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Newspaper Archive of
Shelton Mason County Journal
Shelton, Washington
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 H00tLF PRI£00 on Aramid-belted radial whitewalls Aramid hghter, str "more flex00.ble than steel. AR78-13 was $56'0t Size I Also Fits I Relular Price AR78-13 I 165-13 156.00 BRTI-I: I 175.13 3.00 DRTI-14 I ;67.00 LERT8-14 I 185-14 $71.00 /FR71"I4 I 195.14 $7|.00 R711-14 1 205-14 $19.00 1t'/0-14 I 215.14 $||.00 Len?lS I 205.1s I $11s.oo LR78.1S I 335.1S $/04.00 -installation extra " '10 OFF DieH00ard® battery S3899 • 82.00 wade-in for old battery • Prices are catalog prices • ShiI'-tng extra .eed • :Sears has a credit plan to suit n,ost everY " • Now on sale in our "R" catalog euPP lemet I Seao002 IC00:, Y