how to build a swampscott dory

Step one: Get your dad to build most of the dory

2007-09-03T22:00:00.000-07:00

Lots of dads think football is important. And cars. And showing off your money. But my Dad didn’t care about any of those things. What he did care about was nature. And learning. And for some reason in 1983 he cared very much about the four-plank lapstrake dory. So he started building one.

In autumn of my freshman year, my parents went crazy and moved to Alaska, leaving the unfinished dory in my Granddad’s garage. For sixteen years it waited there, next to the tomato patch, while Granddad took up tango dancing and cut down the oak tree that was planted the day I was born. But in conversations with my own father, the dream of finishing the dory was always looming. At some point Dad started calling it my dory, and that’s when he got me hooked.

II. Take the summer off to make sawdust

2007-09-03T21:30:00.000-07:00

Finally one summer between schoolteaching gigs, I tended bar in a fancy fish restaurant. But I could never tell the halibut and chips from the fish and chips and so I was encouraged to seek other work.

Now I understood that fate had spoken her peace, and she'd be pissed if I didn't head north and finally start work on my bequeathed dory. So I packed my truck and headed up to Dad’s new place in the North Cascades. And through til Steptember, mite sized wood shavings coated every lawn, house, car and person in our neighborhood.

III. Oh shit... math!

2007-09-03T21:10:00.000-07:00

By the time I was on board, Archimedes, I mean Dad, had already done all the tricky geometry, plotting every sweeping line and curve to create his own modification of the classic Swampscott design.

Dad built everything of substance on this boat: Ribs. Hull. Centerboard. Rudder. All he asked me to do was make it beautiful. To me it was already beautiful, but I wasn’t going to let him down.

IV. Laying the deck

2007-09-03T20:30:00.000-07:00

The story of building a deck is the story of gluing stuff together with epoxy: It begins with quarter-inch strips of African mahogany to a plywood hull. But soon you realize it’s your fingers.
Suddenly epoxy is everywhere. You step back and stick to the keeshond. You want to scream but your lips won’t open. Dad sees your trouble and laughs, then walks into the house, locking the door.

V. African mahogany

2007-09-03T20:00:00.000-07:00

Unlike the notorious Africanized bees that tormented California in the 80's, African Mahogany doesn't lurk in your Dr Pepper so it can sting your tongue. But it is exotic. And if you don't watch out it will give you splinters.

For a variety of reasons this will earn you no sympathy from Dad: First, he is a doctor and has pulled spikes from people’s heads. Second, he planed off two of his own fingers a few years ago while building a dobro guitar. His wife was out of town when it happened. I drove up from Seattle and found him laying there all bandaged up on the couch. Then I went out to the garage and picked all the little bone and skin fragments off the wall and floor, laying them in a neat little pile on the workbench. Ours is no family of cowards.

VI. You wouldn't believe how many hours I've spent sanding

2007-09-03T19:00:00.000-07:00

This deck glowed profoundly once, with a hard epoxy shell pornographically exposing every sinew of the grain. But not anymore.

You see all those cloudy spots in the mahogany? How it's all murky and depressing-looking. I did that. On purpose. Untold moons of sanding away a gorgeous finish yet again so we can add another coat of epoxy.

In the end this deck will be gorilla strong. It will be gloriously good looking, making the prettiest boat you've ever seen look like oyster pus.

But for now it just feels a little Sisyphusic.

VII. Refreshments

2007-09-03T17:50:00.001-07:00

Whenever I go back west I like to stock up on Olys, usually hauling several dozen six-packs off the luggage carousel, confident now that they won't explode in flight.

But when I’m in Washington these beverages are as plentiful as the blueberries in the woods. Add in a pack of chaw and the East Indian radio station (AM 1550) that floats down from Canada, and I never want to leave, save for jaunts down to Coupeville for mussels.

VIII. What's on the outside

2007-09-03T15:00:00.000-07:00

There's nothing good to say about paint.

Okay, I'll say this about paint... I have been snakebit, crashed motorcycles, and fallen 30 feet off a shale rock wall onto a cactus, but none of it ever aches like your knees on the third day of boat paint. Under the hot shop lamps where time stops.

You can't give up because you love your boat. Punch-drunk and high on naphthalene, you stay in there. No defense, all heart.

Paint is better than you are. More tenacious for sure. It will ripple if it wants to. If you try to cheat and smooth it out, it will gum. So you can't daydream. You see only the sheen where you've been and the matte where you're headed. Suddenly you've applied the last stroke and you collapse onto the cement. And for the first time that day you realize there's a gentle mountain breeze.

IX. Coaming and Jigs

2007-09-03T14:30:00.000-07:00

The coaming is a lip around the top edge of the cockpit so lobsters don’t wash over the deck and get after the pimento cheese sandwiches.
It is both conspicuous and overlooked. Because people might rest their haunches on it, you have to build it strong. Yet it has to curve. So how do you make something curve and be strong?

Dad?

Well what you’ve got to do is re-saw and plane three rough planks of mahogany, then bend them on a jig, slowly, over several months so they don’t snap.

Then you layer those curved planks, staggered with six tail extensions, all re-sawn and planed to identical thickness (according to your caliper-micrometer).

Then you glue everything together over several days with more clamps and jigs. And once it's dry and you've shaped and sanded it all down, you place the entire U-shaped arc into a cylinder with a irregular and variable pivot and hope the whole thing fits.

And it did. Perfectly. Cause we’re really good.

X. Next up: spars, rudder, oar blocks

2007-09-03T14:00:00.000-07:00

Spars are anything that holds the rigging up, and in our case will be made with white Sitka spruce.

The rudder is ready but the tiller still needs a design, which I won't commit to til I've seen how the spars lie.

Oar blocks house the oar locks. And that's all you need to know about that.

But this amazing, beautiful dory is fully seaworthy now. I could take her on a date in Puget Sound and if the greatest Tsunami swamped her she still wouldn't sink. But the salty sailor would never take to sea without a mast or oars. So tonight she sleeps at home, at my Dad's house, still dreaming of the big waves.

XI. Latest photos

2007-09-03T12:00:00.000-07:00