John Gardner Small Craft Workshop

Mystic Seaport - June 23-25, 2023

​Come one, come all to celebrate Traditional Small Craft in the place where it was born!

Mystic Seaport Museum, WoodenBoat and the John Gardner Chapter of the TSCA are joining forces to sponsor the best ever small boat gathering.

The Seaport Boathouse Livery will be available to all at no extra charge. Go try out working replicas of the original small craft from the Museum’s Small Craft Collection. To celebrate breaking ground on the new Small Craft Hall, we will be honoring replicas of the originals. If you have one at home, bring it and share its story. If yours is in the tradition of the original, say of more modern materials, but honors the essence of the original, that is OK, even encouraged in this age of trailer sailing and garage storage.
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Included will be special tours of the Small Craft Collection. Go visit your favorites then come
back and take a replica for a ride. Observing an original or replica is all well and good but there
is only one way to see how it feels. If you can’t find one but really like it, pick up a set of plans from the Collections Research Center and bring back the new boat next year to celebrate the Grand Opening of the new Small Craft Hall.

Activities will be going on all weekend. WoodenBoat is sponsoring a speaker’s series series
which is open to all participants. Shipwrights at the Seaport Shipyard will be demonstrating
skills in real time, making chips fly. Those demonstrations, too, are included. And throughout
the weekend members of the John Gardner Chapter will be offering rides in their dories or, if
permission is asked, in their own private boats.

​We use our boats, not just look at them. Morning rows both up the river to the source of the
mighty Mystic River as well as down-river to our favorite sandbar beach kick off the days. Late
afternoons are reserved for sailing. Let’s keep the River busy.

Workshop presentations will include building stories, skills explained (make your own rope
fender?) or how to reef your Catboat sail, scandalize your Spritsail or add some new control
lines to your existing rig. Come to Australia Beach just behind the John Gardner Boat Shop on
campus and check in at the Workshop Tent or, better yet, visit the Seaport’s website and sign
up in advance. Launch off our beach or nearby ramps, some of which are carry-in.

Reach out and let us know what skill you would like to bring, boat you would like to talk about
or which activity interests you. We look forward to seeing you there.

Bill Rutherford
[email protected]
860-222-5249