4 Boats in 4 Days: Unique Challenge Benefits At-Risk Kids

As most professional carpenters and first time hobbyists learn from the beginning, it's best to measure twice and cut once.

Having to cut multiple times isn't usually a good thing, but luckily that old woodworking adage didn't really apply this weekend when a group of locals attempted to cut and build four identical 26-foot boats over a span of just four days.

Ten individuals — many of whom have never built a boat before — volunteered their time from midday Friday to midday Monday to build rowing dories for a Seacoast Youth Services program that teaches teens life lessons while guiding them on a course for a maiden experience.

The teens aren't the only ones who encountered a learning curve this year, though, as the first-time individuals who helped cut, bend, shape and glue the plywood boat hulls found they were learning many of the same life lessons they try to instill in SYS' students.

"It was a huge effort," John McCarthy, a member of SYS' board of directors, said of the less-than-precise boat-building process. "It was squirrely. Each [dory] took on a life of its own."

The four-day effort began at 11 a.m. Friday in a private Hampton Airfield hangar graciously donated for the challenging project by airfield owner Mike Hart and his wife, Cheryl, according to SYS Executive Director Vic Maloney.

Roughly 46 of the next 72 hours was spent in that hangar, building two dories for SYS' rowing program and two dories for Station Maine, an "organization of community members dedicated to offering boating opportunities at no cost to youth of all ages in the mid-coast Maine area," according to Station Maine's website.

Don Betts of Station Maine provided the materials and tools and lead the volunteers in the construction process, which included building forms to help shape the boats, said Maloney. In a few weeks he said the volunteers will paint and finish the dories — which will weigh about 250 pounds apiece when they're finished — in time for use this summer and fall.

The first SYS rowing trip was held last fall using a borrowed dory, and Maloney said the teens had so much fun despite 14-degree weather that SYS wanted to find a way to expand the program as well as allow the students to compete in rowing competitions.

"The rowing is just great experience for the kids to learn some self-discipline and teamwork," said Maloney. "You have to have four to six oars in unison in order to not go in circles.

"These could be bicycles, these could be fishing poles — what it is is really a chance to give kids an opportunity to experience something they've never experienced and get them outside and away from video games."

McCarthy agreed.

"Kids grow enormously when faced with challenges they've never faced before," he said.

In total, SYS was able to build its two new dories — which are nameless, although Maloney said they'd like to thank Hart by naming one after the first aircraft he ever piloted — for $5,000.

Maloney said buying just one premade would cost $20,000, which he would be cost prohibitive for his 14-year-old Seabrook-based nonprofit. Because of that, Maloney and McCarthy said they were grateful for Betts' and Hart's efforts, as well as the time put in by all of the volunteers.

Maloney said the ultimate "dream" would be to honor those efforts as well as expand the program by eventually hosting a Seacoast Youth Services regatta of some kind along Hampton Beach, although he said any race of that nature would likely require some assistance from individuals with more rowing experience.

Photos and a video of the boat-building process are attached to this story above. More information about Seacoast Youth Services and the program can be found here.