JOEL ARRINGTON is just a Southerner wandering through the West looking for water. Born and raised in southwest Georgia, Joel started his westward migration with a ten-year career as a fly-fishing guide and carpenter in Colorado. There, he developed his passion for craftsmanship and being on the water. After a few too many subzero winter days he shifted camp to Port Hadlock, WA, where he attended the Northwest School of Wooden Boatbuilding. This allowed him to channel his passions for water and woodworking into a boatbuilding career. As the Boat Shop Manager, Joel is ready and eager to help others delve into the wonderful world of boats and boatbuilding.  

LARRY FROLEY first partnered with CLC in 2001 to help guide the design and development CLC paddleboard range.  In that role he has built countless prototypes and display models, and a small fleet of kayaks, too. Larry grew up on the Southern California coast spending much of his youth on a surfboard, as well as paddling canoes and kayaks. He is an accomplished paddler and paddleboard racer (of both prone and stand up varieties). Larry had an early introduction to woodworking from his father. Larry's long partnership with CLC is highlighted by the the Kaholo series SUPs. Though based in Sacramento, California, Larry is active in tech support for CLC and continues to research and initiate new paddleboard projects. He travels 8 or 9 months out of the year promoting, exhibiting and racing the Kaholo SUPs, and has landed on the podium in many major races.  Following a 31-year law enforcement career with the State of California, mostly as a state park ranger/superintendent, Larry retired as the Chief of Investigations for the California Department of Consumer Affairs in 2004. With an undergrad background in health science, and a passion for health and fitness, Larry is a personal trainer and sports nutritionist.  He is currently pursuing graduate work in nutrition.  Larry is believed to be personally responsible for the demise of the Hostess Twinkie.

     

JOHN C. HARRIS owns Chesapeake Light Craft, the Annapolis-based purveyor of wooden boat kits and plans. His long tenure at CLC was preceded by a passion for boatbuilding and small craft that stretches back to earliest childhood. His first (modestly) successful design was launched at age 14. More paddling, rowing, and sailing craft followed quickly, though he paused to get an undergrad degree in music—another passion. He cut some of CLC's very first kits in 1994 and went on to establish a career as a boatbuilder, designer, teacher, and writer. He’s shipped 45,000 boat kits, built more than a hundred wooden boats personally, and seen his designs launched in 70 countries. His work as a designer and builder ranges from dinghies to large multihulls and from kayaks to powerboats. In recent years he's added the design and construction of RC aircraft to his list of hobbies. "It's all 'light craft' and fluid dynamics," he says. "Only the density of the fluid is different." John lives on Kent Island in the Chesapeake Bay with his family and a rotating fleet of curious small boats. 

 

JAY HOCKENBERRY grew up in Winston Salem, NC, where he picked up a copy of WoodenBoat Magazine as a teenager and discovered boat building. Jay was a 'maker' long before the term became fashionable. For Jay. boat design/building checks every box: challenging, hands-on, creative, useful, and beautiful. He found and restored a Blue Jay (#2135, built from a kit in the 1960s) and interned at the Rockport Apprenticeship when it was in Rockport, ME. There he built a Susan Skiff and absorbed everything that goes into conceiving, building, and launching a wooden boat. Jay had a short stint at Hatteras Yachts when it was in High Point N.C., and went to work at Chesapeake Light Craft in 1999. After a five-year break polishing his CAD/CAM skills in a high-tech factory setting, he's been back at CLC since 2010. Jay's specialty is ushering boat designs from the spark of an idea to the complex reality of CNC kit fabrication, and beyond. As the third-longest tenured employee at CLC, his knowledge of CLC's catalog of designs is vast and deep. Jay is always willing to get outside and into any kind of boat.

GEOFF KERR is a full-time builder of wooden boats who does business as Two Daughters Boatworks in Westford, Vermont.  His repertoire is broad and varied, and includes a 5500-pound power cruiser designed by Paul Gartside, a Bristol-fashion reproduction of Commodore Monroe’s Egret, multitudes of Iain Oughtred’s Caledonia Yawl family, a couple of Nat Herreshoff’s favorite Coquina design, and too many CLC boats to count. Geoff took to sailing as a teenager after a spell at the Hurricane Island Outward Bound School, where he learned about fog, dragging anchors, mosquitoes, and the joys of double ended, seaworthy boats.

He later fed his needs studying marine science as a botany major on the coast of North Carolina, and then as a Coast Guard officer, sailing the Atlantic in a research ship from the Grand Banks to Venezuela. He learned the boatbuilding trade in the Alexandria Seaport Foundation shop with Joe Youcha. He'd wandered in as a volunteer hoping to use the band saw, and stayed for five years, eventually supervising that shop. Besides teaching classes for many of CLC’s designs, Geoff has built many completed CLC boats for paying customers. He’s also been a go-to builder for prototype projects including Pocketship, Peeler, Southwester Dory, and Madness.  He sails his Caledonia Yawl Ned Ludd on Lake Champlain and along the Maine Coast between summer boatbuilding classes, and keeps at least one Kaholo SUP or his old school Patuxent 19.5 kayak on the roof of his truck at all times.

GEORGE KREWSON is a rocket scientist based in Cocoa, Florida, where he has spent the past thirty years working on the Space Shuttle program. George grew up sailing and surfing and began building boats after visiting the WoodenBoat School during a Maine vacation a decade ago. After building a few kayaks on his own and dazzling us with his talent, George became a “beta” builder for Chesapeake Light Craft and has assembled the prototypes of many new designs over the years. As an instructor, he particularly enjoys sharing the sense of amazement he felt with his own first build when flat pieces of plywood came together into a beautifully curved hull. George began experimenting with exotic wood veneers with his second boat, and has become a “go-to” guy in classes and on the CLC forum for technical tips on the subject. When he’s not sailing, he continues to build show-quality wooden boats and furniture for friends and family but is quick to add that whether the finished product is a work boat or a fine piece of furniture, the most important thing is the sense of accomplishment in having built it.

DILLON MAJOROS grew up on the coastal waters of New England, where he learned to sail as a child. He has been drawing boats since he could hold a pencil. Big ones and small ones, fast ones and slow ones, but always - on the corner of some notebook, the back of a receipt - inexpensive sailing ones. He refined his drawings through the Design Program at the Landing School, and began his professional career with Michael Peters Yacht Design in Sarasota, Florida. Mike taught him how to design for production, and Florida taught him how to sail in skinny water. Toward the end of his tenure at MPYD, Dillon teamed up with a few childhood pals and built a 30' long, skin-on-frame proa with a $1500 budget to sail in the first Race to Alaska. Though they didn't quite make the deadline, Dillon still enjoyed a 1,000-mile, month-long cruise through the Strait of Georgia up to Desolation Sound. This adventure helped land him his dream job as a designer for Chesapeake Light Craft. Dillon and his partner, Jessie, spend their free time volunteering with the Station North Tool Library and working on their home in Baltimore - a Freedom 40 sailboat. Dillon has helped build more CLC Teardrop Campers than anyone on the planet. 

TERRY OTIS has been a staff technical advisor at Chesapeake Light Craft for six years.  A former career diplomat and defense industry executive, he has built numerous boats over the decades.  An enthusiastic paddler and sailor, Terry's job at CLC is to help customers choose their boat projects, then assist them with construction and rigging questions. Among other major projects, Terry built the prototype Jimmy Skiff II, photographed the project, and drafted the new builder’s manual.  Joining the ranks of dedicated instructors here at CLC, he enjoys helping others to share his enthusiasm for the Jimmy Skiff II.  His “other boat” is a gaff-rigged Herreshoff 12-1/2 that he campaigns in the Annapolis racing fleet.

ERIC SCHADE has enjoyed building things since childhood and hasn't stopped for almost 50 years. Starting with model boats, he graduated to his first full size canoe in 1983, and since has added scores of canoes, kayaks, rowing, and sailing boats, and countless scale models. He was trained as a mechanical engineer and practiced that profession for 20 years. In 1996 he founded Shearwater Boats, offering custom-built strip and stitch-and-glue boats, stock and custom designs, as well as plans and kits for the home builder. Eric’s greatest area of expertise is the computer-generated engineering of complicated and precise plywood boat kits for assembly by amateurs. In 2005 Eric was hired as a house designer for Chesapeake Light Craft. His contributions include the Shearwater and Wood Duck lines, which have been a gigantic success, with over a thousand built. Eric has taught boatbuilding at a number of shops and has mentored the construction of about 200 boats. This experience, and the feedback he gets from supervising the construction of his designs, not only has improved his skills as a builder, but has honed his skills as a designer and teacher.  (His name is pronounced "SHAH-duh.")

NICK SCHADE grew up around canoes and kayaks. After a career as an electrical engineer for the U.S. Navy, specializing in low-frequency electro-magnetics, he realized he wanted to get back on the water himself. Not able to afford the kind of boat he wanted, Nick decided to design and build a “strip-built” kayak. While this type of construction was popular with canoes, it was not commonly adapted for kayaks. Nick worked together with his brother Eric to develop the process, and over the years has branched out and developed innovative kayak designs using the plywood stitch-and-glue method. As his skill as a kayak paddler and boatbuilder evolved, Nick’s designs evolved to match his changing aims. The driving goal has been to maximize on-the-water performance while respecting the natural materials used to create the boat. Out of these efforts, Nick created his business, Guillemot Kayaks, specializing in high-performance sea kayaks for craftsmen interested in building their own boats. He wrote The Strip-Built Sea Kayak and Building Strip-Planked Boats, well-received books describing the strip-built method.  His books and writings have helped foster worldwide enthusiasm for wooden kayaks and canoes. Nick’s shop is located in Groton, Connecticut, where he builds prototypes of new designs and turns out custom-built kayaks. He has taught kayak construction at Mystic Seaport, The WoodenBoat School, and the Connecticut Valley School of Woodworking. His work has been exhibited at the American Craft Museum, and one of his kayaks is in the permanent collection at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

JOEY SCHOTT followed a different path to boat building. Boats and the Chesapeake Bay have been a part of his life since infancy. He started sailing competitively at an early age, enjoying much success along the way. His boatbuilding career began as a CLC customer in 2002, when he built a pair of Chesapeake kayaks, one of which caught the eye of the CLC staff at Okoumefest. His Chesapeake Double took "Best Execution of a kit" in 2004. He returned in 2006 with a new boat that took top honors as "Best in Show." A self professed "victim of boat building OCD," he kept honing his skills using traditional and non-traditional materials for building boats, and in 2009 he joined the staff at CLC where he continued to advance his skill set by learning from the many talented boat builders on staff. Joey’s thirst for knowledge and willingness to share what he learns was the hallmark of his tenure with CLC as Sales Manager. There are many examples of his work in the showroom at CLC, or on the road at any of shows and demos. While he has built boats using every technique that CLC utilizes, he is best known for strip construction. His build of a Guillemot Petrel won top honors in the 2014 WoodenBoat Show Concourse d’ Elegance for human powered craft. In his spare time Joey is most often found on the water. An avid kayaker as well as a sailor, he is always looking for new adventure. Over the past few years, he has developed a passion for rough water sea kayaking. There are many images on the CLC website of him doing what he calls "extensive product development." He also was the boat building instructor for a local charity, Box of Rain Foundation, where he led groups of 10- to 16-year-olds through the construction of several CLC designs over the years. Joey currently resides in Richmond, Virginia, where he owns and operates his own boatbuilding, kayak, and small craft repair business, Turning Point Boatworks.

ANDREW SCHROEHER  is an Annapolis native, with a passion for woodworking and small boats. He has a Bachelors degree in Wood Science and Technology and has a vast knowledge of the characteristics and capabilities of the wood products and machinery we use in the daily operations here at CLC. For the last 6+ years he has also been an integral part of the CLC production team. After several years managing and producing parts in the solid timber shop, Andrew now heads the CLC custom projects and building department where he does nearly everything, including building complete boats, refinishing customer boats, maintaining the CLC fleet, and leading the charge on prototype projects such as Teardrop Camper, Tenderly 10, and others. An avid sailor and paddler, he has been sailing competitively here in Annapolis for more than 15 years in a variety of fleets. He is an energetic and talented addition to the group of amazing instructors here at CLC, with an eye for detail, tremendous patience and fun-loving attitude.

JOHN STAUB's career in the maritime trades began as child, cruising aboard his grandfather's fishing boat. He spent weekends handing his grandfather wrenches, planting the seed of what would become a life surrounded by boats. John stayed close to saltwater in the early years, growing up on a surfboard in Ocean City, and sailing around the world compliments of the Marine Corps. This was followed by a 16-year interval in restaurant management. In 2013 John moved to Annapolis to finish what his grandfather started: building a career as a boatbuilder and spending more time with his kids.