Two nights a week, Jay and Kelly Borne make a nearly one hundred mile round trip from their home in Wilmer, Louisiana to the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Maritime Museum in Madisonville.
The couple was displaced from their St. Bernard Parish home by hurricane Katrina. But the storm didn't wash away their heritage.
"I guess you could say it's in the family. My grandfather and my dad and uncle built boats when i was a kid," Kelly says.
Jay and Kelly have spent the last 5 months recreating a century old design that was common on south Louisiana's lakes and bayous. Jay considers this the ultimate in woodworking.
"This is an 18-foot Atchafalaya work boat," Jay says.
Jay and Kelly have discovered patience as their skiff takes shape one nail at a time.
Ed Higgins has been working off and on for more than two years to finish his 18-foot flat-bottomed batteau.
"I think anything that you build yourself and it functions, it's not an ornament, it has some use, you will derive some satisfaction out of it, and I think that's why it's so popular," Higgins says.
Ed also has boat building in his blood. It probably started with his great uncle Andrew Higgins. The New Orleanian that General Dwight Eisenhower credited with building the boats that won World War II.
"You addressed him as sir. Even his own sons addressed him as sir. My father addressed him always put a handle on it," he says.
Ed Higgins uses mahogany plywood similar to that used by his great uncle to build the landing craft that put allied forces on the beaches of Normandy. The Higgins factories in New Orleans turned out thousands of landing craft and pt-boats.
"I've heard that at peak, which would have been around 1943 on into 44, they were turning them out at 17 to 18 boats a day. The paperwork had trouble keeping up with them," Higgins said.
Today, the wooden boat building moves at a much slower pace.
So how long does it take to finish one of these custom made boats? During the first 12-week session you should be able to finish the hull. During the second session, the inside gets trimmed and during the 3rd 12-week session the boat gets painted and usually finished.
Ryan Eady and his dad figure they'll spend a full year working on their boat.
"We were just delivered a stack of wood and we turned it into a functioning boat so I think a source of pride in knowing that I did it with my own hands," Eady says.
Bob Doolittle is the instructor who teaches the finer points of boat building, using what he calls a free form construction method.
"We're passing on this style of construction that's typical of southern Louisiana for the skiffs and the bateaus," Doolittle says.
The skills are passed on to another generation and some family traditions, even some that shaped our history, are being kept alive.
