We Build a Boat

After our trip to Venice Karl became obsessed with Venetian boats, not the gondolas that tourists hired for excursions and we did too, but one of the smaller wooden boats, working one-man oared boats like the sandolo, pared-down gritty versions of the garish passenger vessels. He wanted to stand tall and row this boat in Lake Champlain. We happen to live right on Lake Champlain which while not the Venetian lagoon is more convenient.

In Venice, Karl resisted taking official tours of palaces and galleries and instead befriended a crusty carpenter who had a workshop down a grimy calle and in spite of any language barrier became his instant protege and next best thing to a prodigal son. On our way to have dinner at a restaurant facing the Grand Canal, Karl got down on his hands and knees to help a bricklayer move a granite block. Karl was a man's man, an artisan, monarch of the blue collar world, muscled shoulders and big calloused hands, and beautiful like a god.

Karl researched Venetian boats. At first he thought we could just buy one, go to the boat store, say "that one looks good" and there he would be, astride in his boat, twisting his long oar against the forcola, gazing alternately toward the Vermont shore and New York. It proved impossible. Venetian boats were not available in this country, and new ones are rarities even in Venice. Building gondolas or sandolos is a dying craft.

Karl decided to build a boat. He could construct a house, put together a bookcase with fine joinery, but boatbuilding is an art with which he had no experience. Luckily, he found a school where he could learn boatbuilding and actually leave with the ship of his dreams, or close to it - a dory. In fact, a dory would lend itself perfectly to his dream of Venetian paddling, sturdy, seaworthy, and able to be rowed standing up.

The boatbuilding school was in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Karl asked me to come. I could relax on the shore of Lake Superior while he went off each day to the workshop and built his dory. I thought it sounded like a lovely way to spend ten days or so.

At the welcome dinner for the students, the school Director said, "I'm so glad to see you all here, along with your boat building partners. You will find that working with your partner is a critical part of getting your dory constructed correctly. "

I looked at Karl. 'What does he mean, working with your partner?"

Karl quickly leafed through our paperwork. "Oh," he mumbled. "I guess I missed the part where it says you have to bring someone to work with you."

So instead of me lolling on the lake and leisurely visiting antique stores all day while Karl sanded and chiseled and glued, we both devoted every daylight hour to the construction of the dory. And it was so much fun working with Karl, both of us novices in this particular endeavor, and at the end of the class we trailered home the dory, and Karl admitted that he owed me big time, so big time that it took years for him to work off the debt.