‘Meet the Boat Builders’ panel speaks to maritime heritage of Greenport
Greenport’s current place as a boatbuilding hub takes center stage this week.
Four veteran East End boatbuilders will headline a Times Review Talks discussion Wednesday on the craft, skill and problem-solving behind designing, building and restoring boats on the North Fork.
The panel for the “Meet the Boat Builders” event – which will run from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. at Wooden Boatworks’ shop in Southold – features Patrick Brennan, Anders Langendal, Paul Gartside and John Needham.
The foursome followed very different paths into boatbuilding, design and restoration.
Mr. Brennan, Greenport Village’s deputy mayor, trained as an architect and builder before turning to boat restoration with Wooden Boatworks, which operates the Southold shop where Wednesday’s discussion will take place.
The more than 10,000-square-foot shop gives the team room to work on vessels up to about 55 feet long and stage several projects at once.
Mr. Brennan said the ability “to do our best work” is one of the chief advantages of the Southold facility, along with the flexibility of multiple work bays and the ability to maintain skilled, year-round jobs.
Mr. Langendal began learning the trade as a teenager in Sweden before coming to the East End, where he eventually passed the craft on to his sons.
Mr. Gartside grew up in his parents’ boatyard in Cornwall, England, and today designs and builds boats from a small shop in East Hampton. His career has taken him from England to Canada and the United States, and he continues to design boats for clients around the country.
A relative newcomer to the East End, Mr. Gartside said he has been struck by the role wooden boatbuilding plays in the North Fork’s identity.
“Here on the North Fork, the visual landscape is clearly enriched by the wooden boat culture,” he said, “and the area is very fortunate to have it.”
Mr. Gartside said those kinds of maritime communities tend to grow around individual enthusiasts, eventually drawing in the skilled tradespeople and artisans needed to sustain them.
Mr. Needham spent decades building, repairing and restoring boats at Coecles Harbor on Shelter Island.
“I’ve been in ‘the game’ for my whole career,” Mr. Needham told Riverhead News-Review ahead of the event. “I love learning. I love being on the water — except during hurricanes or nor’easters. I am primarily on the repair and maintenance end of the business. My brother, Peter, is the creative and driving force of our building program.”
He said working alongside the yard’s craftspeople remains one of the most rewarding parts of the job.
“Seeing the finished product roll out of the building and get launched never gets old,” Mr. Needham said. He said the same is true of seeing a proud owner with a new vessel and adventures ahead.
Wednesday’s discussion will focus on the work itself — how the four got into an unusual trade, how boats are designed and built, memorable projects, difficult problems they have had to solve and what they still enjoy about the craft after years of doing it.
It is also expected to steer through Greenport’s evolution from a whaling and shipbuilding center to the marine trades and boatbuilding talent that remain there today.
Wooden Boatworks also operates from the historic Hanff’s Boatyard on Sterling Street in Greenport, tying Mr. Brennan’s work directly to that boatbuilding tradition.
Among the projects expected to come up is a complicated sailboat repair Mr. Gartside and Mr. Brennan worked on together that required replacing a heavy keel without tearing apart the boat’s interior.
The moderated discussion will be followed by questions from the audience.
Tickets for the event, held at 2700 Hobart Road in Southold, are $25.
The talk is sponsored by Suffolk Security, Stony Brook Eastern Long Island Hospital, First and South and North Ferry.
