WHAT: CCSO Build-A-Boat Youth Program
WHEN: Aug. 10-14, 2009
TIME: 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
WHERE: Everglades fire station, 201 Buckner Ave., Everglades City
They’ve spent most of their young lives around boats, and next week 10 Everglades City-area teenagers will come together to build one for the first time.
The teens will be participating in the Collier County Sheriff’s Office’s Build-A-Boat Youth Program. The pilot program is open to Collier County teens ages 13 to 17, but is geared toward giving youngsters first-hand experience in woodworking and boat-building and job skills that will stay with them the rest of their lives.
The overall goal is not just to build a boat. The program also aims to build pride among participants and positive relationships between the teens and CCSO.
“We wanted to do something for youth in the middle schools and high schools because they seem to be the ones who get dropped through the cracks,” said Lt. Mark Cherney of CCSO Special Operations and one of the program’s organizers. “There are not a lot of youth programs for them.”
While the program is being launched in Everglades City, CCSO’s goal is to construct three of these boats over several weeks next summer in various locations around Collier County. The hope is to make this an annual program in a continuing partnership with the Marine Industries Association of Collier County Foundation, which is sponsoring the pilot program and picking up the cost. Graduates would be program mentors in future years.
Participants will spend the week with CCSO deputies constructing a Bevin’s Skiff at the fire station in Everglades City. When completed the wooden rowboat will measure nearly 12 feet long and weigh 450 pounds. The teens and deputies will launch the vessel Friday in Everglades City; the time and exact location have yet to be determined.
Lt. Harold Minch, who heads-up CCSO’s Safety and Traffic Enforcement Bureau, will oversee the construction of the boat each day. Minch has experience in building similar vessels. He attended a wooden boat building school for eight days in Newport News, Va., in 2001, the same year he built a 17-foot mahogany ocean kayak, which he said he recently refinished.
Building a boat with his own two hands gave Minch a great sense of satisfaction as well as pride in his work. He hopes the teens’ will share a similar experience in Everglades City.
“I have something that’s timeless; it’s one-of-a-kind,” Minch said.
The boat the teens will build in Everglades City will be donated to CCSO’s Junior Deputy Camp to be used for youth programs.
In addition to building a boat, the teens will learn about boating safety.
Each day during lunch deputies from CCSO’s Marine Unit will present a safe boating course for the teens. At the end of the week the teens will be able to take the test for a boating safety education card, which is required for anyone younger than 21 in order to operate a boat in Florida.
Randy Ward, president of the Marine Industries Association of Collier County Foundation, said the program is a natural fit with the foundation’s mission of boater education and safety.
“One of the goals of the foundation is to get youths into boating and this is a great way to do that,” Ward said.
