Jumping the Velvet Rope

My poor behavior upon seeing a Grant Adirondack Guideboat.

I’m not anyone’s idea of a rebel. In my eight years as an Air Force officer, for example, I can only recall one time when I deliberately broke a rule. Driving home at 2 am after helping a patient in the emergency room, I barely exceeded the speed limit within 40 feet of exiting the front gate at Scott Air Force Base.

The SPs, doubtless bored, pulled me over. Later that day my commanding officer surprised me with his reprimand. He said “show me your wrist.” Odd request, but I did as he directed. He suppressed a grin, slapped my wrist–hard–and said “don’t speed.” That was all it took. Thereafter, I kept my speedometer arrow-sharp on the speed limit.

I didn’t break any major rules, that is, until I was walking alone at the open-air Shelburne Museum in Vermont. The problem started when I turned a corner to see a black and green painted original of a boat I had built, the Grant Guideboat.

You may have seen a guideboat yourself. They look like a canoe, but with an upswept stem and stern, like a mini Viking boat. They were used by turn-of-the-century guides who took adventurers across and between the lakes of the Adirondacks, portaging the light boats on their backs.

I created my guideboat over two years of early-morning weekends. To start, I painstakingly transcribed the boat plans from MIT marine architect John Gardner into full-size building templates. The plans are graceful, refined, and, if you stare at them long enough, mathematically logical.

A quick aside about Gardner: He recognized that American boatbuilders had brilliantly evolved craft designs from one generation to the next, but a great many never created written plans. During the heyday of the fiberglass boatbuilding craze of the 1960s and 70s, these earlier boat types were very nearly lost. In a tour de force, Gardner single-handedly located best examples of traditional boat types and recorded their dimensions. More than anyone, he is responsible for the current wooden boat revival movement.

Of the hundreds of guideboats Gardner might have studied, he chose the design that had been passed down in the Grant family. You can find those plans and a rich description of the Grant approach to boatbuilding in Kenneth and Helen Durant’s The Adirondack Guideboat. I was so taken by the stem plans that I framed them.

Grant employed a technique called lapstrake construction to build the sides of his boats. I took a simpler approach, one that is conventionally called cedar strip construction. If you chose to build a boat, you might want to consider building from a cedar strip kit, such as the one made by the Adirondack Guideboat company. They are also a good source if you want to purchase the artful authentic oarlock mechanism.

It is an absolute joy to row and paddle the guideboat. You can do both, as the center and bow seats are for rowing with long graceful oars, and the stern seat for paddling as you would a canoe. The boat feels tender when you first climb in, moving from side to side, but stabilizes once everyone sits down. Your center of gravity is lower than in a canoe, so it feels comparatively planted in rough weather. The shape of the hull, and the combination of rowing and paddling makes the boat fast and responsive. You can get a sense of its impressive speed in this video of a traditional guideboat race.

When I rounded that corner and saw the boat at the Vermont museum, I was overwhelmed by a desire to know whether I had recreated it with fidelity. I jumped over the velvet rope and ran my hands along areas of complex joinery, such as where the gunnels meet the stern. My hands told me things my eyes couldn’t. Uplifted, I saw that Gardner’s plans were highly accurate and I had faithfully followed them.

I also was struck that while my boat was an accurate recreation of the original, my level of craftsmanship was worlds away from Grant’s. Luthier Robert Detterich wrote of a similar experience when he was able to hold a violin made in 1670 by Francesco Ruggieri.

I have to tell you that hearing it is great, but holding it and feeling it live and dance in my fingers as I breathe and talk is quite the most wonderful thing I've ever experienced as a craftsman. If you know instruments a bit, it speaks to you… of 'one percenters'- tiny details that add up to something that your average grafter could slave away at for decades and never get close to… the angle of a breath with the impact of a hurricane. With a really fine instrument, I can feel it moving around in my fingers while I talk, and the way that it does that will tell my little brain about different qualities that are present, or more likely not present. Most instruments will respond to my voice, as filtered through my fingers. This one responds to my breath. Jumps to my breath.

Of all the worldly objects I might build during my life–whether musical instruments, sculpture, other boats–I don’t expect to build anything again as beautiful as the Grant Guideboat. On that summer day in Vermont, it was a near-spiritual experience to touch the real thing.

Upon reflection, I feel a debt of gratitude, also responsibility, for having touched the sublime–as in Stanely Kunitz’s remarkable poem on a father and son catching a fish. What should be done, this feeling of somehow needing to pay it forward? For having jumped the velvet rope, I have decided to make a donation to the outstanding Shelburne Museum.

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Cheers to You and Your Future Adventures,

Dan Gustafson

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