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Douglas Magazine: All Hands on Deck - Painstaking Workmanship, Oct/Nov 2024 Issue Page 44

Abernethy & Gaudin Boatbuilders and its small staff of 12 also serves a well-heeled, private-boat-owning demographic, mostly dwelling in the Victoria region but also in Puget Sound south of the border.

It’s a hot July afternoon at the company’s Brentwood Bay boatyard. The smell of wood shavings mingles with the sharp scent of solvent in a cluttered shanty that buzzes with activity. Two craftspeople are finishing a new transom made of gorgeous, auburn-hued teak on a boat that’s out of the water and on the rails. It’s one of countless details in a painstaking two-month restoration of this sleek, wooden power cruiser, one of roughly 100 that were built by Vancouver’s Grenfell Yachts back in the 1960s and early ’70s. 

Owner Bruce Reid, of Sidney, is a Grenfell aficionado. His grandfather had a Grenfell and his son is also a proud owner. Reid now holds the rights to the design. One look at the work being done on his 35-foot, B.C.-made wooden beauty and it’s immediately clear that quality trumps cost on this restoration.

After fielding a few phone calls, Jean Gaudin wanders down to the dock with a retired couple who have made a surprise visit to check progress on their sailboat refit. It’s getting a bunch of new woodwork, including new gunnels currently being planed to perfection by a technician.

Robert Abernethy of Abernethy & Gaudin Boatbuilders works on the details of a wooden vessel at its boatyard in Brentwood Bay. The company’s small staff of 12 largely serves a private-boat-owning clientele. Photo by Jeffrey Bosdet.

“My dad was designing and building boats, so I kind of grew up around it,” Gaudin says. “I worked at Jespersen [Boat Builders] for six years on many different projects and I learned a lot.”

In 1999, Gaudin teamed up with Rob Abernethy to launch a business. Their boatyard has been busy ever since. This past spring they opened a second facility in Sidney, realizing that they were outgrowing their space on Brentwood Bay’s picturesque and historic waterfront.

Gaudin pauses when asked if he and his partner want to continue growing their business. He says he’s content with the current scale, which already has him spending more time on admin and less on the tools than he would like. But even if Abernethy & Gaudin wanted to expand, finding shipwrights and skilled craftspeople wouldn’t be easy.

“It’s not a common profession. They’re usually avid boaters,” Gaudin says.