Georgia Dugouts, Glued, Other Boats Prompt Own Appreciation

My Caravelle 17 1/2-foot runabout, which a nor'easter did some damage to, and I used for my clam treading business out of Long Beach Island.

National Fisherman Very interesting article on Georgia boats, originally published in 1980. Same year I began treading clams commercially, and probably the same year I learned of the National Fisherman, reading a little of it. For commercial fishermen. Some business on the island had that magazine for sale, but I can't place it!

Boats are definitely "crafts" and I'd say there's certainly an art to creating the dugouts photographed in the article. Cypress again. I can't quite place that kind of tree, though I've heard of it from boyhood, but I might have seen some and taken note of them while in Florida or Louisiana. 

Nothing beats handcrafted boats, but even commercially molded boats are cool for what they're made of. My squareback canoe is rotomolded polyethylene plastic, and though I can never rid the impression altogether of that being cheap, it's durable stuff and shows no signs of aging after eight years. I did have to buy a plastic welding kit and fix where the bottom rubbed through on the keel, but that worked, so no problem. Flex Seal and the like does not bond to polyethylene. Virtually nothing does, and I judged it best to weld the material. (The weld sticks are polyethylene also.)

I worked on my Caravelle after the starboard side got punched through by a bulkhead, nor'easter winds pulling it out of its mooring, when the top and bottom constructions also separated. Used fiberglass strips and fill, then painted it. Very pleasurable. 

So I found the article's descriptions of epoxy use in boat building interesting. And the mention of composite plastic/wood construction--cool. When the words came to the part about making sure one is doing it right, I felt "aha" because I was thinking the same thing from the moment I read the caption about the glued boat. (I don't always read an article from first word to the last, though I usually do.) 

I still think the coolest thing is the dugout canoe at the article's head. How a boat that well proportioned was dug out of a tree trunk. Wow.

Shore Adventure