Wind and Oar Boat School

In Portland, Oregon there is a new wooden boat building school. The Wind and Oar Boat School is not-for-profit and community oriented. At present the school is in the middle of it's first build. The St Ayles Skiff is the boat and it is being constructed by a team of women who have never built a boat before.









I've told you about this group previously. At that time, the school was awaiting approval of it's application for non-profit status.





Now it's official and the Wind and Oar Boat School is on it's way.





Founder, Peter Crim keeps us up to date:


"The molds are all mounted and aligned using the string through the alignment holes method. The stem supports are attached. We are scraping and sanding excess epoxy from the frames we glued last Saturday so they can be mounted back on the molds."





"We built a scarfing jig for the keelson and we have a rough cut done on the first scarf. Students practiced planing yesterday on a piece of plywood.
The goal is to be planking by next Saturday."








"There's talk of a second women's boat and ADX has offered the location for it. We might start that one in August and with a youth boat build in September at OMSI, we could have a fleet by next June."







"A friend of Kelley Roy's [co-owner of ADX] has a partially finished river dory that's been sitting for many years at another community shop space and that she would like finished. Kelley has offered ADX for the project and there are people interested in working on that so we may make a boat shop of it yet."




Photos courtesy of Jann Lane.





In a recent conversation with Garner Pickering I learned that there are currently five St. Ayles Skiffs being built in the US.
Garner is the Marine Products manager at Hewes & Co., the producers of the boat kits for the entire United States.
Four more kits are on order.

Hewes & Co. are located in Blue Hill, Maine and they have arranged for Brandon Davis at Turn Point Design in Port Townsend, Washington to cut kits for interested parties on the west coast. If you'd like to get in on the action contact Garner Pickering, gardner@hewesco.com.

So far all but one of these boats are in Maine. Each of the boats in Maine is built by high school students although one of the kits on order is for an elementary school! Three St Ayles Skiffs are very close to being finished. Mt. Dessert Island High School, George Stevens Academy and Sumner High School are in a dead heat to be the first St. Ayles to be launched in the United States and are supported by WoodenBoat's BARC program.

We will keep abreast of developments concerning the splash of each new St Ayles in the US.

Stay tuned!
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