When I was a kid, I used to talk to my dad about building boats. Every winter, we would decide that we would get boat plans during the summer and build something, and every summer we would forget about it. Part of it had to do with me, I will admit. I was a kid, and my attention was pretty flighty. For the most part, I enjoyed spending time with my friends more than with my father. Nevertheless, even if I had been there every day, I doubt we would have been able to put our wooden boat building plan into action. My dad worked so much that he scarcely had time to look at a boat plan, much less build it. So between the two of us, my childhood drifted away with no boat building.

As a matter of fact, we never got around to building a boat until I had moved out on my own. We hadn't gone sailing together in several years. When I was a kid, we used to go sailing all the time, but once I moved away, my dad gave it up. He didn't have the time, or so he said. One day, however, I was looking through my old books that had been sitting in a box since I first moved away. Boy was I surprised when I found some boat plans among them. There were several different blueprints, designs that we had bought back when I was in high school. I called him up and we met up for coffee. When I mentioned the boat plans, he was interested. He looked them over and looked up at me. That is when we decided to build a boat together.

We decided to start with something simple. We found some boat plans for a 16' wooden Dory, and figured we would go with those. A Dory is a small, stable boat. We would be able to build it in the garage and it could be easily transported by car. Working with the boat plans was harder than I anticipated, however. My dad had a good bit of woodworking equipment in his garage, but neither of us had used it in years. There were definitely a few frustrating evenings before we really started to make some progress. When we finally got that boat together, however, it was worth all the effort. It really was quite a beauty sitting there, freshly painted and ready to put to sea. It made me want to build more boats!