09 Jun Rebuilding History

Having worked in construction building before decks and fences allowed me to transition into being an intern at the Small Boat Shop at San Francisco Maritime, but it’s still a challenge. There’s a lot of terminology and tools specific to maritime that I’m very unfamiliar with, and it has also been a while since I built a deck or a fence… Also, I just spent a year reading a bunch of post modern theory in grad school ????‍♂️. I helped at the Boat Shop last summer as well and, luckily for me, they are still working on the same boat. Traditionally it would take a crew two to three weeks to build the type of boat we are building at San Francisco Maritime, but a number of factors have greatly affected the progress. These types of row boats, or yawls, were used by bigger ships to ferry people and materials to the shore if it was too shallow for the big ship. The one we are building in particular is a replica of a yawl on the sailing ship called C.A. Thayer, that is in the park’s collection on Hyde Street Pier. The plans for the yawl were digitally extrapolated from historic photographs from about 1912.