Ultralight Boatbuilding

Tom Hill lives in Huntington, in the Green Mountains of Vermont, where he has been building boats and houses since 1972. He reckons he has built more than a hundred boats in that time, and has repaired hundreds more--everything from canoes and rowboats to 60-foot power yachts. Although he has worked with all types of wood construction as well as fiberglass, he has used glued plywood plank construction almost exclusively since being introduced to the method in 1980. Tom has taught boatbuilding classes since 1981 at The WoodenBoat School (Brooklin, Maine), The Brookfield Craft Center (Brookfield, Connecticut), the Shelburne Craft School (Shelburne, Vermont), and The Appalachian Center for the Crafts (Smithville, Tennessee). The boating he likes best is gunkholing--poking along interesting shores and exploring coves, estuaries, and inland waterways in canoes, kayaks, and small sailboats--but he appreciates ocean cruising as well, and once sailed his 28-foot sloop from Lake Champlain to the Bahamas and back while living aboard her for a year.