EMMA
Photos by Liesel Briggs
When Ken Briggs was 10, he was fascinated by boats. His grandfather, seeing an opportunity to share skills that would serve Ken for a lifetime, guided him through building a small boat. Two generations later, Ken’s grandson, Kippen, had taken an early interest in sailing; when he was 11, he asked Ken if they could build a boat together. With his grandfather on board, Kippen read Jim Michalak’s Boatbuilding for Beginners and Beyond and decided to build the Mayfly, a flat-bottomed skiff detailed in the book. Starting during the winter of 2023–24, grandfather and grandson worked together in Ken’s home workshop in the woods outside of Whitehorse in Yukon Territory, Canada. On Father’s Day in June of 2024, they launched EMMA. Kippen had learned valuable lessons about patience and perseverance, and the two had learned a lot about each other.