A Shipwright in Training

These days I’m working at the boat shop of McClave, Philbrick and Giblin in Mystic Ct.  Readers of Wooden Boat have probably bumped into one or two of Ed McClave’s articles.  He brings a phenomenal depth of engineering knowledge to his writing.  Andy has assembled  an excellent crew of builders at the shop so the level of work that we can do is truly as good as it gets.

When I’m not at the shop I’ve been writing a blog for my old school.  You can find it on the home page.  I may be doing another one following another boat project, but we’ll see… Yeah, it’s a cheesy tease.

Excellent article in this last Sunday’s NY TImes Magazine.  The Case for Working With Your Hands is written by another PhD who found more fulfillment in the trades.  In his case, he repairs motorcycles.  Worth reading.

Tillerman posted a challenge to all sailing writers to list their favorite blog posts recently, and I thought about it for a bit, and decided to play.  I haven’t (duh) been working on this blog since June as I’ve been writing the Cherokee blog.  Naturally, that’s where the entry I’m submitting comes from.  The contest begins with the phrase “This post is simply the best because…”  So, here we go.

This post is simply the best because it appeals to our inner Sherlock Holmes.  Or at least it shows what some boat builders think about while they’re building.  Oh, and it was fun to write.

Hi folks,

I’ve decided to keep the blog here.  It was too much trouble to transfer all the photos over to the wordpress site, I like the look of the site as it exists here, and I have more flexibility with how to use photos.  In short, I like having my own domain better.  So, please disregard the previous changeover notice, and I promise I’ll start posting here again very soon.

-Tom

Much much moving these days.

The day after graduation, we started up on the Cherokee project.  The original plan was to drive up to Maine that day and bring the Concordia Yawl down that David (the project manager) and I would be living on for the duration of the project.  No such luck.  The museum opened on graduation day, and we really needed to get something going on the Cherokee asap.  So, we’ve delayed the boat trip, found temporary housing, and got right to work.

Here’s the space where we’ll be building Cherokee:

The view out of the front door isn’t half bad either:

I haven’t decided what I’ll do with this blog just yet, but there a couple of things I do know:

1. it will move over to http://shipwrightintraining.wordpress.com/ very shortly 
2. I’ll be in charge of the Cherokee blog over at the Museum of Yachting.  You can find it here.  In fact, I’ve already started it!

This may morph into a larger version of the Cherokee blog, perhaps with a little less tact.  After all, when I’m writing the Cherokee blog I become a part of how the museum presents itself.  I have to watch my goddamn mouth over there for instance.  

It may turn into something else entirely… perhaps stories of clever ways that boatbuilders are solving the problem of how to make a living doing this job.

Feel free to drop me a line if you have something you’d want covered.  And, no, an all-porn format is right out.