Manchester boatbuilding company
My best friend, Will Heslop, and I were both students attending good universities, both lining ourselves up for internships in our last summer before adulthood. But when the pandemic led to the cancellation of Will’s internship and ended my search for one in March 2020, we realised we’d never have a better chance to finish building our boat, writes Antonio Gillespie.
The project had begun two years earlier. We’d dreamed up the idea of voyaging the rocky Cape Ann coastline, half an hour north of Boston, Massachusetts, in a vessel we had built ourselves. Neither of us knew how to operate any type of electric saw nor did we understand the properties of wood, but we got carried away with the idea and forked out $138 for a set of design plans for the sexiest wooden sailing craft we could find on the Internet. Despite the label: ‘Skill Level to Build: Intermediate to Advanced’ – we were determined to build an Iain Oughtred 17ft Skerrieskiff in Will’s parents’ garage in Manchester-by-the-Sea.
