Gail McGarva

Boat builder

©Rebecca Collis

©Nick Matthews

©Rebecca Collis

©Gail McGarva

For the love of boats

Gail was a sign language interpreter before becoming a boatbuilder
She lives and works on the south coast of England
She breathes new life into a traditional craft

Gail lived on boats for many years, but it wasn’t until she journeyed to the source of the River Thames in 2003 that she had an overwhelming desire to make boats the centre of her life. She left her job as a sign language interpreter and re-trained as a boatbuilder. Her specialist areas are building replica boats, ‘clinker’ construction and building boats by eye, without the use of designer drawings and construction plans. The first work she made was a replica of the Gardie boat, a Shetland eela boat of 1882.

Interview

©Gail McGarva

Why do you love what you do?: I love the journey of building a boat from ‘tree to sea’. I love the skeletal, sculptural forms of the boats and how people respond to them almost as living, breathing creatures. I specialise in building replica boats, or as I prefer to call them, ‘daughter boats’, and it gives me the feeling of breathing life into a new generation of traditional boats.
Can you describe a recent project?: My most recent project was called The Story Boat. I upturned a retired fishing boat of 1923 and transformed her into a miniature maritime museum. It was built in collaboration with wheelwrights to create a mobile structure and allow me to travel to schools and deliver educational workshops inside The Story Boat.
Do you have an apprentice?: Not as yet. I have tutored at the Boat Building Academy in traditional boatbuilding techniques and I have delivered masterclasses in traditional clinker construction to trainees from National Historic Ships Training schemes.
What surprises people about your work?: In clinker construction the planks of the hull overlap and most people assume the overlapping planks are glued together. However, there is no glue used in the overlap of the planks. The watertight fit relies on the planning of a rolling bevel along the length of the plank, which is then fastened with copper rivets.

Gail McGarva is a master artisan: he began his career in 2005 and he started teaching in 2007