Building boats, building lives
A throwback to the future
The best places have auras, often because the past resonates through them and finds ways to remain close to the surface. So it is with First Light Boat Works in Chatham.
I don’t say this because my big old honking stepson Woody Metzger with his partner Jim Donovan own and run the place, though he and I do have our own resonant past, and I’m proud as hell he’s doing this even though I had nothing to do with making it happen.
I say it because of the wooden boat building that still goes on, because one of the few remaining marine railways still guides ship-launches into the sea. Then there’s the old buildings that lean against the shore, and the main workspace that still has a waft of its original use as a hanger for blimps before being hauled from the long-gone naval air base on Pleasant Bay. There’s the way the spirit of naval architect F. Spaulding Dunbar, who started the yard in 1936, still hovers, as do energies of the Pease brothers, who owned and ran the place for decades until about five years ago, when the next generation stepped up.
All this within a stone’s throw of fancy Main Street Chatham, on a postage stamp framed by wealth and water, somehow remaining true to a sea-facing, hand-hewn tradition of romantic hard work, a rugged little faceted scene that defies modern makeovers even as it survives because people still want to buy wooden boats.
“Now there’s a mouthful,” as Woody would say.
These days First Light might build four boats a year of their 26-foot design. There’s the Monomoy, the Tashmoo, the Pocasset, each with the same hull but different elements up top. They use a fair amount of laminate products “so we don’t have to go after old-growth trees,” says Woody, as well as white cedar that might come from Maine and other hard wood from southern swamps.
Then there’s special one-off projects, fancy for sure, plus repairs and servicing, taking care of moorings and a dock, storage off-site, even an upweller to grow baby shellfish for the Cape’s hatchery, ARC. There’s systems and engine work too, “but since the day we started, we never stopped building boats,” Woody adds. If you want a 26-footer, you might have to wait about four months for an opening to start, then another three to four months to receive a boat ready for the water.
Hanging around the yard, dogs underfoot, the smell of varnish or wood shavings often in the air, is a satisfying break from the meticulous, upscale settings that have come to dominate much of the Cape. But let’s be clear; this yard doesn’t exist without a whole lot of disposable income heading its way.
“Our clients are a nice mix and a lot of great people,” says Woody, “some Cape Codders, some people with second homes, some off-Cape like from Nantucket. But let’s be real: we’re privileged, they’re privileged.”
Woody’s privilege is mostly well-earned. Born here and raised in Orleans, he was about eight years old when I showed up in his life. He and his mom Kathy and I were a pretty cool family unit until she and I parted ways when he was a senior in high school. He was a kid who could talk to anybody, skateboard up a tree and ski down any mountain. He did the classic things Cape kids do for work, painting houses, construction, even some environmental consulting – and working at Arey’s Pond Boat Yard, where he met Jim Donovan who was a lot younger but already an ambitious boat builder. Jim’s Cape roots are even deeper than Woody’s; his grandfather Fred Bennett is one of the legendary old-school fishermen out of Chatham, still carving beautiful duck decoys when he’s not scratching for clams.
Years passed. When the Pease brothers offered Woody a job as their yard’s general manager, it took him less than a day, after a quick check-in with his wonderful wife Katie Sparrow, to say yes. He reached back to Jim who was living in the Caribbean to say they should reconvene, figure out a way to buy the place. It took almost a year to put the pieces together, including Jim’s return, and on the last day of 2016 they did it.
From the start their partnership had a natural division of labor; Jim more of a builder, Woody more of a communicator and front man, though both can do both. And so a couple of Cape Cod guys have figured out how to stay on Cape Cod, maintain history without trying to turn it into a hands-off, hermetically-sealed museum, create eight or nine year-round jobs for others to do the same, and send handsome, sea-worthy wooden boats coursing down marine rails into the Atlantic.
Like I said, I had absolutely nothing to do with this success. But I love that there are still stories like this one out there to tell.
NEXT: AND THAT’S THE WAY IT WAS — HANGING OUT WITH WALTER CRONKITE
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Let's hope!!!!
Love craftsmanship like that.