Building Boats, Building a Community in Brooklin

Brooklin, Maine, population about 750. There is a small sign as you drive into town calling this place the Boatbuilding Capital of the World. In junior high school kids are part of a project where they go into the woods and pick out a tree to be cut down, milled into lumber, so they can be taught to build a wooden boat out of it.

Steve White grew up here. Like a lot of small-town kids he tried hard to leave. “I thought if this place wasn’t the end of the world, then I could see it from here.” But he eventually returned to work with his father, well known boat designer Joel White, at his Brooklin Boatyard in Center Harbor.

The business employed less then 10 people in the 1970s, but it now employs around 50 people. Steve White calls boatbuilding, “Deeply, deeply, satisfying work,” as he describes how boatbuilding has literally built the town of Brooklin, Maine.

This excerpt from our latest film “Wood/Sails/Dreams” explores the resurgence of wooden boats and traditional wooden boat building that began in the 1970s. We hope to bring “Wood/Sails/Dreams” to the big screen in time for the 40th running of Nantucket’s Opera House Cup, on August 19, 2012.

Source: https://www.vimeo.com/31677696