Boating tradition lives on in a Hemingway workshop

HEMINGWAY - Not many people realize that an old-timey icon of quality is being built right in the Center Crossroads community.

The coastal rivers of the Carolinas birthed the need for good boats. Many of the old time fishermen earned or supplemented their income from their efforts and they needed a reliable craft to get them to their favorite spots. For a couple centuries boats were built crudely, first of cypress logs, then cypress planks. But they were heavy and slow.

Lumberton fisherman Lonnie Britt began building boats from cypress planks during the 1940s, but he didn’t like the lumbering barges he was building. He was the first boat builder to switch to marine plywood in 1948. As he tinkered with the design, he developed a very light -weight boat that cut through the water like a dream. His Carolina boat became the standard for the next three generations of fishermen from Florida to Virginia. At one point they built several hundred Carolina boats every year.

The tradition almost ended in 2004 with the retirement of Britt’s son Robert.

But Hemingway contractor and avid fisherman Lee Floyd could not let that happen. He visited Britt and eventually bought out the company’s patterns, jigs, frames and specifications. Floyd also spent some time with Britt to learn the tricks of the trade.

Today, Floyd’s business is developing slowly, with the boats being built in his workshop during slack times in his contracting business. Most of his boats are custom orders at this point, but he is poised for better economic times when he hopes to be building greater numbers of the famous boats.

“It’s one of the most enjoyable things I’ve ever done,” Floyd says. “I got started by repairing a Carolina boat for a friend. I studied it carefully and rebuilt it exactly. Then I took it out on the river and it ran perfectly. That eventually led me back to the Britt’s company.

Some boat builders have gone to aluminum, fiberglass or other materials, but the classic wooden boats still has some advantages. The Conway special – the standard sized boat is only 140 pounds without the motor. And one can easily tinker with the design. “With a fiberglass boat you would have to make a completely new form, where we can easily make changes,” he said.

The basic material that gives its light weight is marine plywood, which has to be special ordered and is very expensive at about $100 for a 4x8 sheet of three quarter inch used for the interior framework. It’s made from tropical okoume wood, which will not soak up water, and is considered the finest wood for marine plywood.

A rock-hard waterproof plastic glue is used for the joints. “We’ve tried several glues. Some glues claim to be waterproof, but they aren’t, says Floyd. “This one really is.”

Beside marine plywood, air-dried oak is needed. “We’ve had to use kiln dried lumber at first, but screws will split it. Now we have a good stack of oak lumber that is air -drying.

This is used for trim, such as the splash guard on the side that turns away the water and helps raise the boat up for planing under power.

Some of the framing is oak, which has to be cut on a bevel to form the proper angle for the sides. Much of the trick in building involves multiple angles. “We have to shape them by eye; it cannot be machine cut.”

A Carolina boat does need just a little extra care. “It should be stored under a shed, not out in the open,” says Floyd. “An occasional coat of paint is the only other thing – it doesn’t need expensive paint, just a regular enamel. With minimal care, it should last 25 or 30 years.

“I got my first boat at age 15 – got a note at the bank for $300,” says the Conway native. “The banker told me to have my Daddy come in to cosign it, but I had the boat home before he got home from work. -Been on the river ever since.”

Floyd’s had plenty of water adventures. One time when he was oystering on Winyah Bay, fog rolled in and the water got choppy. His boat sank right by the lighthouse at the outlet. But the water was shallow enough so they were able to pull it up to the lighthouse and got dried and warmed up. When the fog lifted, they went back across the bay to Georgetown.

Floyd was a forestry student at Horry-Georgetown Tech when he met his wife, Denise, who is a business teacher at Johnsonville High. They have two sons, the older is a shrimp fisherman who works out of McClellanville and the younger a student in high school, who is working with his dad for the summer.

More about the boats can be learned at the company website: http://www.sccarolinaboatworks.com