The Idea to Build a Wooden Boat

Old boats and ships, meaning ones made of wood have always fascinated me. Not being able to afford the expensive wooden boat kits during my early teenage years I would, instead, try to build something from scratch. First I tried the Bounty, and, at age 13, with nothing more than a few scraps of wood from my Dad's workbench and some dowels I bought, I made what I thought was a reasonable attempt of the ship that Fletcher Christian took from the sadistic Captain Bligh centuries ago. My interest in the Bounty came from a complete reading of the Bounty Trilogy  by Nordhoff and Hall and a subsequent viewing of the theatrical version starring Marlon Brando as Christian and Trevor Howard as Bligh. The boat I made was rather pitiful but it was the best I could do given that I had almost no materials  and no plans, just a picture of the ship from the book. This was followed by a somewhat better attempt at the Cutty Sark, the famed British clipper ship, involved in the China tea trade. I based my model on pictures from a book about the Cutty that I had read. Both models were lost during a move from Boston to Florida that took place after my first year at college at University of Virginia.
During my years at medical school at Tufts in Boston, I sailed dinghies with a classmate out of a public boathouse on the Charles river.I had always loved sailing, having learned how to sail sunfish and small dinghies at summer camps that I attended from age 8 through 15.
Then came residency in internal medicine back in Virginia, a place I had missed terribly after those 4 years at U. Va. had ended. Boston was just too cold. During residency a bout with cancer, 6 months of chemotherapy, 3 months of radiation treatments. Then my first marriage and two sons born ,the chemo having successfully given me a lasting remission and , surprisingly, two sons despite the claim by oncologists that my fertility might not survive the cancer treatments. 4 years ago some complications related to the cancer treatment(yes, 20 years later!) developed which made it difficult for me to be active in exercise and, more importantly, playing golf, which was what i did with my free time, usually with my youngest son.
What to do? Well, I happened to catch a viewing of Mel Gibson's 'Bounty'(not my favorite...I like Brando's better) on TV and thought about building model ships again. A WEB search revealed a number of vendors of wooden ship model kits and I ordered Occre's 'Albatross' a reasonably easy to build double planked wooden ship graded by the vendor as being in the 'easy' category. I thought my youngest son would like building it with me, something we could do together in lieu of the now impossible golf, and, for a while, he helped, but quickly lost interest(too tedious Dad, he said). So I built it my self in 4 months and had a great time and success. What a difference from the roughly hewn improvisations I had attempted as a teenager!
I was hooked. I re-read the Bounty trilogy and decided to get a 'Bounty' kit made by Artesenia Latina, a Spanish company specializing in realistic ship model kits. This would turn out to be a much greater undertaking as this version of the 'Bounty' was 40" long and 34" high at the main mast. This particular kit also left the starboard side of the hull open so that each floor in the ship, with contents could be seen, even down to the numerous pots of breadfruit plants that were in Bligh's cabin for the never completed trip from Tahiti to Jamaica. In two years it was done and came out beautifully.
I built a small simply designed ship of the Golden Hind next, then a solid hull version of the merchant
ship 'Newsboy'from a kit by Model Shipways. And now, I am about 4  months away from completing a 46" version of the USS Constitution, also by Model Shipways, this kit being very much at the advanced level. Ashley, my best friend and wife, has been most supportive of the time I spend on these pursuits. She too, has hobbies, and I am always very happy when she sits down to her Creative Memory scrap booking(she is awesome at it) while I work on some part of a ship, with a movie playing in the background.
Throughout all of this, I devoured books on maritime history, focusing primarily on the tall ships from the 1600's through the 1800s up to the Gloucester fishing schooners of the early 1900's. I couldn't  get enough of it and the building of the models became nearly an obsession but one that allowed me to forget what had become a painful repercussion of my cancer treatments.
And then it hit me. Why not build a REAL boat, one that could take me back to my days of sailing but also one that would allow me to build a real old fashioned style wooden boat similar in style to the models I was building. Google took me right to the Arch Davis Designs website. Arch, a man originally from New Zealand, who now resides in coastal Maine, has designed a number of beautiful do it yourself wooden boats. Two of these, The Laughing Gull and The Penobscot 14 caught my eye. I emailed Arch, describing my interest in these 2 boats and also explaining that, while I was an accomplished ship modeler, my macro carpentry skills were just average and had not been tested in some time. He reassured me that I could and should build the Penobscot 14, describing it as a lapstrake boat with extremely pleasing lines  and a delight to sail. He said with the help of the comprehensive builder's manual, 1 hour long DVD instruction video(which is VERY good), numerous pages of plans, and patterns drawn out on mylar sheets that I would be able to build this boat and be quite happy with it. If I wanted, a head start kit for the penobscot 14 was available which included all of the previously mentioned materials and also the stem( an important and difficult piece for an amateur to engineer), the 2 bulkheads, the transom frame, and all of the station molds for a very reasonable price including shipping. I went for the kit and am glad that I did as I received  a perfectly engineered stem, station molds, and bulkheads. I invested in some required hand tools I did not have including some planes and a a set of chisels from a Woodcraft store and had them hone and sharpen them for me as well as purchasing sharpening stones to keep my hand tools sharp(a MUST according to Arch). A jigsaw, and a high quality rechargeble drill and electric sanders(a Black and Decker Mouse and a larger orbital sander). I also ordered the required System3 epoxy kit suggested by Arch and the various sized stainless steel screws from West Marine. I was ready to start the project and building adventure of a lifetime.