What I learned from building a model ship

“I must go down to the sea again, to the lonely sea and the sky.” With these words, John Masefield begins his best known poem, “Sea Fever.” They capture the draw that some of us feel to the broad vistas and limitless horizon of the sea. I have been one of these people for as long as I can remember. Wherever I am, whatever I am doing, the sea is always nearby, if not as a physical presence, then as a mental backdrop to my appreciation of the world.

I simply cannot think of the world without the expanse of the ocean. For nearly 20 years, I have been fortunate to share my love of the sea with a like-minded group of enthusiasts and craftsmen devoted to building model ships.

It began as a dream. The seeds of a longstanding wish sprouted into an actual, bona fide, sleeping dream. When I awoke, the dream sent me to the internet where I found a shop that sold the kits and tools needed to build model ships. Bill, the shop owner, had a passion for his work and fitted me out with everything I needed to begin. The kit and equipment were essential, but what I cherish most was his invitation to call him if I needed help once I got started.

It wasn’t long before I and five other novices were meeting with Bill at a nearby maritime museum for one of his courses on ship modeling. On the last day of class, we all wanted more, and so we did the only thing we could to keep going. At Bill’s suggestion, we started a club.

Over the next 18 years, we have grown from our original membership of seven to a group of more than 30 ship modelers at all levels of expertise from rank amateurs to professionals whose work graces museums throughout the world.

I am a rank amateur. I probably shouldn’t be after 18 years, but we all have our gifts and fine woodworking isn’t one of mine. This is not to say that I can’t build a decent looking model ship, but only that one of mine will never find its way into a museum.

Now comes the last week of July and our club’s annual exhibition which lasts for a week, features more than 50 models, and draws close to 1,000 visitors. I haven’t built a new model or exhibited one for a long time, and the older I get, those little infirmities of my advancing years make the work much harder. My eyes don’t see as well, my fingers aren’t as nimble and my confidence is flagging. Never mind all that. This year the exhibit’s theme, My Favorite Model, lets me take the easy way out and enter something I made years ago.

My choice is a Chesapeake Bay skipjack, which I built from a kit in 2011. It remains one of my favorites for its relative ease of construction, its eye-catching yet manageable size and what it taught me about the history of oyster dredging on the Chesapeake Bay.

Well, that was an easy decision. But wait, not so fast. Something else is niggling my brain. It’s the kit I bought at our club’s annual auction a few years ago, an Italian model of the yacht America whose victory in an 1851 race in England gave birth to the America’s cup race of the present day. I had recently opened the box and started work on the model, hoping that I could build something that would look nice in our home in spite of the flaws that had already begun to creep into my construction. If I finish it in time and if the flaws don’t ruin the overall appearance of the ship, I might enter it into our exhibit as another favorite.

Setting that thought aside, I focused on building the model. I was already resigned to the challenge of having limited guidance with a kit where the instructions were translated from a language other than English. I would use the drawings supplied by the manufacturer and pictures from the internet as my guides. I would also simplify, turning a model of a ship under full sail into one of a ship at anchor with its sails furled and stowed out of sight.

There was still a straight wooden rail to bend around the hard curves of the stern and decisions to make when the wood resisted my best efforts at steaming and softening it to conform to the desired shape.

When the wood cracked, leaving two jagged pieces of railing, I joined them with a piece of more pliable cardboard. Who uses cardboard to fix a wooden ship model? Let this be my secret and bring out the spackle to cover the cracks and joints with a seamless coating. Well, not quite as seamless as I would have liked.

And so it continued with each phase of construction, every step offering a chance to get it right, the risk of screwing up and an opportunity for a redemptive solution to the problem. There were days when I thought I would never finish, that my mistakes, even the ones I could correct, were ruining the appearance of the model. Still, I reasoned, even a flawed but basically decent product is better than an unopened box on a closet shelf.

The yacht America is finished. It sits on a living room table, its sleek lines giving the impression of motion even when it is lying at anchor. I entered it into our club’s annual exhibit along with my earlier model of the skipjack. Completing it challenged me to set aside doubts about my ability to do an adequate job, to trust my ingenuity to fix my mistakes and, even when I couldn’t, to enjoy creating something beautiful in spite of its flaws. Building the America gave me a handsome model to display in our home and reminded me that we are never too old to learn a valuable lesson in life.