THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 20, 1996 TAG: 9610220463
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MEREDITH COHN, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CHESAPEAKE LENGTH: 106 lines
THE WOODEN VESSEL barely makes a dimple in the Elizabeth River's surface, even with the weight of a man kneeling inside.
And each gentle pass of Marc Pettingill's single-bladed paddle produces only a breath of air, a tiny ripple of water.
The going is smooth - just what the Great Bridge boat builder aimed for when he designed and built the ultralight solo canoe he calls ``Sweet Dream.''
The canoe harkens to the centuries-old practice of building boats out of wood, something he plans to explain to others with a new book that explains his design.
The book includes plans for construction, giving readers a chance to answer not only a drive to work with their hands, but also the desire to explore.
``It's like a door,'' said Pettingill, a 48-year-old retired Coast Guardsman turned boat builder. ``You get in and go through a door that leads to so many places out there. You need just six inches of water and you can go where no motorboats can.''
For a stretch in 1994, Pettingill used his 27-pound Sweet Dream, which measures 13 feet by just 28 inches, to paddle from Sandbridge to Suffolk.
Some of the waters he plied weren't crystal clear or pristine, Pettingill recalled: Some were swampy, overgrown, choked with trash. Still, they wriggled through forests of cypress, past multitudinous wildlife. He saw inlets and islets of the Chesapeake Bay invisible by foot, automobile, or even sailboat.
``It surprises me that there are hundreds of miles of canoeable waters no one knows about or uses around here,'' said Pettingill, who paddles around the Elizabeth River at least two times a week.
``It's a unique experience we have here,'' he said. ``And the nice thing about canoes is that they're so personal.
Pettingill wrote his book, ``Building Sweet Dream'' (Tiller, $25), to introduce beginners to paddling their own canoe. It's a step by step accounting of how to construct a simple vessel with little more than two pieces of plywood, a back yard or garage, and a handful of tools and weekends.
The novice is taught everything from purchasing materials to painting the finished product. Directions even show how to turn scrap wood into a seat and paddle.
Sweet Dream's design is called a ``folded-ply'' construction because the sides of the hull are drawn together and intertwined, or folded, to form the canoe's familiar pointed ends.
Much like a dress is made from a pattern, the canoe design is cut from 4-millimeter-thick okume marine plywood. Edges are stitched together with nylon electrical ties until a layer of epoxy and fiberglass tape takes hold. Pettingill claims the construction takes as few as 40 hours.
``My philosophy is that if you're just going to build one boat in your life, you shouldn't need a garage full of tools and a lot of research,'' he said. ``In my book, I don't even assume you have a workbench.''
As a father of two, Pettingill found the idea of introducing schoolchildren to boats and the water appealing.
Pettingill periodically has demonstrated his skills to South Hampton Roads schools, but he laments the lack of an official, permanent boat-building institution in a region known as one of the nation's earliest ports.
The last such institution, the Norfolk School of Boat Building, closed its doors about five years ago. Pettingill is looking into opening another teaching facility, for adults and children.
But in the meantime he plans a series of do-it-yourself books, each outlining a slightly more complex wooden canoe. A pattern for a larger vessel called ``Merlyn'' is in the works.
Pettingill isn't the first to refine or expand on wooden boat construction. Industry observers say hundreds, if not thousands, of designs have surfaced in the centuries since the first canoe was carved from a tree. Aficionados say they likely will endure despite the commercial manufacturers' discovery of, and preference for, synthetic materials.
Fiberglass is cheaper and easier to build from than wood, but it can break down and become spongy if bent enough.
``Wood is also more aesthetically pleasing,'' said Matthew P. Murphy, editor of the Maine-based WoodenBoat magazine, which reaches 106,000 boat-enthusiasts world-wide. ``It's the first thing people usually notice.''
Designs like Pettingill's originated in England for a utilitarian, rather than recreational, boat. The first one was manufactured by Berthon about 125 years ago for use by small yachts with deck space too limited for a larger dingy. It was smaller, lighter and more modern than wooden boats native to the Chesapeake Bay.
According to Pete Lesher, curator of the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum in St. Michaels, traditional bay designs, created by natives and mimicked by settlers, were ``log'' style canoes made from poplar and pine trees at least 28 feet long. The logs were slowly hollowed out with fire, the ashes scraped away with oyster shells.
Pettingill's model would catch the eye of the casual boat hobbyist or woodworker because of its simplicity, Murphy said.
``Everyone thinks he can design one a little bit better or more efficient,'' he said. ``The difference is that Marc's is a lot easier for an amateur to build. If I was going to build it, I could make it a little more personal by adding my own spin to it.''
It's also so small and light that one person easily can slide it from the roof of a car into the water.
Even children, armed with a double-bladed paddle, can smoothly propel straight ahead, as well as turn, in calm waters.
Murphy said he watched Pettingill construct one of his canoes last June at the magazine's boat show in Mystic, Conn., where Pettingill introduced the design.
``It was a flat sheet and voila, it was 3-D,'' he said. ``I think people were really excited to try it themselves, which, I suppose, is what Marc wanted.''
Pettingill says he's had hundreds of requests for the design in recent months.
He hopes their Sweet Dream is the same as his: providing ties to the past and a means to adventure. MEMO: To purchase a copy of the book, contact Pettingill at 548-2880 or
Tiller Publishing at (410) 745-3750. by CNB