Instructor Profiles

Joel is just a Southerner wandering through the West looking for water. Born and raised in southwest Georgia, Joel started his westward migration with a ten-year career as a fly-fishing guide and carpenter in Colorado. There, he developed his passion for craftsmanship and being on the water. After a few too many subzero winter days he shifted camp to Port Hadlock, WA, where he attended the Northwest School of Wooden Boatbuilding. This allowed him to channel his passions for water and woodworking into a boatbuilding career. As the Boat Shop Manager, Joel is ready and eager to help others delve into the wonderful world of boats and boatbuilding.  

John owns Chesapeake Light Craft, the Annapolis-based purveyor of wooden boat kits and plans. His long tenure at CLC was preceded by a passion for boatbuilding and small craft that stretches back to earliest childhood. His first (modestly) successful design was launched at age 14. More paddling, rowing, and sailing craft followed quickly, though he paused to get an undergrad degree in music—another passion. He cut some of CLC's very first kits in 1994 and went on to establish a career as a boatbuilder, designer, teacher, and writer. He’s shipped 45,000 boat kits, built more than a hundred wooden boats personally, and seen his designs launched in 70 countries. His work as a designer and builder ranges from dinghies to large multihulls and from kayaks to powerboats. In recent years he's added the design and construction of RC aircraft to his list of hobbies. "It's all 'light craft' and fluid dynamics," he says. "Only the density of the fluid is different." John lives on Kent Island in the Chesapeake Bay with his family and a rotating fleet of curious small boats. 

Jay grew up in Winston Salem, NC, where he picked up a copy of WoodenBoat Magazine as a teenager and discovered boat building. Jay was a 'maker' long before the term became fashionable. For Jay, boat design/building checks every box: challenging, hands-on, creative, useful, and beautiful. He found and restored a Blue Jay (#2135, built from a kit in the 1960s) and interned at the Rockport Apprenticeshop when it was in Rockport, ME. There he built a Susan Skiff and absorbed everything that goes into conceiving, building, and launching a wooden boat. Jay had a short stint at Hatteras Yachts when it was in High Point N.C., and went to work at Chesapeake Light Craft in 1999. After a five-year break polishing his CAD/CAM skills in a high-tech factory setting, he's been back at CLC since 2010. Jay's specialty is ushering boat designs from the spark of an idea to the complex reality of CNC kit fabrication, and beyond. As the third-longest tenured employee at CLC, his knowledge of CLC's catalog of designs is vast and deep. Jay is always willing to get outside and into any kind of boat.

Geoff is a full-time builder of wooden boats who does business as Two Daughters Boatworks in Westford, Vermont.  His repertoire is broad and varied, and includes a 5500-pound power cruiser designed by Paul Gartside, a Bristol-fashion reproduction of Commodore Monroe’sEgret,multitudes of Iain Oughtred’sCaledonia Yawlfamily, a couple of Nat Herreshoff’s favoriteCoquinadesign, and too many CLC boats to count. Geoff took to sailing as a teenager after a spell at the Hurricane Island Outward Bound School, where he learned about fog, dragging anchors, mosquitoes, and the joys of double ended, seaworthy boats.

He later fed his needs studying marine science as a botany major on the coast of North Carolina, and then as a Coast Guard officer, sailing the Atlantic in a research ship from the Grand Banks to Venezuela. He learned the boatbuilding trade in the Alexandria Seaport Foundation shop with Joe Youcha. He'd wandered in as a volunteer hoping to use the band saw, and stayed for five years, eventually supervising that shop. Besides teaching classes for many of CLC’s designs, Geoff has built many completed CLC boats for paying customers. He’s also been a go-to builder for prototype projects including Pocketship, Peeler, Southwester Dory, and Madness.  He sails his Caledonia Yawl Ned Ludd on Lake Champlain and along the Maine Coast between summer boatbuilding classes, and keeps at least one Kaholo SUP or his old school Patuxent 19.5 kayak on the roof of his truck at all times.

George is a rocket scientist based in Cocoa, Florida, where he spent thirty years working on the Space Shuttle program. George grew up sailing and surfing and began building boats after visiting the WoodenBoat School during a Maine vacation a decade ago. After building a few kayaks on his own and dazzling us with his talent, George became a “beta” builder for Chesapeake Light Craft and has assembled the prototypes of many new designs over the years. As an instructor, he particularly enjoys sharing the sense of amazement he felt with his own first build when flat pieces of plywood came together into a beautifully curved hull. George began experimenting with exotic wood veneers with his second boat, and has become a “go-to” guy in classes and on the CLC forum for technical tips on the subject. When he’s not sailing, he continues to build show-quality wooden boats and furniture for friends and family but is quick to add that whether the finished product is a work boat or a fine piece of furniture, the most important thing is the sense of accomplishment in having built it.

Dillon grew up on the coastal waters of New England, where he learned to sail as a child. He has been drawing boats since he could hold a pencil. Big ones and small ones, fast ones and slow ones, but always - on the corner of some notebook, the back of a receipt - inexpensive sailing ones. He refined his drawings through the Design Program at the Landing School, and began his professional career with Michael Peters Yacht Design in Sarasota, Florida. Mike taught him how to design for production, and Florida taught him how to sail in skinny water. Toward the end of his tenure at MPYD, Dillon teamed up with a few childhood pals and built a 30' long, skin-on-frame proa with a $1500 budget to sail in the first Race to Alaska. Though they didn't quite make the deadline, Dillon still enjoyed a 1,000-mile, month-long cruise through the Strait of Georgia up to Desolation Sound. This adventure helped land him his dream job as a designer for Chesapeake Light Craft. A few years ago Dillon hung his own shingle as a boat designer. Design work and his young family keep him very busy in his adopted home of Knoxville, Tennessee.

Eric has enjoyed building things since childhood and hasn't stopped for almost 50 years. Starting with model boats, he graduated to his first full size canoe in 1983, and since has added scores of canoes, kayaks, rowing, and sailing boats, and countless scale models. He was trained as a mechanical engineer and practiced that profession for 20 years. In 1996 he founded Shearwater Boats, offering custom-built strip and stitch-and-glue boats, stock and custom designs, as well as plans and kits for the home builder. Eric’s greatest area of expertise is the computer-generated engineering of complicated and precise plywood boat kits for assembly by amateurs. In 2005 Eric was hired as a house designer for Chesapeake Light Craft. His contributions include the Shearwater and Wood Duck lines, which have been a gigantic success, with over a thousand built. Eric has taught boatbuilding at a number of shops and has mentored the construction of about 200 boats. This experience, and the feedback he gets from supervising the construction of his designs, not only has improved his skills as a builder, but has honed his skills as a designer and teacher.  (His name is pronounced "SHAH-duh.")

Nick grew up around canoes and kayaks. After a career as an electrical engineer for the U.S. Navy, specializing in low-frequency electro-magnetics, he realized he wanted to get back on the water himself. Not able to afford the kind of boat he wanted, Nick decided to design and build a “strip-built” kayak. While this type of construction was popular with canoes, it was not commonly adapted for kayaks. Nick worked together with his brother Eric to develop the process, and over the years has branched out and developed innovative kayak designs using the plywood stitch-and-glue method. As his skill as a kayak paddler and boatbuilder evolved, Nick’s designs evolved to match his changing aims. The driving goal has been to maximize on-the-water performance while respecting the natural materials used to create the boat. Out of these efforts, Nick createdhis business, Guillemot Kayaks, specializing in high-performance sea kayaks for craftsmen interested in building their own boats. He wrote The Strip-Built Sea Kayak and Building Strip-Planked Boats, well-received books describing the strip-built method.  His books and writings have helped foster worldwide enthusiasm for wooden kayaks and canoes. Nick’s shop is located inGroton, Connecticut, where he builds prototypes of new designs and turns out custom-built kayaks. He has taught kayak construction at Mystic Seaport,The WoodenBoat School,and the Connecticut Valley School of Woodworking. His work has been exhibited at the American Craft Museum, and one of his kayaks is in the permanent collection at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

Andrew is an Annapolis native, with a passion for woodworking and small boats. He has a Bachelor's degree in Wood Science and Technology and has a vast knowledge of the characteristics and capabilities of the wood products and machinery we use in the daily operations here at CLC. For the last 6+ years he has also been an integral part of the CLC production team. After several years managing and producing parts in the solid timber shop, Andrew now heads the CLC custom projects and building department where he does nearly everything, including building complete boats, refinishing customer boats, maintaining the CLC fleet, and leading the charge on prototype projects such as Teardrop Camper, Tenderly 10, and others. An avid sailor and paddler, he has been sailing competitively here in Annapolis for more than 15 years in a variety of fleets. He is an energetic and talented addition to the group of amazing instructors here at CLC, with an eye for detail, tremendous patience and fun-loving attitude.

John's career in the maritime trades began as child, cruising aboard his grandfather's fishing boat. He spent weekends handing his grandfather wrenches, planting the seed of what would become a life surrounded by boats. John stayed close to saltwater in the early years, growing up on a surfboard in Ocean City, and sailing around the world compliments of the Marine Corps. This was followed by a 16-year interval in restaurant management. In 2013 John moved to Annapolis to finish what his grandfather started: building a career as a boatbuilder and spending more time with his kids.