Jim Hammond lives on a hill a few miles north of Port Rowan. He is married and has two small children. For most of his working life so far he has taught Art at Valley Heights Secondary School. In the past few years he has been strongly drawn to the art of boat building as it flourished in this part of Ontario during the early nineteen hundreds."The art of building small wooden rowing or sailing skiffs has almost disappeared with the general trend towards the use of fiberglass and aluminum.""This part of Ontario boasted a number of boat builders, each prepared to design and build wooden boats to specification. The names McCall and Mason were well known in St. Williams. Ferris worked in Turkey Point, and Bulmer in Port Rowan."Jim Hammond's active involvement with wooden boats began in 1988, when he undertook to restore a Grew Cruiser. This 14-foot boat had been built in 1963. Then Jim's friend and mentor Ross Bateman bought a 1920 Ackroyd dinghy, complete with Egyptian cotton sails, for $80 at an auction sale.
The hull of this dinghy needed a lot of work, which Jim performed with signal success. Subsequent restoration projects included a 16-foot Peterborough boat ("Islander"), a 12-foot chestnut skiff rescued from the dump by a neighbour, and a 16-foot boat originally built by Desi Johnston.Then Jim decided to build his own boat. The model he chose was something along the lines of a "pea pod" boat developed in Maine. This boat is a "double-ender" which means that it is pointed at both ends, with no transom.Jim calls his boat the "Inner Bay Rowing Skiff." It is light enough to be easily handled by two people, and easy to maintain, requiring perhaps a light sanding and a coat of paint every three years. This is an important improvement over the old wooden boats, which had to be varnished every year.Old wooden boats were built on jigs and required many ribs to be fastened to the hull with copper clinch nails. Jim has developed a lapstroke building technique, which dispenses with ribs, and uses modern epoxy glue instead. The Inner Bay Rowing Skiff needs no soaking before it becomes watertight.
I have all kinds of restoration work to do," Jim said, "but I would like to devote more time to building. Right now, I am working on providing the rowing skiff with a rudder, drop keel and spritsail. I have built two flat-bottom rowing skiffs, which could easily be marketed in kit form."Sometimes I can almost see myself in a little booth at a boat show, with a couple of rowing skiffs and a couple of paintings on display."