Brush Creek Yachts ~ Concentric Circles and Paradoxes

Doug, his son Ben, and Marvin Spencer, with the new Marsh Cat “Magpie”

 

(This is a post started last August; am just getting back to it.)

It will take nearly four hours of driving to get there, to get where the boat is, a boat built by hand in the loft of an old barn. We head out at sunrise while there’s still dew on the grass.

We don’t go east toward the coast, though, where most boats and builders of them live. Instead, we turn and go the other direction – to the southwest into the mountains. Instead of the land of crabs and oysters and skipjacks, we’re going deep into coal and bluegrass and moonshine country.

After 200 miles of driving we’ll still be in Virginia, though just barely. From south of Fries it’s just 10 miles as the crow flies to the Carolina line, and 20 to Mount Rogers, the highest peak in Virginia. This is where Marvin Spencer, proprietor and master craftsman of Brush Creek Yachts, lives and builds boats.

 

Buffalo Mountain

 

 

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Logging as an Art Form

Came across this video a few days before Christmas. Just found it again.

Cutting timber on steep mountainsides in Switzerland. So steep that no conventional equipment can be used. It’s all done by hand, with chain saws and hand jacks.

The trees have to be partially felled, carefully shaped, prepped and aligned, so when finally broken loose with the jack they shoot straight down the mountainside to the water below.

Once there, the logs are caught and corralled, then chained together in a big boat-shaped raft and towed down the lake.

 

INS HOLZ (IN THE WOODS) from mythenfilm on Vimeo.