Prospective Perspective
In early March, Jonathan Goodman came to the ‘Shop to do his volunteer week, something we require all prospective apprentices to do before they are accepted into our 9-month and 2-year boatbuilding programs. The following piece was written by Jonathan about his volunteer experience.
Jonathan (left) assisted Kyle with steaming the inwales onto the A&R Tender during his volunteer week. Here, Kyle is explaining the step by step of what’s about to happen so that all of his helpers know exactly what to do.
"A week at the Apprenticeshop!" exclaimed Christine, my AirBNB host, when I arrived in Rockland on Sunday night, "You're so lucky!" It was as if by mere association with the Apprenticeshop, and without having yet stepped foot there – I had been somehow ennobled!
Yet the next morning, as I made my way across Main Street, my pride was checked by an undertone of apprehension. I was about to start my volunteer week at the 'Shop as part of the application process, and while I had been on boats some, I had very little woodworking experience. I was on spring break from school and had flown across the country, and I was eager to finally see the 'Shop and meet the community.
The air inside had an earthy, wooden smell, and as the clock neared eight a small group was gathering in the central area on the shop's second floor. Soon enough it was morning meeting. The weather report was given alongside a reading on aesthetics, and announcements were made. A short round of introductions – making me aware of the peculiar novelty that a new person presents to a small community – and before I had quite taken in all the names, it was time to start the day.
One of the things that struck me early on in my visit was just how hands-on it was. Within the first hour, I had been instructed on the use of the table saw, band saw, and chop saw. By midday, we were steam-bending a piece of oak for an inwale after we had fished the wood from the cold Atlantic waters where it had been pickling over the weekend – and after that, I learned what an inwale was. By the end of the week, I had been introduced to, and had the chance to try out, a great number of machines and tools around the shop. I was also introduced to much more woodwork and boatbuilding terminology than I can now remember. Yet it was not simply the immediacy of the work that allowed for this learning but also the generous patience of all the apprentices and staff. Everyone was happy to answer questions, diverge into various tangents, and entertain my curiosity. I often worried I was exhausting my hosts by asking them questions as simple as 'What is a garboard plank?" or "How do I use a chisel?" yet I was constantly reassured not only by firm denials but also by lengthy explanations.
Another thing that stood out throughout was how slow going the work can be. The hands-on approach notwithstanding, I was humbled by the realization that a good day's work might be some sanding and another layer of paint, or the planing of a few large boards. Of course brushes need to be washed and tools sharpened, and thus various small tasks and preparations and clean ups accumulate into a craft that seems at first impenetrably complex but by and by emerges as a world of small particulars. This elicited a dual feeling in me of reassurance and perplexity. On the one hand, the complex is compartmentalized down into simplicity. On the other, each detail is revealed to carry within itself various mystifying possibilities beyond categorization, left up to the skill, style, and judgement of the maker.
So it went. Every day I took my quarter hour walk to the Apprenticeshop along the sleepy shops on Main Street and the gray-pink morning light reflecting on the waterfront. Here I will add that for me these walks might as well have been arctic expeditions, due to the devastating Maine weather. Under four layers of clothing every excursion outside felt to me a brutality. Meanwhile at the 'Shop everyone was celebrating the arrival of spring weather. I, unfortunately, had arrived from California.
On Wednesday morning, we went on a field trip to a canoe maker nearby. In the afternoon, one of the apprentices gave a demonstration on the making of metal bolts. This frontal presentation was perhaps the only instance of more conventional teaching throughout my week. Indeed, much of the learning seems to happen in 'the doing of the thing' and the doing, oftentimes, is solitary. Yet the shop is not without its own social rituals and habits. The three floors each ferment their own ecosystem, the top floor with administrative work, the middle with smaller boats and more personal projects, and the bottom with larger boats and larger crews. It all comes together during Friday lunch, when everyone (including friends and family) climbs up to the kitchen area-cum-library for a shared meal. Conversation rises. There is a range here – introverts and extroverts, conversationalists and eaters. Yet the collective, as a whole, is rich in character and experience. Sitting around the table are apprentices and staff with backgrounds in design, architecture, house building, music, teaching, sailing, and various branches of the military. Most decades of life are represented within the small group. Personally, having grown up in Israel, I was heartened by the presence of an apprentice from Greece and a former apprentice from Portugal – compatriots from the Mediterranean basin (and from warmer weather). The flinging of chocolate and fruits across the room, a universal sign of the familial, marked the end of Friday lunch.
Afterwards, it was walk-around, when everyone shares what they did over the course of the week, a short interview, and my visit came to a close. It all happened in early March, days before America woke up to the threat of the coronavirus. The virus came seemingly overnight, and now, less than two months out, it feels as if my visit was of a truly distant time and of a very different era. There I was, only a few weeks back, flying across the country, meeting new people, sitting together for meals, shaking hands, and even standing together in close proximity.
Yet my week-long visit at the Apprenticeshop remains with me throughout these weird days as I wait out the pandemic and stay-at-home restrictions, in anticipation of the calming of the waves, the 'flattening of the curve'. There at the 'Shop is a community that cannot happen over zoom, not only for the obvious reason that it centers around woodwork and sailing, but also because it is a community where the pace of conversation, of thinking, and of learning is the pace of in-person interaction. Today, when the media talks of an uncertain future unlike anything we've known, at the 'Shop an education is offered that is steeped in tradition. Theirs is an institution that operates with an almost museum-like ethos, with the very practice of apprenticeship itself marking a living history of the craft. And, perhaps most importantly, in the midst of the somewhat frantic world-wide case tallies and in the heat of my antsy impatience in the face of the uncertainty, I try to remind myself of the patient, laborious, meditative everyday processes that make up the building of a wooden boat.