My Backyard full of Boats!! |
Laser |
Hampton |
Canoes |
Lightning |
STAR |
Welcome to my boatbuilding page! This site is dedicated to the various boats that I've worked on over the past several years and future projects I am preparing to tackle. |
NOTE: This site is for the strong of heart and those not easily swayed by spouses, public opinion and conventionality!!!! |
More Links |
Projects |
This page was last updated on: September 17, 2002
OPTIMIST !!! |
I love boats. It's that simple. I have a special fondness for old wooden boats that have some life left in them. As you will see in the following pages I have had more than my share of boats over the past 17 years. When I graduated from college I was kicking around and wanted to do something with sailing before I had to get a "real" job. One day I saw an article about a boatyard that preferred to work on wooden boats. I called the owner up and asked for a job. Shortly thereafter I started work as the yard "scut boy". While I only worked there for less than a year I had the opportunity to see and learn a lot about boats as well as purchase my first boat. It was a 1946/47 vintage Hampton One Design, a boat indigenous to the lower Chesapeake Bay. I cleaned it up, rigged it and spent a season sailing before I moved inland and started a real life. Over the next couple of years I stripped the fiberglass that had been laid in polyester resin, faired the hull, laid new glass in epoxy, painted with Interthane two part polyurethane paint and sailed occasionally. Now jump forward about 7 years; I was married, had a career, house and a newborn daughter. I also had the desire to build a strip canoe. In the living room. That didn't go too badly except when I nailed the sawhorses to the subfloor through the carpet! Then my wife was positive I'd gone over the edge! The neighbors were also convinced I wasn't wired right. And the cat liked to play in the wood shavings from when I planed the strips to fit. Needless to say my wife wasn't thrilled to find shavings all through the house. Still I wanted to sail and the Hampton was too much to singlehand on windy days as well as taking time to rig and launch. So I bought an old fiberglass LASER to beat about in and this is what I used to initiate my now 14 month old daughter to sailing. (Mom sat on the beach and pretended not to be worried) The Hampton wasn't seeing action so I sold it the following winter and put the cash towards more tools. Several years later I did the same with the canoe and bought a bandsaw. Now we've moved into a new house we built ourselves and I have a dedicated workshop. I acquired a STAR class hull and a Lightning over the summer of 2000, both for the astronomical sum of $100. |
Starting them young! This is my daughter relaxing (as only babies can do) in her boat cradle built by Dad of course. Hung from a high ceiling and given a gentle push, it would swing for several minutes. Then when she was 14 months old I strapped her into my LASER and took her out for a quick sail while MOM pretended not to worry! A few years later we were out and she wanted to flip the boat to see what would happen! I told her the first thing that would happen is her MOM wouldn't let her go sailing anymore. |
All material and photos contained herein are copyrighted by D. Tabor and may not be used without permission. |
Click on the RED buttons to the left to see individual pages. |
More pages will be added in the future! |
My operating initials. |
Doesn't sailing look like fun? I think this guy's funmeter is Maxed Out!!! |
Photo by Sharon Green, a well known big-boat photographer. |
Our last night at sea Bermuda to BVI, Nov 2000. My daughter Keegan thinks the cloud in the middle looks like a teddy bear! |
Woodworking (under construction!) |
