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Sports

Education Event: "Charlotte" A Wooden Boat Story

CHARLOTTE is a film about an extraordinary boatyard, the Gannon & Benjamin Marine Railway, located on Martha's Vineyard.  Ross Gannon and Nat Benjamin established the boatyard in 1980 for the purpose of designing, building, restoring, and maintaining traditionally built wooden boats.  Over the ensuing decades Ross and Nat have played an essential role in preserving and extending the art and craft of wooden boat building.   Their combination of tradition, innovation, craftsmanship, ingenuity, and originality has made the boatyard a Mecca for wooden boat owners and lovers from the world over, and has transformed Vineyard Haven harbor into a showplace for a vast array of gorgeous wooden boats.

The film chronicles the design, construction, and launch of “Charlotte,” a 50-foot, gaff-rigged, traditional plank-on-frame wooden schooner built from Nat’s original design for his personal use.  The film provides the viewer with a succession of carefully constructed observations, allowing the boat building process to speak for itself, showing rather than explaining, much in the way that knowledge of boatbuilding is passed from master to apprentice.   The film is a character study of the processes, people, and the boats themselves, but ultimately what emerges is best described as a meditation on tradition, craftsmanship, family, community, our relationship to nature, and the love of the sea.

The SHYC Education Committee has invited Nat Benjamin to host a showing and discussion of this wonderful movie.  Whether or not you are a wooden boat enthusiast, this is a unique opportunity to experience the creation of a work of art and to meet its creator.  Copies of the movie on DVD will be available for sale.  Please join us for an homage to wooden boats and to meet this master craftsman.

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Please RSVP to 860-535-0112 or office@shyc.us by January 25

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