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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