They would really rather row...

Jim Fitzgerald and Nancy Rothwell displayed their Whitehall rowboat at the Perkins House Ice Cream Social. Fitzgerald made the boat in the shop where he makes guitars.

Among displays at the Perkins House Ice Cream Social June 25 was a rowing boat which was built a year ago by Jim Fitzgerald of Colfax. The boat's design dates back to the turn of the century, but its construction involved materials and techniques of modern construction.

The boat is a modern-day version of a Whitehall design.

Fitzgerald, a retired dentist who practiced in Olympia and moved to the Palouse country to retire, built a new shop at his residence on the McNeilly Road area for his guitar building hobby. However, he made sure the shop building was large enough to accommodate the planned boat building project.

Fitzgerald retired in 2001, and he started work on his house at that time. He and his wife, Betty, moved over when the house was close to being complete.

Betty died in 2014, and Fitzgerald has since partnered with Nancy Rothwell who likes to sit on the stern seat of the rowboat while Jim rows. They like to ply the waters around Bunker's Resort on Williams Lake.

The two knew each other for years, because Nancy was a long-time artist associate with Betty Fitzgerald.

Fitzgerald's interest in boats dates back to before his time at the University of Washington when he rowed for the Husky crews. He was raised on a small dairy farm between Shelton and Olympia and was familiar with boats at an early age.

Fitzgerald rowed on Husky four-man crews. The three other rowers in his shell were also farm boys, but from eastern Washington. They were all strong, but, Fitzgerald noted, they were all too short to land a seat on one of the Husky varsity eight teams. Still, they were often called upon to substitute on varsity boats when regular crew members were not present for the early morning workouts.

During his years with the Husky crew, in 1963 and 1964, Fitzgerald rowed some of the boats which were turned out by the legendary George Pocock who fashioned Husky rowing shells out of oak and cedar.

"He was there then, but I never got to see him. He worked upstairs at the shell house," Fitzgerald said.

His plan to build a rowboat surfaced after he had a chance to row a similar boat on a trip to the San Juan Islands.

"I knew then I just had to build one of these boats," Fitzgerald explained.

The first step was to create a form for the shape of the boat. Once built, the form was turned over and the boat was constructed upside down.

The "planks" for the boat were cut in matching pairs, one for each side of of the hull from 3/16th-inch marine plywood. Planks were cut off a pattern which was extended by a lofting process from the original patterns.

Strength of the boat derives from its lapstrake construction which calls for overlapping the planks as they were added to the form. The planks were glued together with strong epoxy with an inch of overlap.

Fitzgerald fastened the planks to the form with screws. After the boat was formed and epoxy dried the screws were removed and the screw holes filled.

The modern epoxy and plywood technique is a variation from the traditional boat process. Traditional wooden boat builders applied oak strips to shape frames over the boat forms. Planks of thin cedar were attached to the frame ribs in a similar overlap pattern and fastened with rivets.

Fitzgerald noted one advantage of the epoxy technique with the plywood is a reduction in weight. The 16-foot boat weighs 180 pounds.

The boat was fitted with custom wooden seats, and Fitzgerald made traditional oars from a laminated square stock. The oars, which measure eight and one-half feet, were a shaped by a long planing and sanding process. Blades for the oars were also shaped from a precise pattern.

The top of the oars near the handle were left square to act as a counter weight for the lengthy section of the oars which extend out to the water from the oarlock.

The oaks are also fitted with traditional leather mounts which fit tightly into the oarlock.

Fitzgerald also fashioned the special shaped seats from a laminated block. He noted the Whitehall designs from the past had a variety of seats and could have possibly been an option for the original boat owners. .

With the boat project finished last year, Fitzgerald converted the form to benches for his shop and is now back to making guitars. He estimates he had turned out 25 guitars in three years of production.

"One good thing about being retired is you don't have to make a living making guitars," he commented.