Job Creation as Soul Craft: Help Wanted Redux

In the Fall of 2011 I made a help wanted post here at OG and the result was Joseph Shetler, the Mennonite carpenter/artist spending 5 months on the Mon Tiki build. Joe was a great draftsman and precise worker, and we were very lucky to find him. (We ultimately lost Joe to an artist-in-residence program at The Torpedo Factory in Alexandria VA)

We are beginning to ramp up for our next build, so another help wanted post, which is simply a repost of the first one:

The Montauk Catamaran Company is hiring.

From what I’ve been able to glean on the internet and from asking some inappropriate questions of some of my Twitter-friends, I reckon the job pays about as well or better than adjunct professor at a state college, or an associate editor at a smarty-pants magazine (not a strong statement), and with a similar level of job security, which is to say – none.

By contrast the job has no particular education or skills requirement. Experience with wood-working would be good, but not required. Experience with fiberglass and resin would be good, but not required. A person who went deeply into debt to ready themselves to apply for this position has probably made a mistake.

Mostly what we’re looking for is someone (or two or three or ten) who is a quick study, a diligent worker, and has a keen eye for detail. An applicant who could show they were a whiz with drywall compound and spackle would be an instant hire. Someone with old-school auto-body repair skills would probably find a place on the crew.

But if you have none of these skills, do not despair.

If you’re smart, if you can follow directions, and if you can show up when you say your going to show up, even when the job turns out not to be as fun/exciting/brag-worthy as you had initially hoped, we can probably train you into some measure of usefulness in short order.

I can’t guarantee that any of what you might learn in our boat-shop is likely to be transferable to a “real job”, and most especially not transferable into the (much ballyhooed) knowledge economy. Wax on/wax off, grasshopper. (On the other hand, a good friend of my leveraged his experience as an Alaskan halibut fisherman into a sweet position at Time.com, so you never know!)

On the other hand, it’s several months of steady work, indoors, at a reasonable rate of pay, working for a good boss, and you’ll be working on this: a James Wharram Pahi 63 ocean voyaging catamaran.

And when you’re done, and we launch, and she floats upright, and schoons majestically, you can say “I built that.”

All earnest inquiries seriously considered.