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Project Overview
On the Island of Martha's Vineyard, in the port town of Vineyard Haven, is a small boatyard called the Gannon and Benjamin Marine Railway, named for its owners Ross Gannon and Nathaniel Benjamin. For nearly the last 25 years, Ross and Nat have built wooden sloops, ketches and yawls, using tools and techniques from early in this century. Their shop is a tall, cluttered building standing at the very head of Vineyard Haven Harbor, hard by the ferry landing, and an anchorage for the largest collection of wooden gaff-rigged sailboats anywhere along the southern New England coast. Beginning in 1998, Ross and Nat took on the project of a lifetime; to build a sixty-foot wooden schooner of Nat's design, the biggest boat to be built on the Island in the 20th century.
— Tom Dunlop, from the introduction to Schooner
I spent four years recording form and detail as the schooner took shape; the materials, tools and craftsmanship; the personalities of the boatbuilders; the feel of the workshop. I shot thousands of images on color transparency film using my Pentax 6x7, almost exclusively with available light. Luckily, one end of the shop is wide open to the warm early morning light — on sunny mornings I could often be found at the boatyard. I've been working on this project with writer Tom Dunlop. We're hoping that a coffee table book will come of it, one that is both beautiful to look at and compelling to read. The story will begin with a dream and a handful of drawings, and end with the schooner's first sail in Vineyard Sound.
— Alison Shaw
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