Wooden Boats
By Michael Ruhlman
|
REVIEW BY ALAN PRINCE
Michael Ruhlman, who has written two books about food, never cared about boating until his interest was piqued by a colleague's rhapsodizing about wooden boats. Ruhlman visited a New England boatyard and immersed himself in the subject by working there. The result, Wooden Boats, is as finely crafted and appealing as the vessels it describes. These days, fiberglass has replaced wood as the predominant boat-building material. The use of molds allows quick, assembly-line construction of fiberglass boats, a process incompatible with the individual attention that wooden craft demand. Some observers thought the arrival of the plastic age presaged the extinction of the wooden-boat industry. The boats have survived, however, thanks to the relatively few craftsmen who care about them and to the even fewer people who, accepting the operative principle of "no cash, no splash," pay for them. Through unvarnished profiles of the boatyard workers, Ruhlman escorts the reader into their culture. It becomes easy to imagine working shoulder-to-shoulder with these artisans as they painstakingly shape each hull on the island of Martha's Vineyard. Ruhlman declares that he had never before seen "a group of people whose ethics were so bound up in what they created. They were their boats," he writes. His book is not a do-it-yourself manual, but anyone with a mechanical or engineering inclination will welcome Ruhlman's recital of the step-by-step construction process, so detailed that it is likely to impress veteran helmsmen and astound newcomers. Although building a wooden boat is not brain surgery, the process requires a large measure of precision, blended with tender, loving care, from the initial sketching to the eventual christening. A devoted amateur cook since the fourth grade and author of The Making of a Chef and The Soul of a Chef, Ruhlman has found an unexpected yet delightful and profound link between food preparation and boat construction. He sees "something intensely personal crafted by hand, something meant to be perfect, absolute. In each instance I've found that the pursuit of perfection, and the inability to grasp it, is the fuel that drives the best work . . . building a perfect sauce from a perfect stock, creating an extraordinary restaurant, building a wooden boat -- it's all the same thing." Perhaps the prime difference between wooden boats and other vessels is that the former possess an attribute that the latter do not. It's an attribute that Ruhlman uncovers and shares. It's called "soul." Alan Prince of Deerfield Beach, Florida, captains his own -- alas! -- 10-foot fiberglass boat.
|
Support your 