IYRS: For the Love of the Boats

Sometimes the very process of making a film reveals the story. One day we found ourselves at the International Yacht Restoration School (IYRS) in Newport, talking to an instructor there named Bill Kenyon.

Bill was telling the story of how he came across the school as he was wrestling with the urge for a mid-career change. While telling a story about Bob Tiedemann he mentioned, “This whole wooden boat world…that we all live in here…our own little world.”

Those words gave this film its direction. I began to see the series of connections and how they had played out over the decades.

The first boat Tiedemann restored was an Alden yawl named Mariner, which won the very first Opera House Cup. Bob then followed his passion and found and restored the 12-meter boats Northern Light and Gleam. That passion was a small part of what fueled the wooden boat renaissance that grew over the last 40 years.

The idea behind this film is to allow viewers to walk for a bit in “this whole wooden boat world,” to spend some time meeting the people whose lives fill it, and see the connections that define it. Please take a moment to watch a small moment we pulled from Bill Kenyon’s interview.

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/31676320