Peapod rowboat to be christened on Lake Mendota on May 4

It isn’t pea-green, exactly (it’s Badger red and white), but it is beautiful and it is a peapod – rowboat, that is. The boat’s creator and several art students who worked on its construction will officially launch the craft on Wednesday (May 4) at the Memorial Union docks.

Creator Joshua Swan is a master boat builder based in Madison. At the invitation of Thomas Loeser, professor of art and a furniture artist, Swan spent the month of March ensconced in a seventh floor studio of the George Mosse Humanities Building crafting a 13.5-foot peapod rowboat (its name describes its shape) with the help of about a dozen students.

Swan, owner and founder since 2003 of JW Swan Boatworks, is a classically trained boat builder who learned his “craft” at the International Yacht Restoration School in Newport.

“I was drawn to boats as a vehicle to learn about traditional woodworking – I figured if I could learn how to build a boat from wood, I would be able to transfer those skills to anything else I might want to do, but I fell in love with working on boats. I don’t want to earn a living doing anything else,” he says.

Swan emphasized during the boat’s construction that, in the end, the vessel would indeed be seaworthy – “I want my customers to be able to use their boats and to use them often,” he says.

The boat will start the trip to the Union from the Humanities Building on May 4 at about 3:30 p.m. If all goes according to plan, the peapod will hit the waves of Lake Mendota around 4 p.m., and its crew will take it for a short row.

The event is free and open to all. For more information, contact Swan at j_swan@sbcglobal.net or Tom Loeser, tloeser@wisc.edu.