would reply each time with “Mom, you can afford a better house than that little crackerbox, let’s keep looking for something really nice for you.” Grandmother would relent and off they’d drive to another viewing. But after a couple of days Grand- mother insisted they stop at the little yellow house and aſter entering the front door she declared “this is the house—this is my new home.” When they did the title search a few weeks later they found that the original builder was my grandfather, some 43 years before. Not one person in the family had remembered Granddad building that house, and my grandmother was simply responding to the look and feel of the house my grandfather had built so many years previously. Tat look and feel was unique, and somehow spoke to Grandmother about the sweat, blood, joy and cursing of the homebuilding experience Grandpa had so many years earlier. She felt at home, and that was that.


Are there some new small-boat designers, in the U.S. or else- where, who’ve gotten your attention in recent years?


I am really quite jealous of John Harris of Chesapeake Light Craſt—he is a clever guy and will in my opinion make a signif- icant stamp on the world of boats and boat designs. Tere are others, but again, remember my statement that there is just a very small list of those who have the eye. I am not sure if it has to be born into you, or if it can be trained by looking at boats and boat designs for years. But I think we all know it when we see it, and that is one of the true joys of living at this time when we can still play with these little floating bundles of joy.


What changes do you foresee in the future of small-boat building and sales? Fewer sailboats, more powerboats? Hy- brid propulsion systems, or...?


The market is going smaller for sure. Electric propulsion is coming into its own and will soon take over major parts of the market. Sail will come back (yes, it is down at the moment); solo boats or shorthanded boats will again become more common, stand-up paddle boards will go away, houseboats and shanty boats will come on as housing gets so very expensive. All just predictions.


If you were starting out in the boatbuilding and design fields today, would you recommend a course different from the one you’ve taken? What do you see as the future of boatbuilding and design—especially the future of small boats in the global marketplace?


With computers proliferating, designers no longer need to become skillful at hand-draſting, and the science of yacht de- sign has now become more like the press of a key. But while the science part is vastly easier, there is still that eye that has to be developed. If you don’t know where you are going with a design there is no artificial intelligence that will help you make a good boat. So while things have changed, we still see fundamentally the same issue. Familiarity with computers is the rule now, and yet still the nurturing of that stuff between the ears needs to be done. So the path has changed for sure, but basically the same bases need to be touched to get to home plate. If starting over I


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would take one of the year-long design classes that the boat- building schools are promoting and I would become intimate with 2-D and 3-D computer programs. And working in the boatbuilding industry would help immensely with develop- ment of the design side. One of the main things I’ve always had to face with my own design work is that because I’m a builder as well as a designer, I have to design things that can actually be built. Sometimes that is a bit of a chore and I can spend as much time on a design trying to figure out how to build it efficiently and quickly as I do with the hydrodynamic shape of the boat. Tose two disciplines are crucially linked together. Without one you can’t have the other, and it’s a tough task at times.


People seem to have less time for recreation these days, as fam- ilies find themselves driven harder to keep up with busy lives, increased work pressures, and other distractions. And yet we seem to be witnessing at least a modest surge in the number of homebuilders...and kit sales appear to be on the rise.


What trends have you noticed in these areas? Can “ordinary families” afford bigger boats these days, with ever-more-ex- pensive purchase costs, moorage and maintenance fees, and other costs of owning larger pleasure boats?


The boomers don’t seem to want to have all their chips in one basket; they have many things and interests and don’t want most of those to be only in the boating side. Tis is one of the trends that is driving the smaller-boat theme in the industry. Te other issue I see, even in my own life, is that most likely I will be doing more solo boating in the future. My wife Soitza loves boating and supports me very well in it, but with grandchildren, gardening, and aging parents that need tending, I can see the handwriting on the wall. If I want to spend time on the water I will need to do a lot more of it solo. And while I may be a somewhat unique on the boat-use spectrum, I remind myself that I’m nothing more than my own demographic, and if this trend is hitting me then it may be hitting others. Figuring out what boat designs will help make that easier, safer, or more rewarding, can and will be a whole new batch of fun.


During the recent Lake Union Wooden Boat Festival you talked about how some boatbuilders have been cannibaliz- ing themselves via the sale of used-boat models they’re still building...and how with some builders the race has been on to bring out new models that aren’t available on the used market. How has the “cannibalizing” effect hit your company, and what are your general views of the future of boatbuilding—with special emphasis on smaller boats?


I am worried about our markets. It feels much like the early 1980s and I don’t see leadership in the boating community with a long-ranged vision to take us to the next plateau. It’s no secret that these are very confused times in the world politically and environmentally. My impression is that there is, more and more, a tendency for each of us to screen out the external and go inward as a reaction to this confusion. Boating


SMALL CRAFT ADVISOR


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