Bryan Kearns workshop

Cousin Ed arranged for an informal tour of Bryan Kearns’s wooden boat restoration workshop. Kearns is a wonderful raconteur, a man remarkably, enviably at home in his own skin. Of course he plays in the local steel pan band (and of course Pete Seeger was responsible for demystifying steel drums… But that’s another post).

We ended up spending more time talking about his fine collection of old tools than about the boats themselves, but the effect was the same. Maybe better, in that the lingo of tools is more familiar to me than that of wooden boats.

Still and all, I can now say “gaff-rigged yawl” and “starboard launch” with new authority, and I’ll be better able to commiserate with people who say you just can’t get good quality brass fittings any more.