Pat lecturing at the Great Lakes Boat Building School.

As part of my commitment to the Marine trades I have been engaged in the training of new professional boat builders. Over a twenty year period I have instructed hundreds of individuals with experiential based courses in all aspects of wooden boat building. These career programs have enabled many young people to enter their chosen field and become respected boat builders in their own right.

Programs I have developed and taught include:

   Workshops of one to ten days:

      Introduction to woodworking

      Hand tools

      Power tool woodworking

      Advanced Joinery

      Boat building topics

      Fundamentals of LOFTING

      Advanced LOFTING

      Small Boat Building

      Spar Making

      Epoxy Composite Boat Building

      Restoration and Repair

      Marine Survey

As a full time instructor at the NWSWBB I developed and taught a six month course in Modern Wooden Boat Building where students learned the methods and materials used in Wood/Epoxy boat building, and a three month YACHT JOINERY course for advanced students focused on fine woodworking techniques for yacht interiors.

At GLBBS I developed and oversaw the instruction of the two year career Boat Building program including:

      Class schedules

      Project selection

      Lectures and classroom assignments

      Rubrics and testing

      Student evaluations

      Career Counseling

I have consulted with various organizations and can help with the development of classes of any length.

After forty years of hands-on boat building I still find great satisfaction working wood and creating new boats or keeping the old ones on the water. Working with young shipwrights gives me a chance to pass on “tricks of the trade”, passed on to me from the craftsmen I worked alongside.