In my fifty years, I've never contemplated building a boat from scratch. However, when I saw my friend's (James Knowles) boat plans I was struck by the elegant lines on the drawing in front of me. What he showed me in September of 2001 was a dory. I've known about dories since childhood. My Dad was an honest-to-god Gloucesterman. He told me many stories about rowing a dory in the early 20s from Gloucester to Cape Ann and back to Rocky Neck, about how a dory could keep a man alive in very large, confused seas, and hold hundreds of pounds of fish without capsizing. But all the pictures of dories that I saw in my childhood never captured my artful sensibilities. I was always enamored of the Whitehall, and it's elegant lines, and the very necessary straw hats and umbrellas as rowing attire. Until, that is, James showed me a photo of the Oarling with a sliding seat. So, with James' offers of assistance and guidance, plus encouragement from my partner, Berns, I agreed to construct an Oarling. When we started I had no idea of what I would eventually and, it seems, inevitably, do with this sleek, elegant dory. Her construction in the cottage in back of my house was a transformation… not only of her, but of me.

We started by scarfing the marine plywood panels. Scarfing seems to me the most exacting effort of the entire building process, and fortunately, I didn't have to do it. James did. He made a jig, tweaked it, tweaked it some more, and made 1:12 scarfs on ¼" (for the boat sides) and 3/8" (for the boat bottom and transom) mahogany plywood. After he epoxied the scarfed panels together, he lofted the Oarling plans to the plywood panels and cut out the pieces. By then it was early March, 2002 and we proceeded to "stitch" the hull together just outside my kitchen window with a floodlight for illumination and a 35? evening to challenge our fine-motor skills. But we dressed for the cold, completely absorbed in the task. Our hands wrapped around hot mugs of tea as we took turns drilling holes and threading and twisting wires to bend the plywood panels together. When we finished, I stood back and had a brief inkling of my future, like seeing a distant flash on a foggy night.

Coaxing an elephant seal into an opera box is easier than moving the stitched dory into my cottage. But we did it, and set her on sawhorses. A few days later, I had my first introduction to epoxy and the not-so-fine art of fiberglassing. It took a couple of evenings to fillet the seams with epoxy, and remove the epoxy from the cottage doorknob, pliers, mug handles, teakettle, extension cord, hair, and hair dryer. I realized that I would need coverage to work with fiberglass - full coverage with a clear, full-face mask. I was tracking epoxy everywhere. Somehow James avoided immersing himself in the stuff. He's very neat. He is very patient. He's an engineer.

Pulling embedded wires from the hardened epoxy fillets requires delicacy and firmness. We were literally playing with fire, heating the exposed end of a wire with a butane torch, grasping the wire with pliers and quickly pulling the wire from the minuscule hole as a tiny spark of gas escaped from the hole. After sanding out the sharps and filling in the depressions of the filleting, we began laying 3"-wide fiberglass tape on all seams, interior and exterior. I'll never forget James' admonition to "goop it on, goop it on," meaning put a lot of epoxy on the glass. As a result of the voluminous amounts of epoxy on the interior and exterior hull, I spent almost a month last summer trying to fair the uneven surfaces of the boat. I have had my most important learning experience with fiberglass, and that is to use only enough epoxy to make the glass transparent… and no more than that. I'm sure I'll learn more about fiberglass on future projects. This was an important first lesson.

Sometimes a week or two passed before we could get back to the cottage and continue with the boat. By June 2002, the hull had three layers of fiberglass cloth on the outside of the hull and two layers inside. The bow had a fourth flashing of cloth extending from the bow to a foot aft. The reason for the heavy-duty buildup on the hull is because I decided on how I was going to use this boat. I would row through the San Juan Islands, leaving Fairhaven (south Bellingham) August 9. I wanted the boat to be able to withstand deadheads in the fast moving currents of the San Juans or getting pushed and bumped by aggressive, large plastic boats. So much for my straw hat and umbrella…

The middle of June, we moved the boat back out into the yard. James scarfed and epoxied together mahogany ripped from boards and planed to 1 ½" by 2". This was for the gunwales. Even I could see how important the gunwales were in terms of structural strength for the entire hull. I carefully measured from the breasthook to stern knee so the bottom half of the inwale runs 2" underneath the breasthook and stern knee.

The top half of the inwale butts the edge of the breasthook, runs flush with the exposed, topside plywood edge of the hull then butts flush against the stern knee. The outwale runs from the transom to, almost, completely around the bow. With both power plane and hand plane, I leveled the tops of the gunwales beam-wise so that I could countersink the Piantedosi gunwale clamps for the rowing rig.

In the middle of June, I ordered the Piantedosi rowing rig from Wayland Marine in Bellingham. It arrived three weeks later. By the time the rig arrived, I had pushed my budgeting envelope for this boat and all the trip equipment I would need. I still didn't have oars. James found inexpensive 8 ½' oars through Glen-L, which I bought along with neoprene collars and foam grips. The oars were the only compromise I made with the boat. I had wanted Macons (graceful scooped-bladed oars), but when I searched for an affordable pair… or even a used pair… I became depressed by their cost, sometimes as much as $500 a pair.

By the time my Glen-L oars arrived, I was devoting greater hours each day to finishing the boat. James offered to varnish the oars while I continued to sand the abundance of epoxy that I applied to the boat. I spent three weeks sanding her as smooth as I could and was still seeing wobbles in the rough finish. Sanding with an orbital sander is an arduous exercise for an aging back. James assured me that polyurethane paint would camouflage the imperfections I was seeing on the hull ("you are the only one that sees them"), so we moved the boat back into the cottage for the finish work and set her hullside up.

I constructed a spray booth around the boat, and proceeded to roll on three coats of Interlux undercoating, then brush them out. I sprayed on three more coats, hand-sanding between the layers of undercoating to finally bring the hull to my rough idea of fairness and smoothness. I was completely absorbed by this process and would find myself in the cottage for hours into the summer night, completely forgetting that I had to go to work the following morning. I was relieved when I began the spray painting process since it only took ten minutes to apply a thin coat. It took another ½ hour to clean the spray gun. With this process, I could apply a coat in the morning, then go to work. On my return home in the evening, I would lightly sand, tack off the residue, and put on my spray suit for another coat. The following morning, I'd go in and sand, tack and spray. So within a week, I had six coats of primer and six coats of polyurethane paint. James was right. The hull looked magnificent. Berns came into the cottage and said "Wow!" The hull had a mirror shine. We turned the boat over, and I spent a part of a day carefully taping the outside of the hull where it meets the gunwales and transom. I then taped a plastic skirt completely around the hull to protect the new paint job.

For the inside of the boat, I decided on a bright finish. James assured me it would be beautiful but that I was going to be varnishing for at least a month before I'd have enough protection to withstand the abuse the exposed surfaces would receive during my trip and still maintain brightness. I researched varnish UV hardiness, checked back issues of Wooden Boat magazine, called the Wooden Boat Foundation, flipped coins, and scratched my head. The resulting decision was Epiphanes varnish. I knew that varnishing the interior would take a lot of time since good varnish can't really be hurried with solvents, etc. and retain full UV inhibition, but I was pressed for time since it was already the end of July and the duration of my trip was dictated my arrangements with work for two weeks of paid vacation plus an unpaid extra week off starting August 9.

To speed the varnishing process, I arrived at a very workable compromise: Jet Spray varnish. It's lousy for finish work, but great for buildup because it dries in four to six hours, especially when I have a wood stove roaring in the cottage in the middle of summer. So, in two days, I applied six coats of jet spray varnish. That left me five days to apply three un-thinned finish coats of the Epiphanes for good solid UV protection, with a day or two to harden.

When the day came to move her out of the cottage and back into the sun (August 6th), I was struck silent by how beautiful she was. Out of nothing but flat plywood panels came a gorgeous craft. All we could do was stand back, clink our beer bottles and shield our eyes from the bright shine coming off the gunwales. On August 8th I went in to work very early in the morning after dropping the boat off at a sign maker to have her name (Mac… for my father) painted on the transom. By 10:30 a.m., I was leaving work, deliriously happy... Corporate headquarters in California had decided to transfer all the software technology to Canada and Israel. They gave 50 of us pink slips that day. I no longer had to keep to a schedule on my trip… I was as free as a kingfisher. And I had a sizable severance check.

As I hurried to gather together all the things I thought necessary for a solo trip in waters of the San Juan Islands, I was asked if I had ever rowed a long distance before. No, I hadn't. In fact, I've never rowed further than one mile in San Francisco Bay. So, I thought, maybe I ought to row this boat a little just to understand how the sliding seat rig worked. I borrowed James' van to carry the boat to Padden Lake and ran a checklist: 1) Check that the sliding seat works. Three times I ran into opposite banks not realizing that I had reached them. 2) Adjust estimate of speed. This boat was faster than I anticipated. On return to the fishing dock, four strangers were waiting for me with questions as to what the boat was, where did it come from, who designed it, who made it, etc. I rowed ½ an hour, and talked for ¾ of an hour. Little did I know that this would become a frequent occurrence during my imminent trip.

On August 11th several friends accompanied me to Fairhaven Boatworks for the official christening and launch of "Mac." It was a simple ceremony. And it was the first taste of saltwater for "Mac"… and for me. We would get a big taste of it, in a few days.

I had assembled everything James and I thought I would need for this trip: personal EPIRB, immersible marine radio, cellphone (in a ziplok bag), waterproof watch, waterproof flashlight, food, butane stove, sleeping gear, clothes, tent, rowing gloves, espresso machine, waterproof compass… and a straw hat. Had I known it would get as hot as it did out on the water, I certainly would have brought an umbrella. Alas, I did not bring a sweatband for my forehead; four 1-gallon containers of water (ballast and hydration) would become torrents of perspiration.

Only one item was missing that I felt was necessary for this trip: A PFD. I had ordered a SOSpenders lifejacket but it was to yet arrive via UPS. So on August 13, I finished attaching eyelets on the inside of the boat for bungee cording, arranged all my gear into large drybags, and sat waiting. At 2 p.m., UPS delivered my PFD. I quickly read the PFD instructions and tossed it into James' van, along with all the other equipment, loaded "Mac" into the back of the van, and drove to Fairhaven Boatworks. For the next two hours, I arranged, rearranged, and then rearranged my gear. Berns and another friend arrived at 4 p.m. to push me off, but I hung around until after 5 p.m. so James could be there, too. After all of the beers, epoxy, sawdust, paint and sweat he deserved to see the results of the 9-month effort. I rowed away from the dock at 6 p.m. and watched James and Berns wave until I swung out of sight behind the Alaska ferry that was about to leave for Juneau. I looked up at the ferry to see passengers waving down at me and I waved back, then pulled as smartly as I knew how. When I was about 500 yards out, I heard the ferry's horn and realized she was pulling away from the terminus. A little further into Bellingham Bay, headed for Lummi Island, I looked up and saw the ferry's bow situated directly between her port and starboard sides. With a slight panic, I tightened the straps of my PFD, and rowed quickly off to port. I then noticed that the ferry wasn't moving at all. I had forgotten that the ferry goes south of Lummi Island and I was smack dab in the middle of its way. I cinched my PFD even tighter and flayed the water to turn myself 200 yards north. Thank goodness no one knew my name. I was embarrassed by my first navigational gaffe. I'm sure the skipper was telling the officers on deck that some silly twit in a straw hat was out there splashing around in circles. Not to mention the passengers wondering why the ship stopped five hundred yards away from the dock. But as the ship got underway, the skipper gave two toots and I could hear faint "bon voyage"s.

The details of the trip are another story, for another time. I spent a month out there, learning from experience how to row (sometimes in rough waters), about the necessity of thick padding on a wooden sliding seat, and about adjusting the rowing rig, as I zigzagged from Lummi Island, to Matia, then Orcas, to Waldron across Boundary Pass, and then wandered up the Gulf Islands, eventually rowing into Nanaimo Harbor. The reason I ended up in Nanaimo is simply because that was as far as the chart went.

I came back a different route, which gave me the distinguished honor of negotiating Dodd Narrows with a tug towing two barges. I also came back, a slightly different person.

I bucked through Sansome Narrows at full ebb, pulling hard to stay in the center of the flow, and rowed a soft rain in a wet t-shirt through a flotilla of fisherman hunched in their canvas cubbies of their aluminum boats as I made my way into Cowichan Bay. Of the entire trip, I only met one individual that caused me to imagine firing a flare into the cockpit of his loud, plastic power boat. And I realize that most large ships can't give a toot for small rowing craft and straw hats. In reality, very large ships have the right-of-way. I can stop and turn around much faster than a large tanker.

But I have experienced the wonderful kindness and curiosity of strangers: The men and women that I met extended warmth, help, shelter, and really good navigational advice and food. No matter where I go, on the water, or with "Mac" on a trailer, someone always comes up to me with a curious excitement in their eyes to ask me about the boat, what it is and who built it.

And I've found a way of life and exercise that I can take with me into deep old age. "Mac" has opened a new chapter in my life, and is taking me exploring in a way that I never imagined two years ago. So if you see a woman wearing a straw hat rowing a really pretty, white boat, hail me. I always have a cooler with a beer or two to share…and stories to tell about building a Devlin boat and rowing it to shores across the water.

Dale McKinnon

The yellow boat (a Fairhaven Flyer) is longer than the Oarling by 3 feet and ten inches narrower at the beam. Sam Devlin modified the Oarling hull for the author's 800-mile solo rowing trip from Ketchikan, AK to Bellingham, WA during the summer of 2004. The boat is named after the author's granddaughter, Bella.