A BOATSHOP FOR GEEZERS

Three old friends merge simple tools and talents—and have more fun than ever

Story and photos by Marty Loken

After decades of boat work in all sorts of spaces—from one-car garages to a cavernous warehouse in the 1990s—I recently joined two boat-obsessed friends in renting and outfitting what we laughingly but lovingly call Geezer Boat Works. At ages 80, 79 and 70-Something, this might be our last boatshop, so we’re making the most of it.

GBW is the opposite of a commercial enterprise, and that’s a good thing: It’s just a place where some aging buddies can tinker with boats in relative comfort, surrounded by tools and products needed to do woodwork, refinishing, planking and framing, wiring, plumbing and other such tasks.

Besides being associate editor of Small Craft Advisor, my background includes decades of work on customers’ boats—some rotten to the core, others needing just a bit of love. I am joined at Geezer Boat Works by two fellow boat nuts—Bob Miller, a retired Coast Guard officer with tons of boating experience, and Denis Wang, also retired, who for years taught biology at the high school and college level…and was one of the organizers of the famed Small Reach Regatta, an event for sail-and-oar boats on the coast of Maine.

All three of us are hopelessly addicted to wee watercraft, and in personality we might appear half asleep at times, so onlookers guess our friendship will survive playing together…maybe well beyond the 12-month lease.

In retirement, I’d been restoring and building boats for years, always solo, after decades of sharing work space with a crew of fellow boatwrights. I had no complaints about working alone, but when the three of us brainstormed the idea of a shared boatshop (over beer, I might mention), and how we could help each other with some projects, share tools and materials, and simply work on boats in the company of trusted boating friends…well, the musing soon became a reality. This Spring, we leased a 32’ x 48’ shop with an interior ceiling height of 20,’ tall enough to fully rig most of our small sailboats indoors.

As a bonus, the new shop is fully insulated, has heat from 220v overhead units, along with an air scrubber and massive roll-up door facing the morning sun. The shop came equipped with large sodium-vapor lights, but since they emit a dull yellowish color and sharply increase electric bills, we installed half a dozen economical daylight-balanced LED shop lights, which offer cheery illumination inside the building.

We already have five boats in the space, with four being worked on: Bob’s 18’ Poulsbo Boat launch, SCOT FREE; the 18’ John Gardner-designed outboard camp cruiser, MOON LADY, that Denis acquired from the Northwest School of Wooden Boatbuilding; my 14’-on-deck, 20’-overall gunter yawl build, MOUSE, and the 10.5’ lapstrake tender to our 30’ liveaboard cruiser, RAVEN…in for refinish work. Hanging overhead, awaiting restoration, is my 1870-design Seaford Skiff, a 14’ melonseed built in Amityville, Long Island in 1952.

We’d like to share some photos of the shop space—what’s inside and how it’s organized—and briefly describe the projects we’re currently working on. Please understand: Our goal isn’t to crow about the shop, but rather to share bits of knowledge about particular basic tools that have worked for us over the decades; how we’re trying to organize a semi-functional boatshop without spending a fortune, and why working with friends on small boats can be a barrel of fun—not to mention more affordable—than paying for and working alone in one’s own shop.

So, here are some photos with captions to show what we’re up to at Geezer Boat Works, situated on the outskirts of Port Townsend, Washington.

This is the plain-looking steel building as we first saw it—nothing exotic, but it’s big enough for three friends to share, and it’s in a great location (close to the Northwest School of Wooden Boatbuilding, and far enough from the owner’s house that we don’t have severe concerns about noise…not that we’re too loud when working on our small boats.)

This was our first look at a portion of the shop’s interior—metal trusses, lots of insulation, overhead heaters and an air scrubber, and a mix of 120v and 220v power. Warm, dry and one big blank slate, ready to fill with our tools, work benches, storage cabinets and small boats.

Here’s an overview taken as we neared completion of the move-in process, showing the first four boats, a spar rack on the left-hand upper wall, some fire-resistant metal cabinets, shelving units and a lot of stuff that hadn’t yet been sorted. You can also see some of the half-dozen chain hoists that allow us to remove boats from their trailers, drop them onto rolling work cradles, and get the finished products back on trailers when they’re ready to hit the water.

Two of the first boats into the new shop: On the left, Denis Wang’s 18’ outboard camp cruiser, MOON LADY, designed by John Gardner and built at the nearby Northwest School of Wooden Boatbuilding. Denis installed a simple, temporary lid over the cockpit area to protect from UV rays and rain, but this winter the boat will receive a new cuddy cabin and pilothouse inspired by traditional Northwest salmon trollers—designed and built by our friend Kees Prins. (See drawing below.) MOON LADY is currently powered by a 25hp four-stroke Yamaha outboard. On the right is Bob Miller’s classic 18’ Poulsbo Boat, SCOT FREE, with nifty aft cabin that’s just forward of a small cockpit. The boat is powered by a 9.9hp Yamaha four-stroke, and features a full cover over the forward cockpit, where Bob overnights. Poulsbo Boats were built between 1930 and 1960 in the nearby Scandinavian town of Poulsbo, mainly for sale to fishing resorts and boat-rental businesses in the Salish Sea. Originally powered by small Briggs & Stratton or Wisconsin air-cooled inboard engines, the salty, seaworthy craft were planked in Western Red Cedar over white-oak frames. Bob and his golden retriever pup, Quinn, can’t wait to do some serious cruising aboard SCOT FREE.

Here’s approximately what Denis Wang’s 18’ outboard camp cruiser will look like following this winter’s work: Full-headroom pilothouse, cuddy cabin with v-berth, steadying sail and cover over the aft cockpit. Currently powered by a 25hp Yamaha, MOON LADY might receive a new 40hp Yamaha to handle extra weight of the new cabin and pilothouse.

Another boat in the shop is my 14’-on-deck gunter yawl, MOUSE…new construction of a one-off design inspired by late-1800s British beach boats. Paint work has been finished on the outside of the hull, and cockpit floors are in place; still to come will be a centerboard, rudder and tiller, thwarts and side bench seats aft for sailing, and a lot of rigging work. The drawing below shows approximately what MOUSE will look like when finished. (In coming months I’ll share details on the design and building of MOUSE, along with initial cruising experiences, in a series of SCA articles.)

The fourth project in the shop has been the 10.5’ glued-lap tender to RAVEN, our 1930 John Alden-designed liveaboard motor cruiser, pictured below. The dinghy, designed by Walter Simmons of Ducktrap Boat Works in Maine, has been in the shop for a complete refinish and installation of her new bow pudding, below, made by Dennis Armstrong of www.theknottedline.com

RAVEN, 30’ mothership to the yacht tender just refinished in our boatshop. Designed in 1930 by John Alden, our liveaboard cruiser is powered by a 30-hp Yanmar diesel and features a new, vintage-style interior created over the past few years by the author.

Finally, there’s a fifth (project) boat hanging in the rafters and awaiting full restoration—a 14’ Seaford Skiff melonseed, designed in 1870 and built in Amityville, Long Island, in 1952 by the late Paul Ketchum. (Below is a Seaford Skiff in the Mystic Seaport collection, to illustrate the design.)

So, let’s talk about tools in the Geezer Boat Works shop, along with our organization and storage of materials and supplies. First up, below, is the stationary tool that’s a must for all boatshops—a bandsaw, in this case our vintage Rockwell 14” model, a heavily-cast workhorse. I’ve had the beast forever and just love it. (Some boatshops have much bigger ships’ saws, but the 14-incher is fine for work on our small boats.)

Next, below, we have a DeWalt 12” surface planer, then a stationary Grizzly 12” sanding disc that’s handy for shaping, beveling and otherwise tweaking smaller pieces of wood going into a project, and finally a Ryobi spindle sander that comes with different-diameter sanding drums…really valuable when you need to sand the inside surface of something like a traditional boom crutch.

Another old workhorse is this floor-model Delta drill press. Nothing special—just another essential tool in the shop.

Serious woodworkers often own large, heavy-duty, precision tablesaws. I’ve been there and done that, but find that floor space in retirement shops has been too precious for the professional-grade tablesaws—and I’m mostly just using the saw to rip small stuff, so I’ve been happy with this affordable, easy-to-move Craftsman contractor model with 10” blade. Also in this photo: Metal cabinet at left that is packed with most of our large and smaller clamps; longer bar clamps are attached to a top shelf; blue plastic boxes with socket sets and wrenches; and to the right, our grinding, polishing, wire-brushing and blade-sharpening table.

A closer view of the sharpening-grinding-wire brushing and polishing table, loaded with what you need. Above is a box of hole saws, some cordage and to the right some as-yet-unopened boxes of boat hardware and miscellaneous hand tools.

Here are two unrelated tools, both often-used: In the foreground, a Hula Girl paint shaker that’s driven by a small contractor-style air compressor, and our trusty old router table, mainly used to put a 3/8”-radius chamfer on the edge of things like cockpit coamings, thwarts, cabin-framing pieces and other such boat parts.

Fasteners, fasteners…what to do with them? We have a full rack of plastic trays with bronze wood screws, bolts and nuts (above photo), and then (lower photo) a collection of organizer boxes loaded with small stainless machine screws, washer and nuts; copper rivets and roves in different sizes; stainless wood screws, and weird little things like rivets, and a collection of router bits. In the lower foreground is a double-bevel sliding compound chop saw.

Metal storage cupboards are a must in our boatshop, both because they are relatively fireproof and they’re a nice way to keep unsightly items on shelves, out of view. Our various metal cupboards are labeled Clamps, Varnish, Electrical, Paint #1 (go-to products) and Paint #2, the lesser-used bottom paints, solvents and half-cans of products we may never use again but can’t bear to part with. In the foreground you can see a stainless mini-cupboard unit (originally from a hospital) that is our Festool Center, housing three different Festool sanders and all grades of paper that go with them. Out of view is the Festool tool-triggered vacuum that’s always hooked to the sanders, helping keep air in the shop a bit cleaner.

Here’s one of the shelving units that’s devoted to hand power tools—smaller routers and laminate trimmers, skilsaws, jigsaws, grinders, power planes, sawzalls, drill motors and such, along with a plastic tub filled with glue guns and extra glue sticks…handy when pattern-making with 2”-wide strips of doorskin, our favorite way to make most patterns for cockpit floors, cabin bulkheads and other such items.

This antique wooden drawer-storage cabinet once housed small plumbing parts, and it’s now home to miscellaneous drill bits, counterbores, countersink bits and other small items. Oh, and on the floor to left is a vintage 5hp British Seagull.

My personal workbench has a couple of woodworking vises, two drawer units for small tools and a mess of personal stuff…old photos, half models and miscellaneous. By the way, on the near corner of the workbench you may notice a well-used Milwaukee M12 impact drill motor—not the most powerful, but wonderfully small and capable of driving any wood screw we’re likely to use on a small boat…and terrific for drilling pilot holes. (I’ve had bigger 18v drill motors, but feel they’re too heavy and large for most of our work on small craft.)

Hugely important in our shop is a steel lumber rack, with contents loosely organized into categories like Mahogany, Fir, Cedar, Misc. Trim, and Plywood. (In one of the first photos, far above, you can see our equally-important spar rack, on a side wall, without which masts, booms, yards, bowsprits and other sticks would definitely be in the way.)

And finally, in the interest of cutting down on the mass of keen junk in our boatshop, this is a maple table with plywood backdrop—a small studio to photograph vintage bronze deck hardware and other small marine items I sell on eBay. Dealing with the process is a pain in the backside—polishing old hardware, taking photos, describing items in detail, communicating with buyers, then packaging and shipping—but every once in awhile a sale is made that keeps me going (and contributes to the cost of our never-to-be-profitable boatshop).

Editor’s note: If readers wish to share photos or stories about how they’ve organized personal workshops, please get in touch with josh@smallcraftadvisor.com •SCA•