Sunday, January 3, 2010

Bequia -- Boat building has been a tradition on small Caribbean island for two hundred years. From hand-hewn, 30-foot, open whale boats to 60-foot coastal schooners boat-building was a way of life on this island. Today, the craft of shaping wooded boats here is all but dead, the skills dying with the last of the old builders,  But the tradition of crafting whale boats from wood is still practiced by a few of the Bequia model boat builders. Benson Phillips, a strapping Bequiaina now running the Sargeant Brothers shop near Caribbean Yacht Services is one of a handful of men here who keep alive the craft of using simple tools to shape the hull, spars, oars and deck gear for a variety of model sailing boats. The idea of model whale boat industry began in 1996 when XXXXX   Sargeant began carving model whale boats from gum wood to sell you sailors and tourists visiting the harbor.. This is a soft clear wood from the local gum tree, akin to balsa-wood. It leans itself to carving using only a sharp machete, hand plane and  chisel. Other woods, white pine from off island, mahogany and box wood are use for inlays and for the hull for some of the larger yacht models Benson and others build on commission for wealthy yacht owners,

My 9 year old son, Havana, is a model boat building fanatic. He’ll fashion a boat out of a  piece of scrap of wood in an hour. He’s been dragging me to boat shops and yacht yards all up and down the East Coast as we cruise south to the Caribbean on our own sail boat, Searcher, a Bowman 57 ketch. Visiting the model boat builders on Bequia was on his must-do list. So when we arrived in Bequia just before Christmas, off we want to find the builders. We met Mauvin, a model boat builder with a shop on Front Street, just up the hill from the open air market. The shop had small and large scale model whale boats, some as large as two-feet, others as small as 12-inches, all meticulously carved, varnished and painted in the bright colors of Bequia’s traditional long whale boats. The detail is incredible. Oars, harpoons and lances, line buckets, sailing rig laid out along the thwarts.  On display were half models and replicas of some large, sleek yachts, some completed on commission over the summer waiting to be picked up by the yacht owner when they arrived later in the season.

Further on along Front Street is the “original” model boat shop, Stewart Oliver’s “Original” Model Boat shop. Benson, a tall strapping Bequian, has taken over the shop and adjacent workshop, which is located across from Caribbean Yacht Services, a short walk from the dinghy dock in town. The shop is set back from the road, behind a large breadfruit tree. You can’t miss the sign. Benson’s showroom is crowded with finished models of all sizes, the walls lined with shelving and display cases. More than 50 finished models from small whale boats to 36-inch replicas of mega-yachts, line the walls and sit on the floor.  Benson can be found “out back” in the adjacent workshop, a small nest if wood chips, sawed plans, tools and half finished models. It is here that Benson and a few friends practice their craft. The conversation, carried on in Patois, a West Indian dialect of French, English, and creole, ranges from gossip to foot ball scores, to chiding each other. 

No electrical tools are in sight, and none are used, just hand saws, a machete, chicles, and  a variety of hand planes. A large, stand-up vice holds holding a model while the hull takes shape under the sharp edge of a hand plane. Pots of International paints, spar and Epiphanies varnish reside in a corner. Sheets of cardboard, used for shipping large appliances lined one wall, used to create boxes for shipping the models tourists and yachtsmen would purchase. Windows and doors open to the breeze off Admality Bay, well worn stools and work benches provide working space for three or four men. Half finished models in various states of completion are stacked on a table, other hung from the ceiling, paint and varnish drying.

I asked Benson if he could help my son make a small model sail boat, one that would actually sail. Benson makes display models, works of art that reside on wealthy boat owners’ mantels, not bobby about on the bay, but he know of one model builder that had built boats that did sail . . . and sail well. The next morning there was a sailing model, brought in by  Benson’s friend. The sloop measured 24-inches long, with a beam of 6-inches and a hull draft of 4.5 inches. The long, weighted keel was another 10-inches and the mast was taller than the boat was long. This was thew boat Havana wanted to build. Benson said he’d help Havana get started, but   he had no gum wood  available.

I had a short 2 by 12 plank of Maine pine on board our boat, left over from the dinghy chocks I’d built over the summer. Havana doesn’t let me discard any short ends, knowing he’d find a use for them down the road.  This was it. His model. Aboard our boat, I used my electric circular saw to stripped the plank down the middle, creating four narrow planks that could be laminated, providing the required thickness. It would have been a hard task to saw the plank by hand back at Benson’s shop, as Benson has no power tools. Havana and Benson had  decided on a basic shape for his model. The hull would be 20-inches long, 5.25 inches wide and 4.5 inched deep, to which the fin keel would be fitted. Benson looked over our pine, shaking his head. “Too many knots . . . .  see. it’s checked here, split. You don’t know how far into the wood this check goes. It could open up later as it dries.” But this is what we had and Benson got to work. He laid out the dimensions the top plank, using pins to mark the various points along the sheer of the hull. An old saw blade was used as a straight end to create a smooth curve along the pins marking out the hull’s edge. Benson did not do the laminating until after he had roughed in the deck shape on each plank. This he did with a machete that had lost half its width from repeated sharpening, which he did frequently while hacking away of the excess wood,  With a skilled eye and hand, he caved away the unwanted wood, the shape of the hull coming to life in his hands.  When the three planks were roughed in, he mixed West epoxy, then glued and clamped the three planks together. They would cure over night. Next morning, Benson and Havana would begin to refined the shape using hand planes. 

Coming ashore the next morning to work on Havana’s model,  we met Sam Hermiston a 12 year old Scot living board his family’s ketch in the harbor. Sam was fishing on the dinghy dock when we pulled up and spying the pile of wood in Havana’s arms, asked if we were going to build a model boat.  Sam had built a model sail boat himself at Benson’s shop, so off we went with Sam to Benson’s. The boys got on famously, sharing an interest in models and in boats.  Later that afternoon, Sam took us to his family’s ketch, Sea Warrior, to show us how his model sailed.  The small 14-inch model, made from gum wood, had been hollowed out and deck over, to make it lighter. It is rigged as a sloop, with a tall mast, self-tending jib, deep, weighted keep and no rudder. The model tracked straight as an arrow in the 10 knot breeze that ruffled the harbor, the model laying over in the gusts, righting itself and bobbing along in the chop. We followed it in our dinghy, the  boys were all smiles to see the small boat flying along, all by itself, no remote controls, no battery powered motor, just the breeze and the magic of the boat builder’s craft to harness the wind.

Havana’s hull, roughed in under Benson sharp machete, was then clamped in the vice and hand planes completed the job of squaring off the outline of the laminated planks. Benson then drew a line on the hull where he figured would be the turn of the bilge, where the waterline might be. With his machete, he chopped away the excess wood creating the rough shape of the boat’s under body. More planning, then the profile of the boat took shape. Next would be carving away the wood from stern to the stern to create the completed shape of the hull. When completed, Havana could begin the long, tedious task of sanding the hull.  We’d have to test the hull’s buoyancy in sea water, for if the model sat too low in the water, Havana and I would have to carve out the hull, remove wood from inside the b\oat, then create a deck over the top. That is, if Havana wanted his model to actually sail. He did and does. The Bequia model builders do create boats that actually sail but these boats are crude contraptions, made from half a coconut, rigged with a mast and long bowsprit and rags or sails. There is a race for these boats every year as part of he Bequia Easter Regatta.

No, Havana’s boat was conceived as a sailor. Like Sam’s boat, it would be rudder-less, with self tending jib ands a main sheet that could be adjusted for the course and wind conditions, But, it would be some time before Havana’s boat would feel the wind, as he had a lot of sanding to do. This, to be followed by 4 coats of primer, sanding between each coat, then 2 to 3 coats of top side paint, bottom paint, boot strip, then a Deck paint,  the mast and boom needed to be shaped, then stays and shrouds and halyards rigged. Life-lines? Deck hardware might be added, and finally the name needed to be painted on the stern.

As we continue our wanderings through the Caribbean islands, Havana is busy sanding and designing the rig and deck layout for his model boat, often taking an idea here and there from the yachts we pass or that drop anchor next to us.  Whether his model ever makes it into the water or not is not as important as the lessons he has learned along the way. The patience it takes and the skill of hand and tool that Benson imparted and the feel for the wood . . .  it’s the process not the product that teaches.

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