Vineyard Haven, Martha’s Vineyard, August 2002
This is how a day unfolded — my expedition to wooden boat Mecca. The inn I stayed at looked toward the harbor. There, in my view, sat the Gannon and Benjamin boatbuilding shed — luring me ever since I got off the ferry. Got my takeout tea and scone and headed down to the harbor’s little strip of sand to sit, look at the boats, and call my mother. Trendy folks paid homage at the nearby Black Dog Tavern, dutifully buying their T-shirts and caps emblazoned with the critter.
I was nervous about visiting this place where some of the best plank-on-frame wooden boats are built. What the hell would I say to them? I’m not a sailor — don’t even own a rowboat or canoe.
I waited on the beach until shipwrights John, an Australian, and Carey invited me in. They told me what wood was being used; I mistakenly called the transom the frame. Handing them a copy of a book review about the boatyard that I’d written for Working Waterfront, I asked them to give it to owner Nat Benjamin, the big guy, who was off in Maine.
Awestruck, I looked around the shop that I’d grown to know in Michael Ruhlman’s 2001 book, Wooden Boats, as if I were in the Sistine Chapel. Ruhlman’s book had described this place in such detail that I felt I knew which tools were where before I even walked in the door. I wandered onto their dock, coveting the assorted dinghies and other boats tied there. Two schooners sat nearby. I didn’t know until later that one was the famous Rebecca, the key project in Ruhlman’s book.
The two boatbuilders in the main shed told me to go over to the other shed (known as Mugwump) where a 65-foot schooner was being built for the George Soros family. “Oh,” I said, with raised eyebrows. Carey said, “This one won’t run out of money.” The schooner under construction, Juno, was huge — like a beached whale under a roof. Two stories of scaffolding and planks surrounded it. The schooner shed had initially been built for the 60-foot Rebecca, a project that had plenty of financial roadblocks before its completion.
I motioned to a guy with ear protectors on and he said I could come in and have a look. I’d never been next to, let alone climbed around ladders on, a boat under construction. An amazing vessel (Noah’s Ark flashed through my mind) — beautifully finished planks of wana, a wood from Guyana and Trinidad. One year to go before it’d be done and that’s with it looking nearly done that day.
Two other gawkers wandered in and I asked them if they knew this place because of “the book.” One said he’d known of these guys for years and, yes, they knew the book. One lived on the island and was a piano builder. A student of his from Wichita, Kansas, was with him and that fellow read WoodenBoat magazine regularly, which seemed fascinating since he was in landlocked Kansas. The islander said they were doing a wooden boat tour and did I want to come along.
We wandered back to the harbor, saw an enormous sailboat built in Germany and talked to the captain. Back to G&B’s shop, then on to neighboring Maynard Boats. I felt like I’d died and gone to heaven.
So here I was on this lovely island to do a feature story for a magazine on the man who created Stratton Mountain ski area, Frank Snyder. The fact this ski area legend and sailor lived precisely in Vineyard Haven, home of Gannon and Benjamin Marine Railway (its official name), was a bit of synchronicity. I took the assignment largely to see their boatyard.
After the interview at his house on a quiet cove, I went out in a Cape Dory outboard with Snyder, his son, granddaughter and dog Hinckley, motoring around the harbor out to the Sound on a hot, breezeless afternoon. Frank and I waded on the mud flats, watching little girls catch hermit crabs. He told some small boys how to catch herring better with their nets — this, the man who had helicopters airlift ski chair towers in (a first) when Stratton’s 1961 opening was falling behind schedule. Frank went on to cross a larger expanse than he ever had done as a sailor, passing away on the Vineyard a few years ago.
From a tourist-laden ferry to schooners under construction to dories puttering around inlets, then back to a ferry, and, finally, a blacktop highway. Images of hammers and wooden boat ribs and gleaming water seared into memory. A term used in Wooden Boats nailed the feeling some had when looking at Gannon and Benjamin’s creations: “boatstruck.” Maybe I was now afflicted.
A resident of Connecticut when she isn’t in Maine, Linda Hedman Beyus is a frequent contributor to Working Waterfront.