I started out life building boats. I was trained by an old master
shipwright. He started me out with wooden boats. They are superior in most
ways to any other, they have the longest tradition and will when properly
cared for outlast anything afloat. After I had built a few boats he moved me
on to fiberglass and other materials. I learned how to build boats folks
wanted and used. The glass boats were fast easy to make and less expensive.

The teacher said that the wooden boats made today were superior in most ways
to any wooden boat made in the past. The problem as he saw it was that good
wood was almost impossible to find, people who knew how to make a first
clast wooden boat were getting scarce and maintaining them was becoming the
end issue for most. He also said that insuring wooden boats was making it
more difficult for folks to own them.

If you ever get the chance to sail on a good wooen boat leap at it. As the
resources that made wooden boats great decline and disappear we no longer
have new wooden boats to enjoy. However, that is not to say wooden boats
will not continue to be made. the question will become why make them? If the
wooden boats are not doing what they were made to do is it worth the
addiitonal costs?

Wood is no longe used as the primary building material in the vast majority
of boats. Holding onto the tradition is increasingly arcane. Marine plywood
is gone what is next.

Chris Flynn
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