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The Providence Journal
Boatbuilder Lets Tradition And Elegance Be His Guides
by Tom Meade
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The last time an Adirondack guideboat appeared in Rhode Island was at the
Fine Furnishings Show. This week it returns.
A craftsman from the Vermont company will be building a cedar guideboat
during the Providence Boat Show, which opens today at the Rhode Island
Convention Center and the Dunkin Donuts Center.
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David Rosen, one of the owners of the
company, said today, "People often say they are like floating furniture
or floating art." So eye-catching is the boat that the September
issue of Vogue ran a story about the
design by Rosen’s partner, Steve Kaulback, and some of their discerning
customers.
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"Katie Ford, the president of the Ford Modeling Agency, knows beauty when
she sees it," wrote Robert Sullivan in the article in Vogue, "She
owns one of Steve’s 12-ft boats. And Tom Peters, author of In Search of
Excellence, has two of Steve’s boats, and John Cheffins, the president
of Rolls-Royce, owns one of Steve’s top-of-the-line cedar Adirondack
guideboats." The first double-ended guideboats appeared in the Adirondacks
in the 1830’s when sports – genteel outdoorsmen – from New York City and
Boston would travel to the vast mountain range to go fishing and hunting. A
guide needed a boat that was stable with enough capacity to hold himself, a
sport or two and supplies. But the boat also had to be light enough for the
guide to carry overland from one mountain lake to the next. And the
Adirondack guideboat was born. |
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"It’s a mystery design," said Rosen, "It looks
somewhat like a canoe, but it also looks as if a British boatwright took to
the woods where he came up with the design." |
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The original boats were so thin and lightweight they
were called "egg shells." (One of the builder’s who contributed to the
extreme light-weight of the boats was William Martin, also called "Egg-Shell
Willie.") Today, a 15’ cedar model weighs 70 pounds, only 2 or 3
pounds heavier than a comparable Kevlar model. Kaulback, who once taught a
Brooklyn’s Pratt Institute of Design, has modified the original design to
enhance its beauty and performance.
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At first glance, an Adirondack guideboat bears some
resemblance to a canoe because it is double-ended, but that is where the
similarity ends.
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"If you’ve got a hard wind, you don’t want to be out
on a large lake or the ocean in a canoe," Kaulback writes. "In 1998, in a 90
mile race across the Adirondacks, 81 canoes and kayaks were blown to the
side of Racquette Lake by a hard wind. Thirty-four were flipped by the waves
and all had to be rescued and towed off the lake by boats with gasoline
engines. No guideboats required that service. These boats were made for
heavy water and hard wind, conditions common in the Adirondacks. If you made
your livelihood from your boat, which is what the guides did, you’d better
be able to get your sport safely back to shore, with gear and game intact.
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"There are some situations in which a canoe
will out-perform a guideboat or a pack boat (which is a down-sized version
of the guideboat.) Those conditions are when whitewater is present, when a
canoe’s directional instability becomes an asset, not a defect. To
intentionally direct a canoe sideways is called ‘ferrying." In the proper
context, ferrying is an invaluable tool. But that virtue becomes a defect
when the boat is taken to water wider than a narrow mountain stream. And
when the wind kicks up, which it always does, the canoe will go sideways.
Guaranteed."
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The guideboat is propelled by a rower seated close to
the bottom of the boat. The center of gravity is inside the boat. In a
canoe, the center of gravity is usually around the paddler’s belly button,
above the gunwales, making it less stable.
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Long oars also contribute to the guideboat’s stability
and speed. In an informal race at Mystic Seaport in Connecticut, Rosen,
rowing a guideboat, beat an inflatable dinghy powered by a 6 horsepower
outboard. |
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The real attraction of the Adirondack guideboat,
however, is its ability to turn heads. The cedar and spruce version, which
touches of cherry and woven cane seats, looks as though it cold have floated
out of a Winslow Homer painting. (On the company’s website, there are photos
of boats that have played prominent roles in weddings.) |
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The nine employees of Adirondack Guideboat, Inc. build
about 200 boats per year, and Rosen says, he and his partner are dedicated
to keeping everyone on-board throughout the long Vermont winter. To that
end, they are slightly discounting their boats during the month of January. |
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