The Sept/Oct issue of WoodenBoat Magasine has a great article on the Champlain Longboats program hosted and partnered by the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum. This is one hell of a success story! It has lessons for us and can call us into a new level of action here at Kids & Classics Boatshops. You can also visit the http://www.lcmm.org/ website and see video about the Pilot Gig program there as well.
The gigs they are building in their program are the same ones I had selected back in 1997 when creating my vision for Mahogany Harbour. It was my sense at the time that these gigs are far easier to build than the Atlantic Challenge Captain's Gigs and much more versatile - as these guys have shown to be true.
Who's up for making our own version of this happen here? Clearly the secret is the school system tie-in and partial funding from that source, this gets the kids in the boatshop every day.
I would suggest that step one is to take a copy of this article and our brochure to all the local schools and drum up some interest there. Your thoughts?
I think it would be great to up the ante of the kind of/ difficulty level of boat we make.
ReplyDeletealso love clinker built boats.
Wasn't Peter Code building a gig with his shop down at Port Credit? can we go for a visit?