A Shipwright in Training

Back in 2006 I started this whole process with the eventual goal of working as a shipwright, and along the way I’ve actually gotten paid to do boat carpenter work. All of these experiences have been incredibly valuable, and the money has helped to make this whole venture possible. I’ve approached them with a few specific goals in mind:

• get experience
• learn as much as I can
• make some cash
• think about how these experiences lead to the eventual goal of a job that I want.

Today it paid off in spades. I was offered a job starting as soon as I get out of school working on a new build of an Olin Stephens design six-meter named Cherokee. There’s a little bit about it here. Here’s a quote from the IYRS blurb about it:

That will keep me here in Newport through October I think… it’s going to move fast. We’re talking about 4-5 months start to finish.

Later on in the day I got a call from the guy who’s in charge of maintaining the USS Constitution… yes, Old Ironsides, docked in Boston harbor.

He also offered me a position! Either all this work is paying off, or folks are desperate for people to work on wooden boats for not too much money. Or both.

Since I already said yes to Cherokee, I had to turn this one down, but there may be space still open come October… I liked the fellow in charge of the boat, and working for the Navy (yep, it’s a civilian Navy job) has some real benefits like insurance and retirement. We’ll see… living around the Boston area is hard financially. Luckily the train system is excellent.

The downside is that I’m still an hour away from my sweetie throughout the summer, and Boston adds another hour to that.  Damn.

I’m ready for teleporter technology now. Honest, any time soon is fine by me.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 2nd, 2008 at 9:18 pm and is filed under Miscellaneous. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.