One of my earliest childhood memories is of an outing at age 3 in my paternal grandfather’s 32′ Chris-Craft Sea Skiff—a lapstrake-planked cabin cruiser that was just a few years old at the time. My recollection of that day on the water is more of impressions than fine points: the purr of the gas engine, the mildewy smell of a kapok lifejacket, and the salty taste of one of that lifejacket’s straps. I didn’t know it then, but this was the tail-end of mainstream wooden boats.