Meet the Builders
Tim Clark
Tim’s passion for boats and the sea has been with him his entire life. He grew up in a lobster fishing family in Boston, Massachusetts that spanned several generations and took every opportunity he could to go fishing with his dad or enjoy family recreational outings. Boston Harbor is steeped in maritime history and lore, and the very site where Tim’s family docked their lobster boats was formerly the shipyard of Donald McKay, renowned 19th century shipbuilder who designed and constructed several of the world’s largest and fastest clipper ships including Great Republic and Flying Cloud. These connections to New England’s maritime history along with an appreciation for art and craftsmanship inspired Tim to pursue a career in traditional wooden boat building after high school, so he moved to Maine where he attended the Landing School of Boat Building and Design. Shortly after graduation and a few brief boat building jobs, Tim decided to try his hand at crewing aboard historic gaff-rigged schooners in the famed Maine “windjammer” fleet. This experience opened a door to the world of historic and educational sailing ships where Tim would continue to build on his knowledge as both a traditional sailor and shipwright. Over the years between boat building and restoration projects at numerous museums, shipyards, small boat shops, and a prestigious yacht yard, Tim would work as deck crew and educator aboard sea-going ships on coastal transits and offshore passages including three Atlantic Ocean crossings.
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Over the years between boat building and restoration projects at numerous museums, shipyards, small boat shops, and a prestigious yacht yard, Tim would work as deck crew and educator aboard sea-going ships on coastal transits and offshore passages including three Atlantic Ocean crossings.
His crowning experience at sea was sailing as ship’s carpenter aboard a sail-training bark on a six-month voyage that visited numerous countries on three continents. These voyages along with yacht deliveries and plenty of recreational time on the water would offer Tim valuable perspective on how vessels behave at sea and what is proven effective for performance, strength, and longevity in design and construction. Tim loves all facets of maritime history, but he has a particular passion for traditional working craft and the pleasure boats they inspired during the age of sail. In addition to the sense of satisfaction he gets from no-nonsense traditional shipbuilding, Tim takes great pleasure in the challenge of fine wood joinery and thoughtful aesthetic execution. He is deeply dedicated to traditional craft and enthusiastically welcomes opportunities to research time-honored practices and apply them to his work.
Garett Eisele
Garett was raised in Southeast Michigan not far from Lake Huron. Declining to become a third generation Detroit brick mason, he took an interest in wooden boats of his own accord at a young age.
The first boat that he worked on professionally was the 153’ pilot schooner, Highlander Sea, ex Pilot, at age 16. Impressed as he was at the mere existence of these vessels, it came as a revelation to learn that there were those that still knew how to build and repair them. With that in the back of his mind, he took to working full time on sail training vessels on both coasts and the Great Lakes, eventually landing in coastal Maine, where he began establishing himself in the boatbuilding community there. Rather than attending a technical school, he learned pacing and techniques on the job from some of the most experienced and effective shipwrights in the country.
This approach to learning the trade afforded him efficiency and literacy with large timber traditional boatbuilding unique to working with those who have already mastered it. He also became specialized in large vessel caulking at this time, and there are few others with such regular practice in that trade. Garett believes in the self-evident superiority of hand-made work and in the value of tradition in design. His goal as a boat builder is not to become a curator that produces latter-day intimations of a nostalgic past, but to be a contemporary actor in a still-living trade.