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By PAUL LIVINGSTONE News Assistant Wednesday, November 29, 2006

More than one challenge is available at a Rockport nonprofit designed as an homage to the age of sail and oar.

As the second-largest sailing school in the state, Atlantic Challenge gives hundreds of people a chance to pilot a wooden schooner or row a racing shell. It's also a major mooring spot, with dinghy tie-ups at its 400-foot wharf.

What keeps the spirit of the wooden boat alive, however, is what takes place in the nearby three-story workshop, where instructors and apprentices build boats for customers in the traditional way. Based solely on reputation and appearances at boat shows, Atlantic Challenge's Apprenticeshop gives students a chance at learning through doing.

''Our program is unique in that way. We are dependent on (commissions) to keep the programs running,'' said Trish Badger, who has spent five years in charge of communications at Atlantic Challenge. In that time, she says, boats of all types have been constructed by aspiring builders using hand tools, from 7-foot prams to 35-foot schooners.

''We've built any number of boats over the years, and it's one of the great things about the apprenticeship. A lot of (shops) build the same stock boats over and over again with their students. Our projects are different all the time,'' she said. A recently-built wooden ice boat was memorable, she said, but the focus now is on the once-ubiquitous workboat of the New England coast - the small, double-ended peapod.

A 15-foot Matinicus Island example with lapstrakes and sail is currently being constructed for an Ohio customer by Eric Stockinger of Dearborn, Mich., and Michael Norgang of Damariscotta as a way to demonstrate ''clinker'' building techniques. On the same floor, Adam Burke of Lee, N.H., and Ben Cooper of Kentfield, Calif., are replicating a Havilah Hawkins peapod directly from a 19th-century Vinalhaven-built hull that was brought into the shop for study.

To expose pupils to the full boatbuilding process, start to finish, restorations are avoided. However, three of them are planned for December completion, including a 22-foot Friendship sloop and a 1946 Chris Craft Custom Deluxe Runabout. Now under way is an extensive restoration of a Wianno Junior once owned by the DuPont family and built in Osterville, Mass.

An eclectic mix of watercraft matches the diversity of Atlantic Challenge's student body, said Badger. Some look for a break from their Ivy League educations. Others want a change of career. Many, she said, move to be boatbuilders full-time, and some graduates are now involved in projects at Boothbay Harbor, where the famous ships ''Bounty'' and ''Discovery'' are being rebuilt.

''We have tried to stay as true to the mission as possible, which is difficult in a changing world,'' said Badger Wooden boat building had a big resurgence in the 1970s, she continued, which was spurred by the realization a way of life was being lost. Now, however, the pendulum has swung the other way, and fiberglass has come to dominate the marketplace for new boats.

''That's a bit of a challenge. But we think there are enough enthusiasts out there to teach people going into the future,'' she said.