A Hands-On Voyage of Discovery

D.C. Scouts Visit Solomons To Learn to Make a Canoe For Auction, but Will It Float?

The Cub Scouts from Capitol Hill swarmed the wooden boatmaking shop in Solomons, scoping out the walls of hammers, saws and hand planes as veteran boatbuilder George Surgent barked out his first rule.

"Don't grab stuff unless you have permission," he said.

"Can I use this drill?" asked Tony Perez III, 11, eagerly holding aloft a bit-less cordless model.

Members of Webelos Den 380, leaving behind their apartments and rowhouses in Washington, came to the Patuxent Small Craft Center one Saturday in December to begin building a 16-foot wooden canoe. Working with skilled boatwrights, most of the Scouts would handle tools for the first time as they learned what is considered to be a vanishing art form on the Chesapeake Bay.

The finished canoe will be featured in tonight's annual auction at St. Peter's Interparish School, where several Scouts are students. The bidding will start at $1,000, and money raised will be used for school supplies and provide tuition assistance.

Also up for auction is a weekend in Cape May, N.J., as well as a trip to Los Angeles and a private tour of the U.S. Capitol by Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.), but the Scouts believe that their handcrafted blue and yellow canoe will be the star attraction.

"People are going to the auction specifically for this boat," 9-year-old Quinn Aitchison said.

On the first day of construction, 10-year-old Patrick Lally V gripped a hammer with both hands, hitting the nail on the head about every 12th attempt. That prompted Bill Lake, an 80-year-old volunteer at the Calvert Marine Museum's boat shop, to admonish Patrick for "swinging like a girl."

Den leader Patrick Lally IV then explained the physics of a pendulum swinging, and after a few more tries, his son was hitting the nail every third stroke.

The Scouts also learned the basics of using drills and screws to secure the sides of the canoe. They used duct tape, wood glue -- which to the parents' delight turned everyone's skin a dingy brown -- and bronze nails, which don't erode in the salt or rust.

"Boatbuilding isn't as easy as it looks," declared Jacob Drozdowski, 11. "Building a boat goes from one man's heart to his hands. That takes time and patience. . . . It changes the way you think about boats when you build a boat."

For Surgent, working with the Scouts means that the knowledge of building wooden boats, once a trademark of Solomons Island, will be passed to another generation and the tradition might be kept alive.