Saving an Art Form Through Wooden Boats

The time is the early 1970s. Fiberglass has been the new wonder material for building boats for over a decade and now it is taking over the market. Many wooden sailboats, some of them quite famous, are hauled out and waiting the chainsaw or left to linger in disrepair. There is a feeling in the air that the craft of traditional wooden boat building might become extinct.

Then something happened. Over the next four decades a cast of people, following their own passions, helped usher in a revival of wooden sailboats. They found and restored classic yachts and along the way preserved a slice of American nautical history. They kept the work of traditional wooden boatbuilding alive in boatyards big and small, from Vineyard Haven to Maine and many points in between. They got together at regattas gathering a fleet of stunning beauty, or they sailed with a small crew across the Atlantic Ocean.

In this excerpt from our latest film, “Wood/Sails/Dreams”, WoodenBoat magazine founder Jon Wilson explains his admittedly “harsh judgment” of the fiberglass boats being built in the 1970s and his motivation for starting the publication that helped reignite interest in wooden boats and traditional wooden boat building. We hope to bring “Wood/Sails/Dreams” to the big screen in time for the 40th running of the Opera House Cup on Nantucket, on August 19, 2012.

Source: https://www.vimeo.com/31677257