Wooden Boat Building at the Silva Bay Shipyard School

Wooden boatbuilding as taught at the Silva Bay Shipyard School includes complete construction by students of round bottom, bent frame, carvel or lapstrake planked small boats under 18′ length of a classic style. Maximum size of the boat building class is 16 and the boats are built by small teams of 3 or 4 students under the close supervision of two instructors. Students will complete lofting, build and setup molds, fabricate the backbone, shape and fit planks, rivet in steamed frames, complete thwarts and knees, paint, varnish, build oars and spars, and rig the boat for use.

Project Schedule

Wooden boat building is a six-month long course, from late September to April. Students start learning the basic skills necessary to be ready to learn the advanced skills taught later.

Students refine those skills during the process of making a scale drawing of the boat they will build, building a half-model from those drawings, then moving to the lofting floor to draw out their hull lines full size. About a month into the course, students will have moved from the lofting onto full size construction of their team project. Most of the remainder of the course will be spent on finishing this boat, which will be completed, launched, and sailed by the construction team before the course ends.

Skills and Experience

SBSS believes that by participating in the complete construction cycle of a small boat, and observing several similar projects going on at the same time, students come away with the basic skills to undertake the construction or repair of diverse woodworking projects, and the skills gained are certainly not limited to small traditional boats.

Canada’s only full time, accredited training in Wooden Boat lofting, construction, joinery and marine cabinetry. The wooden boat school is located on Gabriola Island, in the Gulf of Georgia, a few minutes by boat from Nanaimo.