LIFE ON THE WATERvideo
JON WILSON - The Restorer's Journey
July 20, 2026 · 41 min · 16K views · Thimble Islands, Connecticut
What this video covers
Jon Wilson, founder of WoodenBoat magazine, describes how a childhood spent on a family island in the Thimble Islands, Connecticut, and a ferry ride he took before he could speak shaped a lifelong commitment to wooden boats.▶ 1:32 After dropping out of college, working at Dutch Wharf Boatyard in Brantford under owner Jack Jakes, and building several boats in Connecticut, Wilson concluded in the early 1970s that wooden boat construction was heading toward extinction.▶ 11:36 With no publishing background, no business plan, and two subscribers, he printed 10,000 copies of the first issue of WoodenBoat and launched it at the Newport, Rhode Island sailboat show in September 1974, selling 200 subscriptions and 400 single copies that weekend.▶ 18:14 He edited and published the magazine from a 24-by-36-foot off-grid cabin in Midcoast Maine — no electricity, no running water, a phone box nailed to a pine tree at the road's edge.▶ 15:15 He also owns Free Spirit, a Concordia 33 designed in 1939 and built in 1948, which he bought in 1982 and has since refitted with raised-panel bulkheads, kerosene lighting, and a small solid-fuel stove.▶ 23:57 Wilson frames wooden boat construction and restoration as the creation of soul — a philosophy rooted in the belief that the love embedded in a boat's building, combined with the care given in its keeping, produces something greater than the sum of its parts.▶ 22:25
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