Boatwright keeps history afloat

SAGLE - If you focused your attention solely on the hands doing the work, the rhythmic sliding motion and the curls of wood that fall gently to the shop floor with each forward stroke of the block plane could just as easily have been a scene from centuries past.

As Troy Weill smooths the trim on this hand-made boat, nautical history is being recreated with a few modern twists. His latest creation - the 12th to be rolled out of the woodcrafter's Classic Rowboat Company in the past few years - is a contemporary take on a vessel that has its origins among boats that once sailed the seas off of Scotland and Ireland.

"This would have been a working boat, originally, used for everything from getting from Point A to Point B to netting fish," Weill said as he lifted the plane and ran a thumb along the now softened edge of sapele wood near the bow. "It's called a Caledonia Yawl II, and it was designed by a guy named Iain Oughtred from the Isle of Skye of Scotland."

The two-masted boat measures a tad longer than 19 feet and uses overlapped planking for the rounded sides - a building technique that dates back to Viking times.

"The Norwegians came up with it and it worked so well for them that they managed to pillage the village for hundreds of years," Weill said.

Traditionally, the planks would have been held together with copper rivets. Even with the advantage of modern tools and adhesives, the builder pointed out, recreating what the ancient mariners first invented breeds new respect for the old ways of doing things.

"This is a traditional boat with modern building technologies," he said. "But it's still not easy to build a round-sided boat. What you end up with, though, is a superior craft."

The all-wood sailboat represents a departure for Weill, who mostly has set his hand to crafting exact replicas of classic rowboats such as the Whitehall "pulling boat" - a vessel that once served policemen, rum runners, postmen and freight haulers alike for nearly 100 years. Troy Weill comes by his interest in boats like the Whitehall honestly, since his father - noted mandolin and guitar builder Steve Weill - crafted about 25 of them starting in the late-1970s, using a mold that former Sandpoint businessman and boat enthusiast Frank Wright built from plans he found in a book about historic American watercraft.

The Whitehall replicas have a fiberglass hull, a construction technique the younger Weill planned to use for a 15-foot Lake Oswego boat, until those plans were temporarily disrupted by the client who stepped into his shop one day with a sheaf of papers under his arm.

"He came in, plopped down a set of plans and asked if I could build this yawl for him," he said.

"It's a relatively complex design, mainly because of the way it's fitted out," the builder continued, adding that the boat utilizes three sails called a gunter, a mizzen and a jib on its twin masts.

Weill stopped counting how much time he'd spent building the white oak framework, adding the Philippine mahogany planking and installing the African sapele wood trim, seats and floorboards when the job topped 600 hours. As the vessel took shape, the sails of his imagination already had been kissed by a fair wind and the craft was humming nicely along toward unexplored horizons.

"These boats have a life and that's half the thrill for me," he said. "It crosses my mind every hour: 'Where's it going to go? What's it going to be doing when it's finished?' When you build a boat, it's an adventure that you're creating."

Set for its maiden voyage later this month, the Caledonia Yawl II will barely be out of the shop before Weill starts work on the next project. Now that his name has begun to circulate in wooden boat circles, he's been getting calls about jobs that range from building more sailboats to restoring classic wooden-hulled powerboats.

His enduring passion, however, remains rooted in the sleek contours of vessels that have a long history on waters around the world.

"I prefer building classic boats," Weill said. "They've just got great lines - I think they're one of the most beautiful things a human can make with their hands."

For more information, visit: www.classicrowboats.com