capst-winter-2021-Proof1-52REV - Flipbook - Page 49
Jay Taylor stands at the helm of his Peeler Skiff work boat that he built from a kit in his Severna Park garage. Taylor has built several boats from kits sold by Chesapeake Light Craft. Photos by Jerry Jackson
job” and that folks “ooh and aah” when
they see the vessel. And though the couple
is moving to Catonsville, they’ll continue to
explore the Severn River, from which they’ve
watched the Annapolis fireworks on the
Fourth of July. Years ago, her husband proposed marriage while they were skimming
over the water in Middle River.
“It was midmorning and the water was
like glass, the smoothest I’ve ever seen,” she
said. “It was so calm that you could barely
tell where the water ended and the sky
began. Ben paddled up to me and said he
wanted to spend the rest of his life having
mornings like this.”
They now have a 9-year-old, for whom
mom plans to build a craft of her own.
“Kayaks are my happy place,” Abbie
Rooper said. “When I finish this, I know it’ll
be fulfilling to paddle something that I’ve
built myself.”
Beaming with pride
Kevin Littell figures he spent 80 hours
building his rowboat. Truth be told, it was
less.
“I probably spent 10 hours just staring
at it and thinking, ‘Wow, this is really cool. I
can’t believe I’m putting this thing together,’’
he said.
The boat, an 18-foot Annapolis Wherry,
sits at the dock at Littell’s home on the
Magothy River, in Arnold. It has aged gracefully in the eight years since the software
sales executive assembled it from a CLC kit
for about $3,000, roughly half the price of a
store-bought rowboat. One-third of the cost
covered a one-week class for mostly novice
builders at CLC’s workshop.
“It’s not about saving money,” said Littell,
55. “It’s about the experience of building
a boat and turning a pile of plywood into
something so beautiful and functional.”
In the end, he spurned the family’s 42-foot
racing sailboat in favor of the homemade
skiff with the sliding seat.
“It’s a simpler, more efficient boat than
what we had,” he said. “Now, I can get away
from my desk [at home] for an hour and go
rowing without a lot of planning. Its weight
[65 pounds] makes it easy to put on the car; I
drove it to Washington last spring to see the
cherry blossoms from out on the Potomac
River.”
Too often, with do-it-yourself projects,
Littell said, “you do a lot of navel gazing. But
the kit is so well engineered, it’s almost disappointing how easy the assembly was. All
of the pieces are labeled; all of the holes line
up. Building it was like taking a vacation.”
Not that the simplicity bruised his ego.
“When people say, ‘I love your boat,’ I say,
‘Thanks — I built it.’”
Homemade
Not until he retired did Jay Taylor discover his penchant for slapping boats together.
At 73, he has assembled four wooden crafts
from CLC in the spacious garage of his home
in Severna Park.
“It’s a hands-on skill that I knew was in
me somewhere,” said Taylor, a retired U.S.
Foreign Service employee. “Though I had a
white-collar career, I like doing manual tasks.
Every time I touch a tool, I make a faux pas,
but when you work with wood, everything is
reversible. Screw it up and you can fix it.”
There’s a 14-foot Peeler Skiff in his driveway and a 7-foot kayak at the dock several
blocks away on the Severn River. Taylor also
built a Northeaster Dory (a rowboat/sailboat) for a friend in Maine, and a dinghy for
his cardiologist at Johns Hopkins Hospital.
The Peeler Skiff, named for its crabbing
lore, cost Taylor $2,500.
“I’ve seen those built by pros that cost
$16,000,” he said. “They are drop-dead
gorgeous. My boat has beauty that only a
mother could love — but it’s the same boat.”
The kits, he said, are reminiscent of “those
of a model airplane. It’s a little like paint-bynumbers, but it’s always fascinating to see a
stack of wood start to resemble a boat.”
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