The McKenzie River Wooden Boat Festival is coming up in less than two weeks – it’s 25 April at Eagle Rock Lodge on the McKenzie River. Here’s an event page for the Festival at Wooden Boat People.
The show is being organized by Randy Dersham, who sounds like a pretty danged interesting guy. He and his wife run the Eagle Rock Lodge there on the McKenzie, and he co-owns Tatman Wooden Boats with his son Sanderson. Sounds like he even has a day job as a consultant in the computer and video game industry. Busy guy, and sounds like he has fun as well – isn’t that the goal?
At the risk of sounding like another wheezing, reminiscing, old geezer, I very fortunately had my first exposure to the classic wooden McKenzie drifter design when I helped a friend (Lincoln Clark of SLC) one of Greg Tatman’s kits together on Lincoln’s back patio one late summer and fall – it must have been the fall of 1989. Lincoln oiled the inside of the boat with the Marine Penofin oil that Tatman’s still sells, and painted the outside of the boat an incredibly beautiful deep forest green.
Months later, one fine spring day in April of 1990 I left my bleary-eyed wife at about 4 am, holding two toddlers in diapers in arm, and drove from SLC out to Greg Tatman’s shop there on the McKenzie to pick up my first kit for a 17.5 foot high side, wide bottom drifter.
Greg was a fascinating guy – he looked every part the shop master that he was back then, jeans and a wool shirt covered in sawdust and shavings from the planer. My plan was to drive from SLC to the old shop (I think close to where they are now in Nimrod, OR), pick up my kit and another one for a friend in SLC, and drive back as far as I could that day and night so as not leave my wife stranded for the entire weekend.
Greg and his team were having a bit of trouble getting the mahogany gunnels I had requested to run through his big, old, chattering planer without chipping badly; he made several runs though the mahogany he had scarfed together was just getting chewed to hell every time he ran it. We both finally decided it wasn’t going to work, so I settled for oak that he had prepped as a backup, and we loaded the trailer.
Greg felt bad that we’d burned the last few precious hours of daylight working on the gunnels, so he drove me down to the nearby diner for a blue plate special of trout and all the trimmings. We talked of boats and wood shops mostly, though I was pleased to learn that Greg was a gifted water colorist, the recipient of a master’s degree in English Literature, a budding musician, and somewhat of a wordsmith as well.
Our first boat went together without a hitch; I liked the simplicity of the oiled interior and painted the boat’s hull a fire engine red – it was gorgeous.
Over the ensuing years that boat went all over the west from our base in SLC at that time, and was eventually sold to a group of friends after seven or eight hard seasons. My family and I built another one of Greg’s boats in late 2001 – a mahogany beauty.
I tried to track Greg down a couple of years ago, and the last I heard from him (mid 2007, I think) he was in seminary down in Austin, Texas. All the best to Greg whatever he’s doing and wherever he is today.
Wooden drifters need a little more care and attention than glass boats, though they’re quieter, more easily customizable, and simply a thing of beauty to behold. We’ll have to spend a bit of time next fall looking more at wooden drifters, and maybe take a drive out to some of the wooden boat shops out West.
Think about the McKenzie River Wooden Boat Festival the weekend after, it will make you drool over some of the fine wooden boats on display. And yes, anybody with decent woodworking skills and basic hand tools (including a decent router) can put one of these babies together.
Tags: Events
