Ex-resident has thrived in boating world

One former Aiken resident followed his dream of building boats and now shares his passion with the world.

John C. Harris, owner and CEO of CLC, was born in Aiken and attended school in the area before his father, Dyer Harris, who had a job as an engineer for DuPont at the Savannah River Plant, relocated the family.

"I went to Mead Hall Elementary and Schofield Middle School, mostly frittering away my academic life doodling boats and airplanes in the margins of my notebooks. When DuPont decamped from SRP, my family moved to Wilmington, Del. I was in eighth grade then," said Harris.

Inspired by his father's constant ingenuity, Harris built his first rowing shell at the age of 14 but admits it wasn't his finest work.

"My dad has always been enthusiastic about boats and passed that on to me as soon as I could walk. Growing up, I built 'pretend' boats in the backyard, including a functioning mock-up of a square-rigged ship that became a neighborhood eyesore. On Gem Lakes, I launched boat models and crude sailboats. By age 12, I was addicted to the creative process of building things and focused like a laser on becoming a professional boatbuilder," said Harris.

"My father had an ethic of building things himself. When we needed something, whether it was furniture or a trailer or a solar water heater, my dad just went out to his shop and built it. I grew up thinking this was perfectly normal. So when I got tired of the family sailboat and wanted a rowing shell of my own, it just seemed natural to design and build it myself. That was a pretty awful boat - years later I cut it up so no one would drown themselves - but it worked and it didn't leak. From there it was hard to keep me out of the shop, and I started getting better at it."

In high school Harris began putting together a boatbuilding portfolio and wanted to attend a two-year artisan program for boatbuilding after high school; however, his parents insisted on a four-year degree. Harris studied music at Washington College in Chestertown, Md., a location he chose for its proximity to the boatbuilding scene on the Chesapeake Bay.

After graduation, Harris went to work building boat kits for a new company called Chesapeake Light Craft (CLC). The business was a one-man operation subcontracted out of Chestertown.

"I became the first employee of Chesapeake Light Craft; I wasn't its founder. CLC grew very quickly in the 1990s, and, in 1995, we moved the business to a shop in Annapolis, a town that's heavily oriented toward the maritime trades. I bought out the founder in 1999. We have 11 employees currently," said Harris.

He describes the business as a "niche business." CLC makes build-your-own-boat kits and sells plans and materials for amateur boatbuilders. Those seeking to create their own boats for fun or to save money can select the boat they want to build, and CLC will send a kit in the mail with all the parts cut out or a roll of plans and an instruction manual.

"It's complicated work because we have to anticipate all of the pitfalls that a first-time boatbuilder might encounter. Writing instruction manuals is fiercely difficult, and getting good at that has made us the largest 'build-your-own-boat kit' company in the world. We've shipped more than 18,000 kits," said Harris. "I think everybody is fascinated by wooden boatbuilding because it exists at the intersection of art and engineering. Wooden boats are beautiful, yet they have to float, they have to be stable, they have to be fast with paddles or oars or sails. Designing boats requires an artful compromise that many people find intensely stimulating. That's why I've mostly stayed out of powerboat design. It's incredibly challenging to design a good kayak or rowing boat or sailboat, because they have to be almost perfectly efficient."

In 2001 Harris and CLC were approached by a producer who wanted to do a boatbuilding series. Harris wrote, co-produced and starred in a series of television shows about boatbuilding for the DIY Network.

During the filming, CLC decided to make a one-hour DVD to sell alongside their boat kits. Harris has found the DVD to be a huge success and a great help to first-time boatbuilders.

In 2007 Harris appeared on the "Today" show and feels it is one of the highlights of his career. He put one his boats on top of his car and drove into Manhattan for the filming; he went on right after then-Senator Joe Biden.

"The best part of the last 15 years has been meeting my boatbuilding heroes. From a very early age, I was addicted to books about boatbuilding and design, and I had a huge collection by the time I was a teenager. The guys in the books were my idols, at an age when a lot of my classmates were idolizing pop stars or whatever," said Harris. "Now a lot of these people are my colleagues in the business, and it's exquisitely weird to go to boatbuilding conferences with them or even to have them call me for advice. I try to be worthy of it."

Harris admits his favorite boat is usually the one he is currently working on.

"One of the cool things of this job has been having boats that I designed just for fun turn into commercial successes. I was going broke maintaining a heavy cruising sailboat, so last year I designed myself a miniature cruising boat I could tow behind my little Honda. That one, called 'PocketShip,' somehow struck a chord in the marketplace, and we've sold $100,000 worth of plans and kits for it in the last 11 months. There's something intellectually honest about sticking with things you know and love, in my case small wooden boats."

For more information about CLC and Harris, visit www.clcboats.com.