There are many job titles in an organization like ours (too many for my taste), but
one of the most valuable members of our merry band of craftsmen has no title, wants
no title, and will probably be angry with me for even drawing attention to him. He’s
Dan MacNaughton, and he’s got more experience in all aspects of wooden boat
maintenance, design, paint and varnish, rigging, and seamanship than all the rest
of us combined. He is an accomplished author, has owned and managed boatyards,
taught courses, and extensively cruised the coast of Maine and beyond. In a yard
this size, it’s imperative that everyone has a variety of skills, and Dan is the ultimate
example. In a typical week, he might lay a perfect mirror coat of varnish on the deck
of a classic runabout, proofread an e-mail to an important customer, install an electric
bilge pump, rig a Dark Harbor 20 down at the dock, and then deliver a Herreshoff
12-½ to its grateful new owners in upstate New York.
Dan is unassuming, works quietly, and is usually humble. However, one of his most
valuable and appreciated characteristics was highlighted recently by Aaron Porter
in Aaron’s latest editorial in Professional Boatbuilder magazine entitled “If You See
Something, Say Something.” In essence, the message was that there should never be
an instance in an industry with such a huge liability exposure as in boatbuilding
where an employee ignores a potential problem (or worse yet, a hazard) because he
assumes that it’s someone else’s job to care. Dan always cares.
Photo by Alison Langley
E MPLOYE E OF T H E MON T H : Dan McNaughton
He is always listening, always watching, and is generous about sharing his insights from a lifetime of experience. We are so
thankful when Dan politely places a hand on one of our shoulders and says something like, “that looks really nice, but please
realize that it will never work.”
We love you Dan. We’re grateful to have you with us, and hope you never leave.
THE HE RRE SHOF F LE G AC Y: E f f i ci e nt and E le gant M ari ne D e si gn
We do a lot of work with our friend Kurt Hasselbach, the longtime curator of the MIT Museum’s Hart Nautical Collections.
Kurt is “the man with the plans” when it comes to Nathanael Herreshoff, John G. Alden, George Owen, and the works of
many other designers. Many of you have seen black-and-white images of Herreshoff drawings in various publications, but only
a select few have been so fortunate as to put on white
gloves, and view the original drawings themselves. They
are truly works of art. Herreshoff and his draftsmen
primarily drew in ink on sheets of linen, using multiple
colors, shading certain areas for clarity, and making
faint pencil notes and calculations in the margins. For
those who are as fascinated with Herreshoff as I am, to
behold an original drawing rivals the sense of awe one
might experience at the Louvre in viewing the Mona
Lisa for the first time. You will be excited to learn about
Kurt’s Herreshoff Legacy Project whose key objectives,
as Kurt explains it, “are to build a stunning multimedia
international traveling exhibition and a permanent stateof-the-art interactive, aggregated website related to the
total Herreshoff legacy. Getting the word out has been a
big focus in the past year. Of course fundraising is also
an ongoing task.”
They have hired TellArt, a Rhode Island design firm, to
Construction for Buzzards Bay 15 full keel version Flicker
begin the task of organizing the approach to this complex
(HMCo # 674 – plan # 76-79), Courtesy of The MIT Museum.
task of seamlessly presenting the broader Herreshoff
legacy in complimentary web and exhibition venues. “Our goal is to provide unprecedented interactive access to all Herreshoff
content we hold as well as to collections of a wide variety of collaborators,” according to Kurt.
Those interested in the project can keep abreast of developments, gain a sense of where they are headed, and check out ongoing
additions of Herreshoff-related images by visiting the website: http://herreshoff-legacy.mit.edu
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