![]() In addition, one-week avocational courses are held during the summers. A one-year program focuses mainly on traditional techniques, with a short introduction to wood-epoxy construction. A two-year plan is intended for career training in both traditional and modern wooden boat construction. He and his wife enjoy the close-knit feeling of Cedarville, and he confesses that he is “as much in love with the community as with the school”. Andy sold his recently completed “retirement” house and moved north. At a boat show, GLBBS staff saw a fiberglass-hulled launch he converted to electric power and were impressed enough to ask him to join their teaching staff. After retiring, he moved to Michigan and began working with the Michigan Maritime Museum in South Haven. But during his 24 years in the Navy, a transient life limited his boatbuilding projects to kayaks and other small craft. At the Port Hadlock school, he specialized in yacht interiors and contemporary construction.Īndy James, who teaches the second-year program at GLBBS, grew up with boats because his father owned a marina, and he has been a woodworker his life. He went on to work for a decade at yards in Maine, then moved to Port Townsend, Washington, where he opened his own yacht joinery shop, and later turned to teaching. After graduating from high school, he met a boatbuilder in Washington, D.C., who helped shape his career, and a year at Tough Brothers Boatyard on the upper Thames at Tedington, England, confirmed his choice. He grew up far from the water in Phoenix, Arizona, but was interested in boats nonetheless. Pat also drew from a wealth of experience gained during a long career as a boatbuilder. Before coming to GLBBS, he served a ten-year stint at the Northwest School of Wooden Boat Building in Washington State which was one of the primary inspirations for the GLBBS founders. Pat Mahon, now the school’s director, teaches the first-year program. (After a shaky start, I came away with a baseball cap and a Frisbee.) I was invited to stay for the students’ weekly potluck dinner, where I learned that I really shouldn’t miss bingo night at the Islander Bar in Hessel, a highlight of the off-season social life. The welcome was warm, inviting, and a little eclectic. During my visit last April, the boats in progress reflected a wide variety: a John Hacker-designed inboard runabout, a fiberglass fantail launch, a Phil Bolger-designed outboard fisherman’s launch, a Paul Gartside-designed catboat, and two small flat-iron lapstrake skiffs. The projects are chosen for their value in developing well-rounded skills. Two cats, Luna and Target, make themselves at home, napping beneath or on top of the benches or patrolling the building. Down the center of the shop is a series of workbenches, with storage underneath, one assigned to each student. Chainfalls for hoisting and turning boats run on overhead beams. A machinery room to the other side houses stationary power tools and stocks of wood. To one side, a second-floor mezzanine is used for lofting and small projects. Students reinforce an impression of concentration and focus. The two-story-high main shop, amply lighted by large windows, is filled with the smells of wood being cut, steamed, and shaped and the sounds of hand and power tools in use. In effect, the school has become the “Midwest School of Wooden Boat Building”. inland waters, it has reintroduced regional maritime traditions and has brought together Great Lakes youths with a passion for boatbuilding but no way to train for a career without moving to a faraway seacoast. The only vocational boat-building school on U.S. Now eight years after that first class enrolled, more than 100 students have graduated and the school is seeking federal accreditation. By September, the school had received its state license as a vocational school and the first seven students arrived. In 2007, the hired Patrick Mahon, then living in Port Townsend, Washington, to develop a nine-month curriculum. The founders rallied support, and by 2006 they had hired a director, bought property, approved a design, and broken ground for construction. In 2005, a group of local residents who appreciated the rich maritime and boating history of the area founded the school, hoping to expand the economic base in a way consistent with the area’s heritage. ![]() And if you take one more turn at Cedarville, down South Meridian Street, you’ll shortly arrive at the lakefront campus of the Great Lakes Boat Building School (GLBBS). The town’s maritime museum tells the islands’ story, reinforced by an annual wooden boat show in nearby Hessel. Crossing the 5-mile-longMackinac Bridge into the Upper Peninsula-the “U.P.”-you’ll soon enter Cedarville, on the threshold of the picturesque Les Cheneaux Islands. If you drive north through southern Michigan, you’ll eventually reach the majestic Straits of Mackinac.
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