Photos / Peter Van Allen
Scenes from around the Landing School: wooden boat building and even a surfboard build.
Updated: May 25, 2020
Work for ME 2020 — Manufacturing
Breaking into boatbuilding: A traditional craft offers nontraditional entry
Photo / Erin Tokarz
Owen Page, who was trained as a boatbuilder at the Apprenticeshop in Rockland, seen here working on the Dublin Bay. In the background is a mentor, John England.
Photo / Erin Tokarz
Owen Page, who now works at Rockland Marine, had an engineering degree before he turned to the Apprenticeshop to learn boatbuilding skills.
Photo / Erin Tokarz
Owen Page trained as a boatbuilder at the Apprenticeshop in Rockland.
Maine’s boatbuilding tradition goes back centuries, some would say back to the early 1600s building of the Virginia on the banks of the Kennebec River near what is today Popham Beach.
Boatbuilding was taught through apprenticeships and by doing.
Today’s training relies partly on that model, but also on schools that offer credit akin to community colleges and short, intensive classes.
A school for apprentices
Owen Page, 24, who is from France, had trained as a mechanical engineer at McGill University in Montreal. But even as he was finishing his degree, he had second thoughts about going to work for an engineering firm.
“I wasn’t thrilled with my options as a professional engineer,” Page says. “Then I started looking at my hobby of woodworking. I looked at furniture makers and guitar makers. What drew me to Maine was I grew up sailing, what drew me to Maine was boats. I started Googling and came across the Apprenticeshop.”
“I was looking at the Apprenticeshop all through my last year [at McGill],” Page says. “From Montreal to Rockland was about 6 hours. I rented a car and drove over at least three times that year.”
The Apprenticeshop, located just outside of downtown Rockland, offers a range of wooden boatbuilding classes and apprenticeships that can last from nine months to two years, in a small setting. The recent academic year featured 14 students. In addition to boatbuilding schools, the school offers on-the-water training. Students take part in two-week expeditions, navigating Penobscot Bay and other waters in the school’s open sailboats and camping on Maine’s islands.
Nina Noah, the Apprenticeshop’s 31-year-old director of student affairs and outreach, had a similar experience. She’d graduated from the University of Chicago with a degree in biology then returned to her native New York to teach in Harlem and also the Bronx.
“I had zero experience with boats, zero exposure to building or tools,” she says. Through family friends she heard about the Apprenticeshop. “I thought, ‘That would be amazing, but that isn’t a real thing people do.’ But the more I thought about it, the more I was like, ‘Why not?’”
She enrolled in the two-year program.
You start by building a small skiff by yourself and then gradually start working in teams.
“I liked the community part, the interpersonal skills,” Noah says. “That’s a distinguishing factor … You’re in close quarters with people with very different life experiences.”
For now, the school is not accredited, so a student would not be able to get college credit. Instead, students receive certificates — and, in many cases, are able to nab job offers straight out of the program. Which was the case for Owen Page, who spent two years there.
“I liked that you could do your own thing,” Page says of his apprenticeship. “There was no one looking over your shoulder.”
At the same time, he also gained a valuable mentor, John England, a master boatbuilder who had retired from Rockport Marine, a well-respected boatyard not far from the Apprenticeshop with about 35 employees. England helped guide students through the restoration of the Dublin Bay, a 38-foot wooden deep-keel racing boat.
“I was leading the project, with [England] helping with plans and strategy,” Page says. As the program was winding down, “I had my sights on two boatshops, Artisan Boatworks [also in Rockport] and Rockport Marine.”
They expect you to do your best on every project.
— Owen Page
England introduced him to Sam Temple, one of the principals at Rockport Marine. “By the time I went in for the interview, John had paved the way,” Page says.
He is now working on larger wooden boats, 40-feet and larger, including venerable yachts like Concordias.
Working on well-known yachts is fun, but “they expect you to do your best on every project,” he says.
Students of all ages
At the Landing School in Arundel, director Richard Downs-Honey has made a point of bringing in staff to help broaden the school’s standing as a boatbuilding training ground. Students range from traditional college ages to people making midlife career changes.
The Landing School, founded in 1979, is fully accredited, so students can earn an associate degree in four fields — yacht design, marine systems, composites construction and wooden boat building. The programs range from eight months to two years.
This year there were 60 students. The average age is 27, but there are a handful straight out of high school and a handful that are retirees or people making career changes.
Brian McCauley, the school’s 40-year-old director of recruitment and development, falls into that latter category. The Virginia native and was working in real estate in Charlottesville. His wife is from Maine and they were looking for a way to move here. It was while staying at a bed-and-breakfast in Boothbay he was flipping through WoodenBoat magazine, which is published in Brooklin.
Up to that point, “nothing really spoke to me,” he says. “Then I came across an ad for the Landing School. I grew up in Virginia Beach on a surfboard, also sailing or in a Whaler. It was a cool idea to learn about boats.”
For me, I was fairly intelligent, but I don’t do well sitting still in class. This just fit.
— Brian McCauley
He and his wife moved here in 2018 and he enrolled in the marine systems program at the Landing School. He further developed an interest in composite construction and, as a sidelight, helped other students build surfboards.
At one point, the school’s director asked if he could help with a Landing School project. That led to more work and, eventually, a job offer, leading the recruiting and development efforts.
“For me, I was fairly intelligent, but I don’t do well sitting still in class,” he says. “This just fit.”
A Northwoods canoe builder
The Landing School or Apprenticeshop may not be the right fit for everyone going into boatbuilding.
For Elisa Schine, a Vermont native and graduate of Wesleyan University, a more direct approach has worked.
Schine grew up going to Camp Darrow, a Downeast summer camp with a strong tradition of canoeing, including using traditional wood-and-canvas canoes. She was a camper there and then a counselor.
Photo / peter van allen
Elisa Schine, a canoe builder at Northwoods Canoe Co., called up Rollin Thurlow, right, for an internship and has now been there seven years.
One summer, Rollin Thurlow, founder of Northwoods Canoe Co., a wood-and-canvas canoe company in Atkinson, came to the camp to talk about wooden canoes. It took a piece of wood and showed campers how you could take an ordinary piece of wood and nearly instantly, she recalls, turn it into a “rib” for the boat hull.
“After that, we were pretty much in awe,” she says.
It was a while later, dissatisfied with a job in San Francisco, that she had the idea of working for Thurlow.
“I called up Rollin and said, ‘Can I come work with you?’” she says. “It was a big leap.”
The idea was a summer internship — but it has now been seven years.
She and her husband, a school teacher in Dover-Foxcroft, are now year-round residents of Piscataquis County. She is the only full-time employee apart from the owner and founder.
A scholarship for women
Photo / Nate Hathaway
Emma Hathaway, Waterfront and Seamanship Director for The Apprenticeshop and recent graduate of the 12- week program.
The Apprenticeshop in Rockland has established a scholarship for women, and those who identify as women, to participate in its 12-week, nine-month and two-year boatbuilding programs.
The women’s scholarship is part of a new long-term initiative at the Apprenticeshop to increase diversity, equity and inclusion across the organization, from its student and apprentice population to its staff and board membership.
The Apprenticeshop already has women in positions of leadership, both on staff and on the board, several of whom are alumnae of the boatbuilding program.
The scholarship encourages female participation within a space and skill set that has traditionally been the domain of males, inviting women to strive for their full potential in this challenging and rewarding context. They can then serve as role models for other women and girls who are drawn to work with their hands.
“Self-doubt is a thing I struggle with. It is something I hadn’t anticipated being able to overcome as much. When other people don’t doubt you, it’s harder to doubt yourself. I didn’t expect to gain that confidence,” said Emma Hathaway, who went through the school’s 12-week apprentice program.
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