I’ll have to go back to my beginnings and say my father indirectly influenced me the most. He is the one who introduced me to sailing and had a cellar full of tools that I could use, mostly from rebuilding a Stout Fella sloop.
And he had a two-car garage, which, by the time I was 14, I had taken over so completely that my parents were unable to park a car in it again until I left fr military service. I guess Dad figured it was a small price to pay to keep me out of trouble.
Fred Hard says:
All of us who are so fortunate to have had fathers who loved boats and had a reverence for wood, owing to websites like this one, can continue to enjoy what our fathers passed along to us. I continue to see the Herreshoff boats my father so lovingly found derelict and restored. A joy!