Letter from America

I (Mike Jenness, Jr.) first learned to row a boat as a boy out at Saquish Beach, Plymouth, Mass. Where my family has a summer house, and I spent summers during my childhood.

About 10 years  ago I became interested in racing rowing boats.  Out of financial necessity my father and I built our first dory.  Since then we have built several dories that my family, my brother Burt, and now my son Cole (14), row both for fun and in competitions.

About 6 years ago I saw my first Pilot Gig being rowed out of the Hull Lifesaving Museum, Hull, Mass.  During a rowing competition held usually in mid-February called the “Snow Row”.  This race is very well known in New England and attended by many of the better traditional rowers.  I was very impressed by the size and lines of the boat, the way the boat moved through the water, and the co-ordination of the crew.

One weekend my father and I went to Mystic Seaport Museum in Mystic, Connecticut for a rowing competition.  At the Museum we bought a book about building dories written by a well known American boat builder by the name of John Gardner.  The book is entitled “More Building Classic Small Craft”.  In Mr. Gardner’s book there is a chapter on the pilot gig telling about the history of the gigs, the Isles of Scilly, the performance of the gig and a description of building one.  The chapter also had two photos, on of the Treffry, the other of the Nornour under sail.  We found the chapter very intersting (copy enclosed).

Several weeks later we met a man from Maine named Dan O’Reilly at a rowing competition.  Dan had recently built a pilot gig and brought it to a rowing competition.  Being the only gig there it was put into a class by itself.  Many of us small craft rowers had never seen a gig before and went over to meet Dan and talk about his gig.  We spent  a few hours talking to Dan about his experiences rowing the building the gig.

As time went by we started to see two pilot gigs at rowing competitions around New England and the gigs would race each other.  After one particularly rough weather we watched the success that the gigs had in bad weather conditions.  On the ride home my father and I had committed ourselves to building our own gig.

We got in touch with Dan O’Reilly up in Mine.  During a sit down session with Dan we picked his brain about building a gig.  During this conversation Dan told us about his trip (I believe in 1991) that he took to the Isles of Scilly and competed in the World Championships.  The idea of seeing 24 of these gigs together (when the most we have ever seen is 2) and the wonderful experience Dan  had on the Isles of Scilly, both rowing and visiting, my father and I decided we could really build a gig, especially when Dan offered us the use of the molds he built the “Kittery” on to help get us started.

Not being boat builders by trade, we followed building methods described in John Gardner’s book and used lots of “Yankee” ingenuity (which is readily apparent when looking at our gig).

For building materials we used White Atlantic Cedar for the planking because none of our area lumber mills had ever heard of narrow-leaf Cornish elm.  Cedar holds up well in salt water and was readily available.  We used White Oak for the keel, Red Oak for the timbers (we were running low on money and couldn’t afford White Oak), Ash for margin strips and copper rivets to fasten.

Approximately 2 years, many mistakes and a lot of bourbon, later after starting this major project we launched the “Saquish” over the July 4th weekend 1996.

With the increasing popularity of gig rowing in the US my father and I are planning to attempt to build a traditional Cornish  gig to the specifications and with the materials that would allow it to compete in the World Championships.