Category: Boatworks

What’s the Plan?

We’re running a fundraiser to raise matching funds for a MassDevelopment Collaborative Workspace grant, for Boatbuilding at The Brickyard.  The goal?  A regularly scheduled multi-week yearly program bringing boatbuilding to kids in Lynn and the North Shore.

But what is that going to look like?  Why do we need the funding?  Well, here’s the plan.

Right now, we’re working with Community Boatbuilding to use their expertise and experience in helping us launch our program.  Our next build will be in August, and we’re going to be building their bigger, 13’ skiffs for Kayak and Sail Lynn to use on the water, more for adults than the 10’ boats they usually build for, and with the kids.

This is going to need new forms for the bigger boat.  A form is a sturdy “jig” that holds everything in place as you construct the boat.  This takes materials, space, tools and time. Much of it is working with wood, but there’s some metal fabrication too. That work is going to be starting in June.

We need to dedicate some space to the boatbuilding program, which takes from our large, but still pretty full, 10,000 square foot shop.   We’ll need to store the forms, the jigs and fixtures, the stock and materials and any partially-built structures.  We need the space to be safe and secure for the kids.

We want to engage kids in fabricating the parts and pieces, which requires a higher level of safety and protection than is in a standard shop.  The SawStop table saw is a great example – proven to protect users by instantly stopping the blade drive system of the saw on contact with hands, fingers (and even hotdogs, take a look at the videos!)  We also want to teach the kids CNC machining – fabricating some parts on a large CNC router.  Operating this is much like running a 3D printer, which many of the kids have run at school, except this removes material rather than places it – and the principles are the cornerstone of much of current 21^st century machining.

Finally, we want to open up new ideas, such as a foundry where hardware for the boats can be designed, 3D printed and then investment cast from bronze, just as they have over centuries of marine manufacturing.

Sure, this will take time, and this is probably a project that will span years, but with your help we can put the plan in place, and start getting things rolling…  and start launching boats!

Want to help?  Drop something into the bucket at the Brickyard’s Patronicity campaign, here, …and THANK YOU for your SUPPORT!

Read all about what boatbuilding brings to a community of kids here, at Community Boatbuilding.

Read all about the Kayak and Sail Lynn program, giving kids and veterans a chance to learn about our rich marine heritage here on the North Shore, here.

Read about our mission to bring boatbuilding to Lynn, here, and visit the Brickyard’s Patronicity campaign, here. 

We’re off to a great start, help us take it over the top!

This whole thing started about 7 years ago.

At about the same time we were looking into starting up The Brickyard, we learned about the Haley Pilot School 5th grade boatbuilding program in Roslindale, which was founded by a young woman, Sarah Besse, who came from the Community Boatbuilding program in Boston.  Here’s what she told us:

Building boats develops a variety of skills and habits of mind transferable throughout life. Spatial thinking, nimbleness with three dimensional perception and recall is a key to academic success.

According to the National Academy of Sciences, “We suggest that spatial thinking is at the heart of many great discoveries in science, that it underpins many of the activities of the modern workforce, and that it pervades the everyday activities of modern life.”

Our testing shows that students’ spatial thinking skills grew by 56%. In addition to spatial thinking, building boats is a real-world application of mathematics. It also requires hand-eye coordination, safety skills, and above all, teamwork.

From that moment on, a boatbuilding program like this became a central goal of The Brickyard Collaborative.  There were a whole lot of things that had to come together to make it happen.  We needed space where kids could work, and set up the project for several days, if not a few weeks.  We needed qualified teachers.  We needed to find the kids.  Call it “crossing the streams”, for the 1980s movie buffs out there., but this Spring it started coming together.

Well, long story short, through the efforts of Frank Grealish, a veteran teacher in the Lynn Public Schools and his partners at Kayak and Sail Lynn, we started to put a plan together.  They contacted Community Boat Building in Boston, and we met up with Bob McCarty, who teaches their programs.  Community Boat Building was looking for ways to expand their programs into surrounding communties, and it was a perfect match.  We found 4 kids in the Lynn Schools through Frank’s efforts, and it was game on for April vacation.

Take a look at the progress photos, you can almost feel the enthusiasm:

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The community took notice as well.  The Lynn Daily Item ran a little piece on us, here, that got a lot of traffic on Facebook – last count over 2500 likes, 119 comments (all positive!) and 111 shares:

And then there was WCVB, Channel 5 TV.  Want to hear what the kids thought of the project?  Nothing speaks better than this:

4 students in Mass. build 10-foot boat from scratch during April vacation

Oh wait, that’s not the end of the story, by any stretch.  Once the boat is painted and checked out by the shop at Community Boat Building, Kayak and Sail Lynn will have a launch at the Blossom Street Extension dock on June 17th – save the date!

…and one final note.  To keep the program running, the Creative Cities Lynnspire Creative Placemaking Grant Program 2023 has awarded The Brickyard a $5000 grant!  Our next project?  Watch for us in August!

If it’s not too corny, (well, we’ve already quoted a movie from 1984, right?). “I love it when a plan comes together.”

It’s a testament to perseverance, all the folks who’s supported us, The Brickyard, the entire community, but above all, the kids who rolled up their sleeves and built a boat!

Want to help us out and keep the program going?  Donate now through PayPal!  Safe, reliable, and you can use your debit or credit card.  The Brickyard Collaborative is a fully accredited 501c3 non-profit, and your donation is tax-deductible.

Just click the button below!