Joe Garbutt, a 79 year-old retired Navy Master Chief, taught a 9-day "Building the Basic 8" workshop at TTU's Appalachian Center for Craft, July 10-18. He has guided five students through the process of building a rowboat that he designed. Students started with plywood and wood pieces and completed a water-tight, functional row boat. The class launched their newly created boats on Saturday, July 18, at Hurricane Boat Dock in Smithville.
Joe has been creating boats for 58 years. His life has been incredibly varied and he has employed his breadth and depth of skill and knowledge throughout his careers. While serving in Vietnam, he was a helicopter maintenance chief and also served as a rescue swimmer. He rescued several downed jet pilots and crewmen, although it is the ones that he could not rescue that he remembers most clearly.
He started building boats at the age of twelve. His first boats were glorified boxes without a mast. He actually talked his younger brother into standing up with a sheet to catch the wind. Since then, he has built beautiful sailboats, including a 42' Chesapeake Bay Skipjack that he and his wife, Polly sailed from Corpus Christi, TX to Delaware Bay. His next big project was a 36' trawler that he modeled on turn of the century designs.
He and Polly lived on this boat for 10 years and traveled from Texas to the Florida Keys and up and down the East Coast. The dinghy that the class built at the craft center is the same design that they used to get to and from shore when they anchored out. One time, after a big storm destroyed the dinghy, he just stopped at the next port and built a new one so that they could continue on their journey.
Today, Joe is settled on the Texas coast. Joe can hop in his boat and be fishing in 10 minutes. He always has at least one boat in the works and has built over a thousand of the Basic 8 boats. The first boat of this design was retired after 25 years of constant use, when its owner could no longer get about.
To learn more about the Appalachian Center for Craft, visit their website www.tntech.edu/craftcenter. The Craft Center is located at 1560 Craft Center Drive in Smithville. Take I-40 to Exit 273, turn south on Highway 56, travel 6 miles, turn left on Craft Center Drive immediately after crossing Hurricane Bridge.
