This festival in Grand Marais, Minn., celebrates wooden watercraft

About 20 years ago, I felt the need to build a boat.

So working in my garage, I made a one-person, 12-foot canoe that is a modern version of a traditional skin-on-frame boat, with a steam-bent wooden framework covered with Dacron canvas instead of an animal hide.

Designed by a guy named Platt Monfort, the boat's main virtue, besides a certain handcrafted beauty, is that it's very light — only about 14 pounds. However, it's also a bit more delicate than a typical aluminum canoe.

So I only used it to paddle about in the lakes and the Mississippi River close to home here in the Twin Cities.

But I've long felt that the old boat, named Acushla, should see a bit more of the world.

So last June, I loaded it into a van and hit I-35 heading north. Our destination was Grand Marais and the Wooden Boat Show & Summer Solstice Festival, held by the North House Folk School every year at the time on the calendar when the northern days are longest.

The event, celebrating the craft of wooden boats, was first held in 1998, just a year after the school was started.

Mark Hansen, one of the founders of the school, is a boat builder, and from the start the school located on the Grand Marais harbor has had classes on how to build traditional wooden vessels.

"Boats have been at the heart of the school's character and mission at the beginning," said North House Executive Director Greg Wright.

The June festival is a chance for boat builders, boat owners and boat fans to see and show off all sorts of wooden, handcrafted small craft, including canoes, kayaks, rowboats and sailboats. Typically, all sorts of construction methods are represented, from lapstrake to strip-built to birch bark.

You might even see examples of the funny, round, one-person tubs called bull boats by Plains Indian tribes or coracles in Wales.

It's all a bit a bit like a classic car show, except with varnished wood instead of chrome and sheet metal.

North House alumni sometimes come to the festival to display a boat they built on campus. But Wright said anyone is welcome to bring their boat.

"We don't care where the boat is built," he said.

The Urban Boatbuilders program, for example, will often bring examples of the wooden boats built by youths in the Twin Cities.

Boat parade

I opted to participate in the wooden boat parade with Acushla on the first evening of the three-day festival, joining about a dozen other paddlers and rowers in a floating procession along the Grand Marais harbor, watched by an audience gathered on the docks.

The next morning, the big lake was so calm and glasslike, I launched from the beach next to my hotel for a quiet solo paddle to Artists Point.

During the rest of the day, I got a closer look at some of the other boats on display, including some for sale.

Part of the festival is a "Boats-to-Tools Auction" where you can buy anything from a vintage fiberglass motorboat to a German folding kayak. One item I saw was a half-completed wooden sailboat kit, up for sale after the previous owner had given up on finishing it.

"It's kind of a cross between a gigantic marine hardware store and a garage sale," Wright said of the auction.

But you have to be careful here when browsing used boats looking for a good home. Remember the old saying: The happiest day in the life of a boat owner is the day he buys his boat. The second happiest day is the day he sells it.

You can also get on the water even if you didn't bring a boat. Throughout the weekend, the school offers rides on its two-masted, gaff-rigged schooner, the Hjørdis.

For landlubbers

There's plenty of good reasons to come to the festival even if you're not the type who thinks that's there's nothing better than messing about in boats.

North House artisans and instructors are on hand to demonstrate a wide variety of crafts taught at the school, from blacksmithing to quilting. I talked to instructor Brent Gurtek about how he makes muzzleloading flintlock rifles for hunting, and I took a mini class to learn how to tie a decorative monkey's fist knot.

There's also live music, a campfire picnic with s'mores, a summer solstice pageant featuring giant papier-mâché puppets, and a "Lake Superior Chowder Experience." That's where you can sample different chowders made by at least 10 local restaurants like the Angry Trout and the Naniboujou Lodge along with bread made in the North House's wood-fired oven.

But for me the best part of the weekend besides the boats is probably the contra dance. That's the community dance held on Friday evening in one of the school's buildings, a historic, timber-beamed, wood-floored warehouse space normally used to build boats.

Any age or experience level is welcome. While the band plays, kids and adults join together and are led by instructors in group dances as the long day turns into night on the lakeshore.

There's a fee for some activities including the dance, the chowder tasting and rides on the Hjørdis. But much of the festival, like watching or participating in the boat parade, the pageant and the craft demonstrations, is free.

This year's fest

This year's Wooden Boat Show & Summer Solstice Festival will be June 21-23 at the North House Folk School in Grand Marais. For more information, see northhouse.org/events/wooden-boat-show.

Richard Chin • 612-673-1775