. Coast watch. Marine resources; Oceanography; Coastal zone management; Coastal ecology. ouston Lewis stoops over an unfinished wooden boat in a high- ceilinged garage. With his weathered hands, he sands each side, inch by inch, for almost an hour. Nearby, his brother Jamie Lewis uses a small hand plane to smooth a piece of wood. Inside the hollow hull of the sportfishing boat, James Lewis Jr., Jamie's son, tinkers with a sensor that will be installed on the boat's bottom to detect fish. Each day, members of the Lewis family work side by side sculpting their prized boats. By fastening planks a
. Coast watch. Marine resources; Oceanography; Coastal zone management; Coastal ecology. ouston Lewis stoops over an unfinished wooden boat in a high- ceilinged garage. With his weathered hands, he sands each side, inch by inch, for almost an hour. Nearby, his brother Jamie Lewis uses a small hand plane to smooth a piece of wood. Inside the hollow hull of the sportfishing boat, James Lewis Jr., Jamie's son, tinkers with a sensor that will be installed on the boat's bottom to detect fish. Each day, members of the Lewis family work side by side sculpting their prized boats. By fastening planks and frames one piece at a time, they are keeping alive a Harkers Island tradition that has survived for generations. When crafting boats, the Lewis brothers rely on skill and materials at hand. Lots of white juniper. Ingenious tools. Precise measurements. Intensive hand work. No telephone or fax machine. The Lewis brothers build most boats by a time-honored technique called "rack of ; It takes the eyes of master craftsmen like Jamie and Houston Lewis to see that a boat has the right dimensions and design, says Roger Allen, curator of boatbuilding technol- ogy at the Maritime Museum in Beaufort. "Generally, if it looks right to an experienced eye, it will be right in the water," he says. For wooden workboats used by shrimpers and fishers, the Lewis family uses the Harkers Island or Carolina design, recognized along the East Coast for its wooden hull and flared bow. "When we first started, all of our boats were workboats for people in the boating community," says Houston Lewis, who carves decoys as a hobby. "Now, fishermen are struggling. We hardly ever build fishing boats. We build more pleasure ; The pleasure boats are usually sportfishing vessels, also called "sports- wkef&Mlw&Boatbuilders Keep Tradition Alive. "Building boats is a craft," says Jamie Lewis, who has been building boats for more than 40
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