The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Rowing Into the Past

A friend of mine about a month ago took me down into his basement/garage to show me ‘something I might be interested in’. We’d been knocking down some adult beverages and so I deduced that the ‘something’ would be maybe not as interesting as Chris thought I might think. When we got the lights turned on and half a dozen stray power tools moved out of our way, there sat a 12 or 14 foot wood rowboat, old style, bent ribs on the floor and cedar hull fastened to those. Old paint and varnish were flaking and some of the seat wood was missing. The bowstem had rotted up top, but for the most part the boat was intact.

My buddy said he’d had that for a couple of decades, figured he’d fix it up, put it back in seaworthy shape, but you know, time slips by and now the ‘something I’d be interested in’ is jamming up his shop and garage. He avowed as how I might be just the person to finish that unfinished task. After all, I’d built boats with his brother back when we were a tad younger, about 25 years ago. “What do you want to give me?” Chris asked. I set my beer on the bandsaw table and took a little harder look at the boat.

Finally I said, “How much you give me to haul it out of here for ya?” He snorted wine out his nose. We’ve known each other about 30 years. “Okay” he finally shrugged, “it’s yours if you want it.” Yesterday I drove up north to pick it up, shoved it in the bed of my pickup and drove it home. The mizzus is gone this week and you can be sure she’ll be excited when she sees this ‘project boat’ on its sawhorses by the garden soon as she gets back. I figure she needs something to do in her retirement years.

Turns out the boat is a classic rowboat built by the Davis family up on some island in southeast Alaska. Probably about 80-90 years old, all Alaska yellow cedar and supposedly a very fine boat. One just got restored at the Wooden Boat Center here on the island and donated to the Alaska State Museum. So since the mizzus is a historian, I figure …. Well, you know what I figure.

So now I’m going to have to learn how to steam bend wood to replace the worst part of the boat, its bent interior ribs which are rotted or are already broken. I always say we should keep learning, but damn, I have avoided steaming wood for a long time. Not that it’s really all that hard, but it takes setting up all kinds of rigamarole, lighting fires, making steam boxes, experimenting, starting over. But this is a nice old boat. And if you’d ever rowed my aluminum one, you’d maybe understand why I’d prefer a more handsome ride over some crusted aluminum can. Trouble is, I have a 12 foot aluminum boat coming in this week soon as I pick it up. Boy howdy, will the mizzus love our new boatyard.

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