SEQUIM — Seven decades after he built his first boat, David Hough was at it again, using some unexpected downtime to revisit his nautical interests amid the coronavirus pandemic.
“(It) allowed me to forget all that; the resin is hot, or I need to get to fill this hole,” said Hough, 83.
“I’d get up and spend sometimes six hours sanding. I don’t have to worry about the COVID that’s outside somewhere.”
The Sequim writer and former Boeing Company employee said he was spurred to the project following a conversation with his daughter this past winter.
“She said, ‘I don’t know much about your youth.’ We never had much discussion about it. I thought I’d maybe write it down. So I started writing.”
The recollections took Hough back to his teen years, back when he built his first skiff.
David Hough, 83, of Sequim is pictured with his boat. (Submitted photo)
Hough grew up in Aberdeen, and figures his first foray into the boat-making hobby occurred when he was about 12. He recalled taking that craft and a couple of others he built in his late teens on some of the town’s waterways, including the Wishkah and Chehalis rivers — possibly, he said, without his parents’ consent.
Those waterways where “not for the faint of heart,” he remembered.
A participant in activities with Sea Scouts, a division of Boy Scouts of America, Hough took his nautical interests on to a sailing club at the University of Washington. His boating interest superseded at least one two-hour psychology class on a particularly warm fall day, when he opted for some time on the water in a Penguin sailboat rather than sit in a classroom.
Following college, Hough applied his artistic talents at The Boeing Company as a technical and graphic illustrator as well as some video production.
As he got older, Hough turned his free-time interest from boats to two-wheeled transportation in what became a 50-year interest in motorcycles.
“I pretty much abandoned boats,” he said.
Throughout the years, Hough wrote columns for several publications on motorcycle rider safety, education and training, including his “Proficient Motorcycling” column for Motorcycle Consumer News for 16 years, as well as pieces for Sound RIDER! and BMW Owners News magazines.
Now retired, David Hough spent the past six months building a boat from a kit. (Submitted photo)
He published four books on the topic, including the best-selling “Proficient Motorcycling” (a compendium of his columns), and he was recognized twice as a writer by the Motorcycle Safety Foundation’s Excellence in Motorcycle Journalism award.
Hough moved to the Agnew area more than 25 years ago and, three years ago, at age 80, he retired and moved into Sequim, where he found he didn’t have much room for his motorcycles.
As it turns out, Hough said he doesn’t miss riding much anymore for a couple of reasons.
“As we get older, most of us have bodies who hurt; just getting your leg over a bike can be a challenge,” he said.
Hough said he knew riding motorcycles was a dangerous hobby, but over the years, he came to read more dubious statistics.
“I know the numbers now I didn’t know before,” he said.
Not long after he saw a number of roadside hazards during a trip to a motorcycle rally in John Day, Ore., Hough gave up riding for good.
“I don’t have the nerves anymore,” he said.
And while he hadn’t built a boat in decades, Hough still had an interest in watercraft. During a stint as a volunteer at Port Townsend’s annual Wooden Boat Festival, he got a glimpse of the Wineglass Wherry produced by Port Townsend-based Pygmy Boats.
“I thought, ‘Gee, maybe I should get one,’ ” Hough said one day, but he didn’t have the tools, so he let the thought go.
But at the next year’s festival, he saw it again.
In mid-March, just before the COVID-19 pandemic erupted, Hough bought a kit and opened up space in his garage for the six-month boat-building project.
“The project was to build the boat; if the boat ever gets the bottom wet, that’s a bonus,” he said.
But building the boat from a kit was much different that the skiff he built in his youth, Hough found.
“Building a wherry is more like building a model airplane,” he said. “The wood is all held together. The skill I needed was more to learn more about laminating fiberglass.”
Six months later, Hough was ready to take his wherry — christened “Planet X” — out for its maiden voyage. Only, he’d need some help from some kind-hearted neighbors.
“I don’t have the flexibility and balance and vision I had when I was younger,” he said.
His neighbors came through, and on a late-September day, Hough and “Planet X” dipped into the still waters on Sequim Bay.
Hough said he doesn’t have significant plans for the watercraft, other than possibly using it at Lake Crescent at East Beach for some nice, fresh water to paddle.
But that might take some more work, he said.
“My neck won’t turn anymore,” he said, laughing. “I’ve got to come up with mirrors.”
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Michael Dashiell is the editor of the Sequim Gazette of the Olympic Peninsula News Group, which also is composed of other Sound Publishing newspapers Peninsula Daily News and Forks Forum. Reach him at [email protected].
