There's a fine book, Wooden Boats, by Michael Ruhlman that's worth a read for multiple reasons. Firstly, the locale is in my part of the country --Martha's Vineyard. Not that I live there, but it's only a short ferry ride away for most of us in the greater Boston, Massachusetts area.
Martha's Vineyard is one of several jewels located just off the Eastern United States seacoast. Bartholomew Gosnold, an English explorer, named it in 1602 after his daughter who died in infancy. Nearby and also noteworthy are: Monomoy, Elizabeth Islands and Nantucket. Each of these played an important role in early New England sailing history as either shipyards, embarkation points, whaling settlements, and certainly as showcases for the grand homes built by the captains and owners of sailing ships.
Today, Martha's Vineyard is more often thought of as an exclusive retreat for the rich and famous. However, one only has to spend an hour or so hanging around the wharf in Vineyard Haven to see the wide variety of "ordinary folk" -- day-trippers, vacationers, families, island workers, and curiosity seekers of all types -- who disembark from the ferries with regularity. Some are expecting, I suppose that one or more of the Island's notable residents will be waiting on the pier. Rarely happens. Most will immediately set out for their island destinations: shops, restaurants, busses, taxis to Oak Bluffs, Edgartown, or moped rental shops to enable their own exploration.
Many of these visitors will be only mildly aware of the details of the beautiful Vineyard Haven harbor in which they have arrived. They are more intent on orienting themselves so as to optimize their time (and spending) before catching the last ferry back to the mainland. Still fewer of these visitors will notice several specific boats gently rocking on the ferry's diminishing wake. These are the Wooden Boats of Martha's Vineyard. Among them are "When and If," originally built for General George Patton, the "Alabama" and "Shenandoah," both owned by the Black Dog Tavern (of Tee Shirt fame), and "Here and Now," built by Gannon and Benjamin Marine Railway, located on the Eastern shore of Vineyard Haven.
It is Gannon and Benjamin Marine Railway about which Wooden Boats is written. Specifically the book is the story of the boatyard and the two partners who own it, Ross Gannon and Nat Benjamin, and the building of the schooner "Rebecca." Along with Nat and Ross, the reader is introduced to the numerous craftsmen and craftswomen who are employed by the boatyard and who contribute in ways large and small to the building and restoration of the wooden boats for which the G&B is so well known.
What is so special about wooden boats? The author devotes some pages in speculating on that. Perhaps it's the nostalgia of time gone by. Perhaps it's an aversion to plastic "stinkpots" (derisive names for fiberglass motor yachts with tendency to spew noxious diesel fumes in their turbulent wakes). Or it's a sense of the permanence, safety, and resilience that wooden boats seem to embody. I think it is simply the unequaled beauty of the lines of a wooden boat that appeals in the same way that we are intuitively drawn to a work of art in a gallery, or a fine piece of furniture, or a rare gem. One cannot help but stop and admire a gleaming wooden boat at its mooring, or heeling over, close-hauled into a stiff breeze, slicing through the ocean waves.
Rare gems they are indeed. It is difficult to get an accurate count of the number of functioning wooden sailing vessels. WoodenBoat magazine registry lists about 1,200 sailing boats and roughly 1,600 power boats. So, it could be estimated that they number ten thousand or so in total. To show the interest in them however, the circulation of WoodenBoat magazine is well over 100,000! This is many times the number of actual owners of wooden boats -- power or sail. This speaks to the appeal of these boats among all types of people, including those who don't live anywhere near access to water of sufficient depth for a dinghy, let alone a schooner.
Particularly fascinating to me are the lines of a wooden boat. Viewed from any angle, the shape of a wooden boat is uniquely beautiful -- almost hypnotic. The individual planks forming the hull, stern, and decking accent the shape. Readers who may have built furniture as a hobby will know that an efficient way to create handsome pieces is to first take the time to create jigs so that similar elements of the case are consistently cut. In this way, the pieces will fit together tightly and the lines of the piece will be true and well proportioned to one another. Completely different is the construction of a wooden ship.
Each plank of the hull is individually shaped to fit perfectly against its neighbor. This is necessary because each board will make several twists as it is steamed and bent around the frame. Additionally, the width of the planks varies along its length. Each of these twists and bends will make adjacent planks have gaps if the edges were to be left square. Therefore, each plank must be repeatedly bent to the frame and beveled (by hand) in order to precisely align to the next one.
I think that this is what is most admirable about wooden boats. That is the knowledge that this kind of painstaking individual craftsmanship went into its creation. As one admires the lines, one can sense the blending of well-selected natural materials with skilled labor to create a harmonious thing of unique beauty.
As I read Wooden Boats I was struck by the similarities with software development.
Each line of a well-built application is individually crafted -- sometimes repeatedly -- to ensure optimal "fit" with its neighboring functions. The skill to do this takes years to develop and the knowledge of that fact, gives confidence to the user of the code that this is a secure and reliable solution to the problem at hand.
While SOA technologies are enabling more simple and rapid integration of software components, it is important to recognize that enabling this ease of integration belies the extremely sophisticated software design principals to support it. Oracle engineers provide the hard bits requiring sophisticated knowledge of data management, security, systems integration requirements, and business needs, so that our customers can use these functional components (Identity Provisioning, Access Control, Director Services, etc.) to provide robust business solutions.
It's much like the sailor at the tiller. The helmsman needs to know how to respond quickly and adapt to the changing winds and tides. S/he doesn't need to have actually built the boat. Indeed, rarely is that the case. The sailor trusts that the hull will handle the stresses, the mainstays are fastened properly, and that the ballast is correctly computed for optimal stability and performance (among a hundred other things). The sailor relies on the architect and builder to have provided him/her with a worthy vessel.
Oracle engineers are these trusted architects and builders on the sea of software solutions.
