Moutaintop Boat Building Adventures
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The AshBreezeJournal of the Traditional Small Craft Association Moutaintop Boat Building Adventures IN THIS ISSUE CRUISING THE MAINE ISLAND TRAIL THE BENEFITS OF TSCA MEMBERSHIP CHINA CAMP HERITAGE DAYS FESTIVAL VOLUME 33, Number 4 • Winter 2012 • $4.00 The Letter from the President Ash As a longtime TSCA member and a for ways to earn a merit badge? We just Breeze past president, I am often asked how may pick up a few future members. we can expand our membership. For It could also be as simple as inviting The Ash Breeze (ISSN 1554-5016) is some reason, many people like us are your neighbors’ or friends’ kids out for a the quarterly journal of the Traditional independent thinkers and just are not sail or a row. The Experimental Aircraft Small Craft Association, Inc. It is joiners of organizations. As you look Association has a Young Eagles program published at Mariner Media, Inc., 131 around the various TSCA events you’ll where they give kids a plane ride to West 21st Street, Buena Vista, VA 24416. notice the “mature” age of many of us. expose them to aviation. We could Communications concerning I’d like to turn the tide on this trend. do the same with a sailing, rowing, or membership or mailings should be Let’s do more to get our youth interested paddling outing. Think about it and addressed to: PO Box 350, Mystic, CT in boating, especially in Traditional give me your thoughts. 06355. www.tsca.net Small Craft. We are working on another Small I want to propose to each of the Craft Meet in conjunction with the Volume 33, Number 4 chapters to reach out to youth or youth WoodenBoat Show at Mystic Seaport. organizations to join us at events. I You should stay tuned for details and Editor: noticed on the Boy Scout Merit Badge mark your calendars. I can’t think of Andy Wolfe pages at least eight merit badges related a better place to mess about in boats [email protected] to our activities—canoeing, kayaking, than at Mystic during the WoodenBoat Advertising Manager: motor-boating, rowing, sailing, Show. Mike Wick woodworking, model building, and Lastly, please consider contributing to [email protected] composites. How about if we extend a The Ash Breeze. Andy Wolfe does a great welcome to local scouts who are looking job, but we always need more articles. Editors Emeriti: –Tom Shephard Richard S. Kolin Sam & Marty King David & Katherine Cockey Adirondack Guide-Boat Sold Ralph Notaristefano Longtime employees Ken Steinmetz Ian and Justin Martin John Stratton have assumed the Dan Drath helm of ownership Ned Asplundh of the Adirondack The Traditional Small Craft Guide-Boat. The boat Association, Inc. is a nonprofit, tax- building brothers, exempt educational organization Justin, Ian, and Randy that works to preserve and continue all started working the living traditions, skills, lore, and together at Mad River legends surrounding working and Canoe in Waitsfield, pleasure watercraft with origins that VT. predate the marine gasoline engine. It Randy became the encourages the design, construction, head of research and and use of these boats, and it embraces development at Mad contemporary variants and adaptations River; Justin, the team leader of the and joined Adirondack Guide-Boat. of traditional designs. assembly and finishing department; and Eleven years later the brothers are all TSCA is an enjoyable yet practical Ian, who started working for the canoe still working together, building boats, link among users, designers, builders, company while still in high school, and now they own the company. restorers, historians, government, and eventually took over the leadership of Justin said that he and Ian split the maritime institutions. the assembly department. responsibilities and tasks of running The brothers turned down a position the business. “It’s a 50/50 ownership,” Cover Photo by Tracy Munson to move south with Mad River. They Justin said, “So sales, and ordering and met David Rosen and Steve Kaulback, everything else is shared.” ©2012 by The Traditional Small Craft who were in need of a composites team, Association, Inc. The Ash Breeze, Winter 2012 2 Mountaintop Boat Building the Traditional Way by Brian Richardson Ahh, the salt air. The freshening breeze. The keening of gulls. And the names that stir the blood of sailors everywhere—Annapolis, Mystic, New Bedford, Rockbridge Baths. Hang on. Rockbridge Baths? Okay, so maybe Rockbridge Baths is a month or two from joining the pantheon. And maybe its nautical chops are a little lacking, what with being two hundred miles from the nearest salt water and all. And maybe a barn in the middle of the Valley of Virginia is no place to try to honor the tradition of wooden-boat builders everywhere. Then again… Rolling the keel of Miss Sue to the strong back at Grigg Mullen’s mountaintop farm in A long time ago, before there was a Rockbridge Baths, Virginia. From left to right: Brian Richardson, David Blackwell, Recession or anything, Grigg Mullen Grigg Mullen, and Andy Wolfe. invited me over to his house. I love going to Grigg’s house—even though nearly all gone now. I’ve been thinking some plans from it. it’s over the river and through the woods about trying to reproduce one.” Probably it would be useful at this from where I live—because I’ve never I put down my scotch. This was juncture if I revealed three things about had a bad time there. An invitation serious. Grigg: 1) He is an engineer—in fact, means I am either going to be fed cigars “How big?” he’s a professor of civil engineering at and killer single-malt, or he’s hatching a “Twenty-five feet,” he said casually. Virginia Military Institute; 2) He is the major guy project. Sometimes both. “Actually, 25 feet, two and three-quarter best guy with tools I have ever seen, We’ve been friends for about 18 years, inches.” Obviously, he was already a from the most delicate rabbet plane to and have worked on a lot of guy stuff yard or two beyond pipe-dream. It a traditional timber framer’s slick that together as advisors to our campus turned out he’d seen a drawing in a would take your finger off to a two- chapters of Habitat for Humanity, or as book, and already hired a nautical phase table saw straight out of The members of the Timber Framers Guild design professional, Bill Platt, to gin up Perils of Pauline; 3) He’s got all of those of North America, or just for the hell of tools—and then some—in a shop on his it. Still, I was a little taken aback by the Grigg Mullen, the master of handtools. property that Norm Abram would kill audacity of what came with the latest for. Still… cigar and snort as we sat on his porch, “You ever build a boat?” I said. mesmerized as always by the view of the “No,” he said. Blue Ridge. “Because this could wind up being “Wanna build a boat?” Grigg said, the partially sighted leading the visually pausing dramatically after a long draw challenged,” I said. “What I know about on his Nat Sherman. boats is pretty much ‘wet on the outside, “Why, is it about to rain?” I said. This dry on the inside.’ You wind up with was fatuous. Perched halfway up a hill, anything else, you need to start over. I Grigg’s stunning timber-frame house think.” would keep your feet dry even in a flood “That should be enough,” Grigg said. of Biblical proportions. By a long shot. “Another scotch?” “A Hooper Island Draketail,” Grigg So began what Grigg now calls a went on, undeterred by my familiar five-year one-year project. We figured smart-assed obtuseness. “Chesapeake if we finished lofting in January, we’d Bay work boat. I used to see them when be chugging around the Bay by the I was a kid living near the Bay. They’re continued on page 8 3 The Ash Breeze, Winter 2012 What Does TSCA Do? The Benefits Offered to National TSCA Members by John Weiss left local governance to the individual at bay when it comes to donations and Recently, I received yet another chapters, and has not tried to direct dues. Because of the diversity of chapters e-mail message from one of our chapter them in how to develop or administer noted above, that may not be important presidents asking how he should answer their programs. As a result, the chapters to the BMC or MMM chapters (who a question from one of his members: are quite diversified, ranging from have their own non-profit umbrellas) but Why should we be members of the informal, messabout-only chapters like has been VERY important in supporting national TSCA; what do our members Puget Sound and Oregon Coots to the community-focused efforts at get from their association with TSCA? those with significant local youth- and JG and CROPC (where prospective It’s a good question, and I’ll try to community-boatbuilding projects like donors want the tax deduction for their answer it here. John Gardner (JG) and Connecticut donations) and at least incidental in First, TSCA is and has always been River Oar and Paddle Club (CROPC) other chapters. a TOTALLY volunteer-staffed and to those closely associated with larger Visibility of the national organization member-driven organization. We have organizations like Buffalo Maritime is provided to our members via our NO paid staff. Even the officers and Center (BMC) and Michigan Maritime quarterly journal, The Ash Breeze.