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Gordon Chibroski/Staff PhotographerStudents from the five-classroom school have been turning out two boats a year at the boat shop since the program's inception in 1994. This arrangement between school and museum is the envy of educators up and down the coast, said Jason Morin, director of public programs at the museum.
"I heard from one principal who said he would pay us double what South Bristol pays," he said.
Advocates say boatbuilding programs present an almost perfect exercise to practice several different skills at once, including math and teamwork, while teaching maritime history and a new vocabulary, filled with the lexicon of the boatbuilding trade. The South Bristol-museum partnership is one of a handful of boat- building programs for children that put that educational strategy into action in Maine.
"We find it a very rich way to work with kids," said Patricia Ryan, founder of the Compass Project in Portland.
For the past five years, her program has offered boatbuilding and rowing programs to about 125 middle and high school students who are considered at risk for dropping out of school. A social worker and sailor, Ryan recognized that boatbuilding could capture the interest of kids who do not do well in a conventional schoolroom.
"There is something special about a boat. It is run by crews of people. It is a great metaphor: You go on a journey," she said.
It isn't easy building a boat, but the lessons can be transforming, said Eric Stockinger, director of student affairs at Atlantic Challenge, a Rockport boatbuilding and seamanship school that offers several building programs for youths.
"A boat is much more a living object than a table or a box. If a table collapses, nobody dies," he said.
Such programs are not cheap and count on a hodgepodge of funding sources. The cost of materials, a trained staff and insurance are steep.
The Compass Project operates on about $200,000 a year, about 5 percent of which comes from tuition payments from schools. The rest comes from the support of more than 60 corporate sponsors, a constant search for grant money and the program's big fundraiser, a mid-July public boatbuilding event in Monument Square, and August rowing races off the Portland shoreline.
South Bristol taxpayers spend about $400 per student to participate in the program at Maine Maritime Museum. The museum kicks in $12,000 from an endowment and the $3,000 to $4,000 it raises in raffling off one of the students' boats. The money is used to pay for a professional boatbuilder and materials. But it does not begin to cover the real costs, said Morin.
In addition to South Bristol Elementary media coordinator John Nichols and Morin, a half dozen volunteers work with the students each week.
The Islesford Boatworks on Little Cranberry Island is in its second year offering boatbuilding programs to children in the summer. The nonprofit program is run by siblings Brendan, Amanda and Geoffrey Ravenhill who spend their summers on the island, just south of Mount Desert.
Their organization raised $42,000 through grants from a half dozen Maine sponsors, tuition, T-shirt sales and auctioning off the wooden sailing skiff built by the program's 43 students, ages 8 to 15. Help was provided by a dozen volunteers.
The program grew out of Brendan Ravenhill's work with a boatbuilding education program in the Bronx, N.Y.
"He dreamt up the idea that, wouldn't it be great to do it on the island where the kids inherently know about boats," said his sister Amanda.
She said the students' enthusiasm spilled over into the community and soon adults were clamoring to get in. So this year they are...
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