June 8, 1978 Shelton Mason County Journal | ![]() |
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June 8, 1978 |
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Life and lifestyle:
a Bayshore happening
- the seeds of a pair of projects
since come to most visible
fruition.
One project is living and the
other is, well ... it's organic,
anyway. And neither exactly
sprang up according to plan.
Lost? Follow closely:
Two weekends ago, William
"Shan" Shanahan, 27, and Stuart
Hoagland, 22, were forced to
By STEVE PATCH
Get this:
Two brand-new fathers. Only
one admits to thinking about
marriage. The other? Why, he's
never even been in a family way.
It was some nine months ago
that these two previously
unacquainted progenitors planted
.... together as well as quite
independently, one would think
STOWAWAYS, even little ones, will find the pickin's rather
slim aboard the good ship Stusha -- though it will hold a
couple of small crew members in addition to two
full-grown types.
OAK RIBS every five inches give the Stusha strength and
durability at no cost in extra weight or loss of flexibility.
THE PLANKING, all red cedar, is wedgie-seamed and secured
to the ribs with bronze wood screws. The boat has to flex
some," says Stu, "and if we used glue it would just crack."
experience the delay of a new
arrival: the arrival of that
long-awaited moment when the
product of their nine-month
liaison first would "break
water," as it were.
Seems another new arrival
had taken precedence.
"I figured it to be the biggest
thing to happen in Shelton all
weekend," says Shan, beaming.
"But, of course, 1 am the proud
father."
Be that as it may, one thing
remains clear: The May 27 birth
of Forest John, the ten-pound
Forest Festival (hence the name)
baby born to Shan and Vikki
Voss, definitely put a kibosh on
the anticipated climax of Shan
and Stu's months-long labor of
love.
In fact, the two had to wait
a whole week to launch their
baby a 15-foot handcrafted
canoe constructed painstakingly
of the choicest of woods with
nary a conspiratory hint of
fiberglass or aluminum.
Nevertheless, this last
weekend, with a ruddy,
prunefaced little weekling named
Forest in tow, the boatbuilders
and their family of friends
christened the good ship
"Stusha" (you guessed it: from
"Stu-art" and "Sha-nahan").
Its rich wood tones aglow
from the heat of the noonday
sun, Stusha slipped easily over
the just-submerged oyster grids
in Bayshore's Oakland Bay and
drew huge fatherly grins from its
creators as it knifed swiftly and
oh-so-silently through the water.
But it wasn't always so easy
- not for Shan and Stu's baby
any more than for Shah and
Vikki's. And, just as little Forest
had taken a mind to belaboring
his mom's labor, and hence
disrupting plans for a home birth
under the guidance of one-time
Air Force medic Shan, so too
had the Stusha presented its
:zaare of challenges ....... ..
The story begins a couple
years ago. Philly-born Shan is in
Ellensburg, working a farm but
really just biding his time.
"I waited there almost two
years to get in boat-building
school," he remembers. "I was
looking to learn a trade or craft
where I'm working with my
hands."
Port Angeles native Stu,
meanwhile, fresh out of the
Navy, is employed by a
boatyard, where he is working
on a frustration.
"I was stationed on Whidbey
Island the whole time I was in
the Navy," he explains. "I never
did go to sea -- and I think
perhaps I was a little
disappointed."
So, as fate would have it,
come fall term at Gompers
Institute of Carpentry, a
vocational boatbuilding school
affiliated with Seattle Central
Community College, who should
meet over a Henry Rushton text
bul Shah and Stu.
Henry Rushton?
"Oh, he was this famous
canoe-builder from the
Adirondacks, back around the
turn of the century," says Shan.
"We used his Ruston Ugo style
for the lines of the Stusha -
although the construction was all
custom."
Having selected a plan, the
young boatbuilders acquired
around $300 worth of the
choicest of materials: mahogany
for the keel, by virtue of its
inherent strength and
screw-holding capacity without
undue weight; oak for the
steambent ribs and stem and for
gunwales inside and out; and red
cedar, marine-tested, rot-resistant
and light, for the
three-eighths-inch planking.
Why all wood, when
synthetics and metals are so
much easier?
"Wood has proved itself,"
says Shan. "It's the natural
element on water. And it needs
no additional flotation.
Aluminum can sink, and
fiberglass is real unhealthy to
work with.
"Besides, fiberglass is the
lazy man's canoe."
Laziness, of course, did not
enter appreciably into the
Stusha. There was, after all, no
preformed mold into which one
could pour his hull from a can
of plastic resin. In fact, with the
exception of a planer, to bring
the planks down to the desired
thickness, and a bandsaw, to
shape the various laminations, all
the tools used in the birth of the
Stusha were hand-wielded,
strictly.
"We used mucho clamps, of
course," says Stu, "and a
steambox, screwdrivers; a block
plane, sandpaper... And it was
all hand finished."
When the shaping and
sanding were completed, the
Stusha was saturated with linseed
oil, to help preserve the,ood
and enhance its native hues and
grain, and then varnished. And
the result is a functional product
as beautiful as the finest
hardwood coffee table and as
strong as a log boom.
"You'd probably have to get
rammed by a tugboat to hurt
it," says Shan. "If anything, we
overbuilt it. It weighs 80 pounds,
and we could probably take 15
pounds off the next one. Why,
the oak stems in this thing are so
thick they could be put in a
25-foot sailboat."
Although the Stusha has
negotiated successfully the chop
and tide of Puget Sound, its
creators admit it is perhaps
better suited to lake or otherwise
calm-water navigation.
"It's really not a whitewater
canoe," says Shoe. "But it is real
quick and maneuverable, that's
for sure. And, although using it
takes a certain amount of agility
- certainly more than in a
rowboat - you really would
have to work to capsize it.
BUILDERS SHAN
quickness.
age 20- Shelton-Mason County Journal - Thursday, June 8, 1978
(in the
stern) and Stu demonstrate Stushi's knifing
=.?
TWO FULL-TERM PROJECTS are unveiled before a Ba
family Sunday. The one in the foreground, dubbed Stusha, goe
pounds. The one perched on the poopdeck, dubbed "Forest John,
"In at about 10 pounds.
You'd probably have to put all
your weight on one side and
push to turn it over."
Shan and Stu figure their
canoe safely can handle two
grownups plus a heavy load - be
it camping gear or a child or
two. "This is really a family
canoe," says Shan, who is
looking forward already to
taking his own family on some
canoeing trips this summer.
Stu will be returning to
school, so his and Shan's
boatbuilding partnership will
cease for at least a time. But
neither he nor Shan plans to give
up boatbuilding.
"I'm now beginning work on
a Swampscott dory," says Stu.
"It's a roundsided, flatbottom
! 6-footer, for sailing."
As for Sheltonian Shan, he's
thinking very seriously of going
into the canoe-building business,
operating out of a little shoreside
shop with Bayshore residence
coordinator Eric Stroud, 25.
"It wouldn't be a big
business," says Shan. "But I
think we could probably build
one a month or so."
"It would be more a moans
to a lifestyle than a big
moneymakirig ventul, "' adds
Eric,
Although they are hesitant to
venture a guess as to the market
price of their 15-footer, the
builders expect it will certainly
have to exceed that of your
run-of-the-mill fiberglass job.
"But it's like buying a
Mercedes instead of a Ford
Fairlane," says Eric. "You pay
more at first but you appreciate
it more in the long run."
Canoes represent a start and
a good base for production, but
Shan for one figures eventually
to move on to bigger things.
After all, little Forest started out
a healthy ten pounds heavy -
and things can only get weightier
as time goes along.
'Tve kinda got this dream to
eventually build a sort of 'Noah's
Ark,' A 35- to 40-foot sailboat or
auxiliary motorsailer, you
know?" says papa Shoe.
"That way, in case one of
these days things really go down,
we'll have something to get away
on."
A NEAR-GLASSY Oakland Bay slips noiselessly past the
proW and beneath the stroke of co-builder Stu.
Seai's
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