“You can do anything out of an aluminum boat or fiberglass boat that you can do from a wooden boat,” said Billy Garner of Ridgeville, “but the nostalgia anda beauty of a wooden boat are what attract most people to strip boats.”
Garner, a lifetime carpenter, began building Edisto River Strip Boats (www.edistoriverstripboat.com), decades ago, has mastered the art. His combination of carpenter, angler and steward of the Edisto River gives him a unique perspective on the boat-building process, and his boats are both practical and beautiful.
Garner (843-607-4945) builds his boats with rough-sawn lumber from locally-harvested cypress trees, meaning what starts out as a tree in the flooded swamps of the Edisto ends up helping anglers appear as a more natural part of the river than anglers in other boats.
Aside from their natural beauty, these boats are much quieter than their aluminum or fiberglass counterparts, both in terms of hull slap and internal noise produced by anglers’ movements. Another advantage, Garner said, is that his building options are limitless.
“Most commercially available boats are built with molds that cost tens of thousands of dollars, and this greatly limits the modifications a builder can do. I have templates that I can interchange to build a boat exactly how I want it,” he said.
Before building a customer’s boat, Garner talks to the person to determine what they’re looking for, the angler’s size and other details that will help him construct their ideal boat.
Garner builds a lot of sneak boats with pedal-powered electric motors, but he also builds models that can handle outboards on the stern and foot-controlled trolling motors on the bow. This gives anglers a lot more range, while maintaining the stealth to creep along waters like the Edisto.
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