Stem to Stern: Imposters

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Real boat building is a calling. You get up in the dark and go to work, day after day. You get there early and stay late. You tax your body, year after year, with heavy lifting, climbing, kneeling, falling, crawling, lacerations and daily exposure to numerous toxins. You squander human relationships and devote all your energy to your work. You look ahead invariably toward each new project, convincing yourself that this time there will be no indiscernible flaws, of which you are the only one aware. This will be the perfect boat. Eventually, you look behind you and fifty years have disappeared into a mental scrapbook of wins, losses and draws. Six hundred years ago, Michelangelo said: “If people knew how hard I worked to get my mastery, it wouldn’t seem so wonderful at all.” Yes, my brother, and this is real boat building as well. We do this for the same reason that a junkie lives exclusively for his next fix. We do this for the same reason a drunk will drink anything to keep from facing the inevitable. We do this for the same reason a gambler sits in front of that bandit, begging for just one more pull: Addiction. Addiction plain and simple, or … going with the gentler, far less accountable term of today, a disease. We’re boat builders, first and foremost, racked with a rare infectious creativity with no twelve-step program to cure the jones.

There are two kinds of boat builders: The real thing, and the imposters who are in it for what they perceive to be a lucrative enterprise-—which is indicative of their lack of intelligence. You can tell a real boatbuilder from an imposter at first glance. The imposter arrives at the job around 9 a.m. in a black Escalade with lo-pros and black 22’s, holding a seven-dollar venti latte in one hand, a cellphone in the other, and smelling of foo-foo aftershave. Hell, by 9 a.m., a real boat builder has assigned the day’s work, remediated the previous day’s incompetence, scribed and fit ten planks, and smells like sawdust and MEK solvent. The imposter is wearing a squeaky-clean logoed polo shirt, running shoes, a large, expensive, status-designating wristwatch, and parades about, spouting something about a “Line Drawing” in his hand. “Line Drawing” is a bullshit term, coined by yacht brokers, and immediately clues you in that this guy is not the real thing. A real boat builder has glue in his hair, glue on his clothes, a pencil with a worn eraser behind his ear or in his work shirt pocket, and dust on him somewhere and probably everywhere. A real boat builder speaks of “profile” and “arrangements” when referring to the drawings, and if he or she has any that are still legible, they are covered in smeared epoxy, Interlux 96 and ketchup. An imposter leaves his large, pretentious office at 11:30 a.m. and has a 90-minute lunch with those of his kind at a voguish local watering hole. His afternoon is spent reading trade journals and conversing with fellow imposters through online boating forums. The real boat builder brings a leftover meatloaf sandwich from home or orders delivery pizza for lunch and eats between resin coats. His afternoon is spent in the lumber shed, in the machine shop, or on the job with the crew, as chief QC officer and resident pragmatist. By four o’clock the imposter leaves the job in time to catch the Drag Queen show at happy hour with his upwardly-mobile cronies in “Yacht Management.” By four o’clock, the real boat builder has called home to let his patient wife know that it’s going to be another late night on a High-Build shot with his painters. By 10 p.m., the imposter is tuned up at the club, smelling of vermouth and self-absorption. The real boatbuilder is just getting home, smelling of 0006 and worry.

My Uncle Johnny referred to anyone who was good with their hands as a “mechanic.” Real boat builders are good mechanics, since actual boat building requires good hands and the ability to connect those hands to the brain. You might have a trade forte within which you excel, but beyond that familiar set of skills, the addiction requires a respectable knowledge of wood, metal, composites, resins, paints, basic fluid dynamics and electrical theory 101. Mixing a bunch of slush and injecting it into a mold is, at best, bartending, not boat building. A cellphone and a sub-contractor directory is not enough to supply the addiction. Boat building and design requires focus and the ability to tune out the noise of the rest of the world. Boat builders haven’t the faintest clue about DEI, ESG, BIPOC, ZOG and CRT. A real boatbuilder’s long days are filled with other, practical acronyms like RPM, PSI, LCG, GPH and inHg. “Liberal” and “conservative” are terms used to describe the amount of glue applied to a lamination. “Binary” is a mathematical expression in ones and zeros. “Woke” refers to when you coaxed your broken body out of bed. “Organic” refers to materials which contain carbon compounds. Incidentally, what anarchist commune refugee decided that “organic” referred to brussel sprouts grown in cow shit? Didn’t anyone pay attention in high school chemistry? Real boat builders work hard and are immune to these cultural absurdities and expect the rest of the world to behave as such. There is no crying in boat building.

Real boat builders love not only building, but the design process as well. For some of us, the biggest rush of boat building is in the design and engineering side of the addiction. Many real boat builders are uncomfortable with in-house architecture and outsource that element to minimize risk. All imposters use hired guns. I have always considered that approach as akin to hiring someone else to sleep with your new girlfriend; even if they let you watch, it ain’t the same. To get the best out of life, you must participate and yes, sometimes it’s a gamble. The interdependence of risk and reward is cast in stone and feeding the addiction can bring the world to weigh on you. Real boat builders carry that weight on bruised and calloused shoulders. Imposters take a big draw on the vape pen and assign the load to others while taking credit for any and all success.

You can certainly scam some of the people some of the time. In this hyper-connected world, it is easier now than ever before to sham your way into people’s wallets. Imposters are on your phone, in your inbox, in your credit card account and knocking on your front door, preying on stupidity. Take a good hard look at the entertainment industry. Billionaires are created from talentless media darlings, tarred in tattoos, cheap cosmetics and low standards, basking in a confederacy of mutual admiration so it stands to reason that these imposters are well established in our industry as well. Countless boats are being built today with cheap cosmetics and low standards. Every fool with a cell phone, an industrial lease and a plagiarized body plan is a boat builder, promoting the scam just long enough to sell it off on the IPO. The brotherhood of real, venerable boat builders is in the fight of its life against an army of sycophant imposters and spoon-fed consumers, diluting the honor and authenticity of hard work. Hold that line, boys. Real boat builders will not lie down, nor will they become irrelevant! Now, if you’ll excuse me, Kyle is here with the crane so the boys and I can get those 32B’s down on the beds and fly that deckhouse up on the 75. If all goes well, we should be home around 10. Don’t wait up.

This article originally appeared in the October 2024 issue of Power & Motoryacht magazine.

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Source: https://www.powerandmotoryacht.com/column/stem-to-stern-imposters