2015 The first Chester Yawl from a CLC kit was a novel experience for me in stitch and glue construction and especially in epoxy use.
2016 Boat #2 was a sliding seat Annapolis Wherry, again a CLC kit but built during a week long class at Chesapeake Light Craft in Maryland. I picked up more techniques from the pros and finished a boat in record time.
Class of 2016.
All 3 classes that I ran were both fun and rather challenging. I thought the way to go was to build a more or less complete boat during the six week course. Trying to condense the process of building a boat down into two to three hour sessions meant I was racing through the long repetitive steps of building
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in between classes in order to be at a new and instructive point for the following class. In my courses only the teacher had homework and a lot of it!
After the first class I wondered about a different format with each participant producing his own scaled down stitch and glue boat. I built a Bella 12 row boat to 1/4 scale.
Class of 2017
I decided to go back to the original format and we built a 2nd Wood Duck. For a challenge I made the parts up from plans rather than a kit.
Our family needed a second sliding seat boat since Karen had been a team rower in Newfoundland so I built an Expedition Wherry in 2018. (CLC kit)
In 2019 Lance showed up wanting a JonBoat so he could fish for salmon in the Miramichi.
He got the boat and I got many of his great stories!
Later that year Michael came along wanting to build a skin on frame kayak. I acted as assistant. Both of us learned a little steam bending and came to admire traditional building techniques.