking a few beers together.

I come away from this experience heartened by the graciousness of the staff of the Wooden Boat School, who were consistently asking as to how we were doing and if we needed anything to make our experience here  more comfortable.   To my classmates, you could not have been more generous,  with your companionship, beer, advice, tall stories, and sharing of your philosophies.  I am a 3^rd generation Californian from the “Left” coast feeling  largely out of touch with the rest of America; being with you all gave me gave me faith that  this country isn’t “Going to hell in a hell in a hand basket”  as I thought it might be.   I also want to thank Greg who’s dedication to teaching traditional boat building, ability to connect with diverse individuals, and years of boat building experience, created a superlative learning environment  which we were most fortunate to experience.

I wish you all the best.  Fair Winds!