For sail: Peters Township resident, granddaughter construct boat
David and Lily August
Lily August works on her Optimist.
Snowflake takes shape.
Lily August gets ready to start working on her boat.
Lily August stands in the hull.
Lily August works on attaching screws to the boat's underside.
Lily August paints the bottom of her boat.
The carpentry experience of most 7-year-olds is kind of limited.
“I’ve helped my dad in the garage,” soon-to-be second-grader Lily August said about the extent of her working with what’s in the toolbox.
That changed dramatically when she embarked on a project that would dazzle kids twice her age or older: building a sailboat.
“I like it,” she said about the finished product, which is ready for launch on the waters of Lake Arthur in Moraine State Park, Butler County. “I named it Snowflake because we built it in the winter.”
The more-ideal-for-summer Snowflake is an ideal size for youngsters to navigate, about 7.5 feet long.
“I know that because I have a Chrysler minivan, and it fits inside,” Peters Township resident David August, her grandfather, explained.
An avid sailing enthusiast, the former U.S. Navy hospital corpsman piqued Lily’s interest with some trips early in her life aboard his boat. This year, she is attending the Moraine Sailing Club’s youth camp, taking place June 26-30.
Participants in her age range sail in small dinghies known as prams of a design called the Optimist, developed in Florida as a way to offer low-cost sailing opportunities for young people. The Augusts decided to go the route of downloading template plans to build one – it’s not from a kit – and David enlisted the assistance of fellow Moraine club member John Bridges.
“The boat that he helped us with was his 28th Optimist,” David said about the octogenarian Pine Township resident. “He’s built more than 100 boats total. And if you’ve seen the movie ‘Swiss Family Robinson,’ he built that boat for Disney.”
Yes, Bridges was on the Caribbean Island of Tobago during the filming of the 1960 big-screen feature, and he constructed a Chinese junk.
Other Disney movies inspired design elements for Snowflake, such as the color of the interior that Lily refers to as “Frozen” blue and a masthead fly wind indicator that’s a “Cinderella”-themed ribbon.
While Bridges and her grandfather provided the expertise and manpower for Lily’s pram, the Ross Township resident contributed quite a bit of work, herself.
“On the bottom of it, she had to put a line every five inches. She used a Yankee drill,” David said about the handheld ratchet tool, “and drilled the holes every five inches, and then put the screws in.”
“The mast was cut basically from a two-by-four,” he continued. “We used a drawknife to shape it, and then she went at it with sandpaper.”
And Lily mentioned another important task:
“I painted the bottom white.”
When she and other youngsters are on the water for sailing camp, the emphasis is on safety.
“We have one instructor for every three kids, and we have one safety boat per 10 boats. We have instructors in the water with kayaks,” her grandfather said, noting about the participants: “They wear life jackets all the time, even when they’re on the dock. Even the instructors do that, to set the example.”
If Lily chooses to pursue sailing, she would be in good company. According to Robert Wilkes, author of “The Optimist Dinghy 1947-2007,” at least 85 percent of the boat skippers in the 2016 Summer Olympics were former Optimist sailors.
“If you talk to most of the really good sailors,” David August said, “they all started out as kids.”