Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 14, 1993 TAG: 9303140002
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: E-7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: ALEXANDRIA LENGTH: Medium
BOAT BUILDING HELPS YOUTHS ACROSS TROUBLED WATERS
Marvin Williams' face twisted in concentration as the 12-year-old edged a blowtorch closer to the smooth curves of the wooden boat he is helping to build.Slowly, he placed the flame beneath thick wire sticking out of the little sailboat's seams, jumping nervously when he miscalculated and singed the wood. Marvin offered a thin smile as another boy twisted the heated wire free, and the job was done.
"That's it, Marvin, you got it down," said Chuck Moore, one of several men working with Marvin and three other boys to build a two-person sailboat.
The boys are part of a local mentor program called the Untouchables, a strict brotherhood that teaches religion, respect and the importance of education to mostly inner-city black adolescents.
The four-year-old mentor program enrolls 70 boys, Moore said.
"We were losing too many youth" to drugs, crime and despair, Moore said. "Now we keep them busy."
A month ago, Marvin had never been near a boat. By May, he hopes to be sailing on the Potomac River. He said his family likes the idea that he is building a boat, in part because it keeps him out of trouble.
"You bet I'll be sailing it," he said.
"We'll race it and we'll win," chimed in 12-year-old Cory Braxton.
Cory lives most of the time with his grandmother in a part of Alexandria that is sometimes beset by crime. Marvin lives with his mother in a city housing project.
They spend two afternoons a week working on the boat.
"I like it. When it's done we can say we built it," Cory said.
There is something poetic about building a boat, creating from flat wood the graceful arcs and hollows of a thing that will float on water.
But mostly, it is hard work.
The boys began by tracing the plan and sawing the wood. Before they are done they will cut the boat's oars and mast, forge its oarlocks and other fittings and sew its sail.
"If these kids can build a boat when they are 11 or 12, then a lot of other things ought to be possible in their lives," said Joe Youcha, a professional boat builder who is teaching the boys.
Youcha and the non-profit Alexandria Seaport Foundation, which is sponsoring the boat building program, will teach the youngsters basic sailing techniques this spring. By summer, the group hopes to stage a regatta with several small boats under construction at the foundation's waterfront warehouse.
"I have seen it so many times. Working with their hands, building something as a team and solving problems, it teaches leadership, teamwork, lots of valuable things," said Dick Wagner, executive director of the Center for Wooden Boats in Seattle.
For the past three years, Wagner's museum and boat building school has worked with troubled sixth- to eighth-graders to build and launch small sailing dingys.
"It teaches a rhythm of work that is directly applicable to getting a job and working in society," Wagner said.
That sailing is often considered a pastime of the rich, remote from the troubled waters facing boys like Cory and Marvin, doesn't matter, the Alexandria program organizers said.
"Boats are great for everyone," Youcha said.
The Untouchables' boat was designed specifically for the Alexandria waterfront by William Hunley, former chief naval architect and member of the Seaport Foundation.
"The idea was to design a boat that youths and adults could build together and that was small enough that you can put it on top of a car," Hunley said.
Downtown Alexandria has no launch ramp, so boats must be small and portable, he said.
Since the Seaport Foundation began offering boat building classes last fall, several groups of youngsters and adults have started work.
The boat builders also include a church youth group, a father and his three children, and a teen-age immigrant from Poland with two adults who took the boy under their wing, Hunley said.
"These kids for the most part have no exposure to boats. When they first come in here they look like little wooden soldiers, all stiff and nervous. After the second or third trip they're pretty relaxed," Hunley said.