Why am I building a boat?

I have always wanted to build a boat. I mean a real boat...
I have toyed with this in one capacity or another over the years. I am a middle age man in a relatively landlocked part of the state I live, but thankfully not too far to reach the ocean within 5 to 6 hours' drive (not that I ever get there other than business). I am married to a woman that has worked side by side with me in the early years of our partnership doing some pretty physically challenging work. We've  built barns, remodeled spaces, landscaped and generally did whatever was necessary to survive.  As need finally dictated, I found more traditional employment as a  CAD drafter, eventually working my way up to an engineer position for a major electric utility in a very specialized design department.  We didn't stop our work together though. As we acquired tools and space to use them, we continued to  increase our skill set by building furniture, cabinets and other casework . We enjoyed nice furniture and could never afford to buy it so we tried our best and we endeavored to build it.  This was and is the driving force of all the things we have built together. We like beautiful, well made things and can only have it if we eliminate the labor portion of that expense by doing it ourselves. 

My personal projects were, and still are to some degree, dictated by money or the relative scarcity of it. No real surprise there to many reading this. In many ways that is the eternal rub isn't it?  Unless we are lucky enough to be born wealthy, money is the limiting factor in our youth with time in abundance, and time becomes the rare commodity as we grow older. I limited the scope of what I could accomplish based on what I could afford. Sometimes (my wife says "all the time") ignoring the "afford" part of that dictum. I have built or rebuilt a few boats, a strip canoe according to Ted Moore's Canoecraft and moving up a notch many years ago, a non descript 16' powerboat rebuild from the keelson up (sold as soon as was finished and never launched to finance the down payment on my first home).  Great learning experiences but not quite what I dreamed of.  We own a 17' Mako Pro Skiff (or in partnerships with my bank to be more precise) for several years and it serves nicely as a fishing boat.  No camping or cruising to be done out of it but that is not what it was designed for. So, I started thinking...

Cedar Strip Prospector Canoe

I spent my youth being exposed to this maritime passion in one degree or another. The "it", the deep vein of recurring interest in things nautical, has bubbled up over the years.   Walking around the marinas in Tampa with my Father as a 6 year old boy, looking at boats he couldn't afford as a young father, is a deeply poignant, stirring memory. Maybe it is the sea and the draw it has always had on people that places these memories at what seems a genetic level. Whatever it is, this instinctive cellular memory will, for a flash of brilliant clarity, transport me to an age and feeling that makes childhood the limitless world we adults envy. When retrieved and meditated on, it and other countless memories along the Gulf Coast of my youth contribute to the reasons that drive me toward the project that I endeavor to record here. Pouring through books on fish and marine life as a boy in our Tampa living room, playing in the breakwaters at Bradenton Beach, looking out of the window as we traversed the Florida landscape which seemed to me an endless jungle of adventure and excitement are rooted deep in me and seemed to have flooded back in recent years as I have grown older and care less about the posturing and approval of young adulthood. 

 This, I believe, is the real reason why I am driven to build this boat and why I chose this design.  It isn't an exercise in plywood and fiberglass.  I am not building it to prove something to myself. The nuts and bolts of this don't signify.  For me, this vessel, this means of conveyance is the realization of a lifelong desire for adventure.  It can be poked up creeks and skinny water but still carry two for a week or more of comfortable cruising. At least the comfort level we can endure.  Exploring the coastline of the southeast with my wife, sharing with her what I have experienced but moreover, creating new experiences that neither of us have yet to share is why I am building this boat. Taking friends and family, a new Granddaughter (another on the way) on day cruises in style while we beach on some remote strand for a picnic is why I am building this boat. And to take my Dad out for some of that unrealized adventure sacrificed to raise a family is why I am building this boat.