The Boatbuilder – Part 1: Half-Built

"It's a good hull," said Wren. "Whoever started this knew what they were doing."

"My uncle," said Joanna. "He died before he finished."

"I'm sorry." Wren ran her hand along the curved cedar planking with a gentle, practised touch. "I'd like to finish it. If you'd let me."

The boatyard sat at the end of a long dirt road on the Maine coast, a ramshackle collection of sheds, slipways and stacked timber. Fog drifted in from the grey sea, and gulls wheeled over the water. The air smelled of cedar, tar and wet rope. Joanna, forty, an architect from Boston, had towed the unfinished boat nine hours in a rented trailer, not sure what she wanted from it.

Wren, thirty-six, was the builder. She was tall and quiet in an oilskin apron, with sawdust in her dark hair and a pencil behind each ear. She worked with a calm, steady economy, the way people do when they've spent a lifetime with their hands.

"How long?"

"The summer. If the weather holds."

Joanna had a firm in the city and a career she could not easily leave. But she heard herself say, "I can take a few weeks."

She stayed through June. She learned to steam planks and drive copper rivets. She stained her good shirt with varnish and laughed about it. In the evenings they sat on the end of the dock with a thermos of tea while the fog rolled in.

"Why do you do this?" Joanna asked. "Boats."

"They're the only thing I've found that don't lie," said Wren. "They float or they don't." She looked sideways. "I'm sorry. That was a lot."

"It was perfect. Wren, can I tell you something else that's true?"

"Please."

"I don't want to go home."

Continue the story: Part 2 – Launch Day.

Continue the story: Part 2 – Launch Day.