Photo by Sarah Friday 



North Carolina wooden fishing boat docked for repairs 



Nelson Silva of Ogden, a boatbuilder 

 who uses fiberglass and wood. "It's up 

 to the individual — what they really 

 want." 



And understandably, some boaters 

 want fiberglass. The sturdy plastic-like 

 material glided into the market about 

 20 years ago. Before then, "Everybody 

 wanted fancy wooden boats," re- 

 members Gillikin. "Then they wanted 

 something that would hold up." 



Fiberglass boats became particu- 

 larly popular in the South, where 

 wooden boats tended to mold or rot 

 more quickly because of the heat. 

 There's a larger demand for fiberglass 

 down here, says Silva; so he sells most 



of his wooden dinghies and knock- 

 abouts up North. 



"People assume that fiberglass is 

 going to replace wood altogether, but I 

 don't think it will," says Mike Alford, 

 curator of watercraft research at the 

 N.C. Maritime Museum in Beaufort. 

 "There will always be the need for a 

 custom-built boat, and wood lends 

 itself to that very well. A wooden boat 

 has certain qualities and facts about its 

 nature that are different from other 

 materials, and sometimes that's exactly 

 what you want." 



The competition doesn't bother 

 Gary Davis of Marshallberg. A full- 

 time boatbuilder, Davis builds recrea- 



tional and commercial boats of any 

 size. Two to three times a year, he 

 sends his latest project sailing down 

 the pike. 



Turn-around for wooden boats is 

 slow, says Davis. It takes him about 

 five weeks to build a 19-foot skiff and 

 about six or seven months for a 60-foot 

 headboat. Six days a week he's out in 

 his workshop, making perfect on land 

 what he will send into the water. 



Building a large wooden boat is sim- 

 ilar to building a watertight house, says 

 Davis. On the outside is the frame and 

 supporting structures that must be fit- 

 ted, nailed and painted. Under the 

 roof, the boat needs flooring, win- 

 dows, cabinets, drawers, electricity, 

 electronics and plumbing. Then come 

 the finishing touches. 



Davis, like most of the other boat- 

 builders, sells his boats predominantly 

 in the East, for prices ranging from 

 around $7,000 to $150,000. The price 

 tag and individual craftsmanship are 

 two of the biggest selling points for 

 wooden boats. Davis says that if one of 

 his boats is properly maintained, it 

 should last a lifetime. 



He learned the craft like most other 

 North Carolina boatbuilders, as a skill 

 handed down through the years like a 

 family treasure. His grandfather Ray 

 from Marshallberg provided Davis 

 with his unique heirloom. 



In his grandfather's time, the Core 

 Sound region was one of the most well- 

 known for boatbuilding. "At one time, 

 there were 42 places on Harker's Island 

 that were building boats," says Gil- 

 likin. Most were small operations craft- 

 ing fishing boats and vessels for people 

 to get on and off the island. 



Further south, boatwrights were 

 also hard at work. As far as Harold 

 Varnum knows, boatbuilding in his 

 family goes all the way back to his 

 forefathers from Ireland who settled 

 near Wilmington. That was three or 

 four generations ago, and today the 

 Varnum name remains synonymous 

 with wooden boatbuilding in south- 

 east North Carolina. 



The tradition is part of the reason 

 Varnum builds boats. For him, the real 

 pleasure comes in the creating. "I love 

 to create," he says. "I'm always creat- 

 ing something. It's hard work, but I 

 like it." 



Jimmy Gillikin feels the same way. 

 "I just love to do it," he says. "You get a 

 pile of lumber and you fix it into some- 

 thing that floats." 



