By Jim Flannery
Staff Writer
Staff Writer
This text was written by a newspaper reporter.
Clark Mills raised a hand, rough as sandpaper, and pointed out some of the more memorable way stations of his 73 years. They were all within a block or so of each other: the red brick schoolhouse of Fort Harrison Avenue, and the boat yard and white clapboard house down the hill on the edge of Clearwater Bay.
"I started school over there," said Mills, shifting easily into the role of tour guide and storyteller. "I bought the marina and lived in a house next door to it. And here's the funeral home, just waiting for me. I haven't gone very far, have I?"
Mills, one of Florida's master boatbuilders, has seldom strayed from Clearwater. He moved there with his family - his father was a successful Ohio grocer - when he was 3 years old. Clearwater was just awakening to the siren call of the Florida land boom. Many of its leading citizens would amass fortunes in real estate speculation, only to lose everything later in the crash.
The lesson was not lost on Mills. He passed up easy money for a lifelong apprenticeship as a boatbuilder and designer. Mills never stopped learning about his work, so he never grew tired of it.
"Each boat has its own special mystique," he said. "Every facet of it is just as interesting as it can be, right through lofting, fairing, lining up the planking. Every step of the production has to be just right, even the caulking.
"Then when you slide it into the water, it's almost better than sex. It's a wonderful feeling."
Mills conceived the Optimist pram, a practical, economical dinghy that has been a training boat for thousands of children around the world. He also designed the ultralight Windmill, a one-design for teens who have graduated from the pram and want "the fastest, most dangerous, go-faster-than-hell boat you can think of."
He designed the wooden pram in the early '50s for the Clearwater Optimist Club's youth program. His aim was to design a sailing boat, suitable for children, that even an unhandy father could build for less than $50.
The result was a square-bowed, flat-bottomed "little Sharpie… a dumb-looking boat, nothing beautiful to look at," Mills recalled. "But it sailed fast, and it was useful."
Mills also designed and built party fishing boats and sleek sailing yachts, a popular line of daysailers, and a 42-foot tugboat adapted for use as a motor-yacht. The yacht was built for a wealthy citrus grower - "an old Florida cracker," as Mills describes the friend - who preferred the look of a tug over the ostentation of a conventional yacht. He so admired its builder that he christened the tug Clark Mills.
Mills' latest project is designing a 13-foot catboat for his youngest son Fred, 29, who wants to build and sell them.
"It's slow-going, and he's an impatient man," said Mills, pushing an amorphous black ball cap back on his head.
Fred had learned that building a fiberglass hull-mold was not nearly as romantic as he had thought. He found the tedious hours of sanding and wallowing in resins distasteful. Mills wondered if his son's temperament might be ill suited to such an exacting job.
"I loved boats all my life," he said. "It always seemed to me a privilege to build one."
As a boy, he used to scavenge rolls of corrugated tin and fashion the curved metal into hulls, boarded up at the ends to keep the water out. Mills designed and built his first sophisticated craft, a canvas-hulled rowing shell, when he was 10 or 11.
"I didn't know the Irish had been building boats like that for hundreds of years," Mills said. "I thought I was pretty clever."
Mills worked in naval shipyards during World War II, and after the war opened his own boatyard, Clark Mills Boatworks, in a tumbledown tin shed in Dunedin, Near Clearwater.
In the '50s, he joined in partnership with Frank Levinson, twice the national Flying Dutchman champion and son of a well-to-do Indianapolis haberdasher, to buy Clearwater Bay Marine Ways.
The yard seldom employed more than a dozen people, but it took on surprisingly large boat building jobs: among others, a 52-foot auxiliary-powered ketch, two 65-foot catamaran party fishing boats, a 42-foot tug, a 31-foot John Alden-designed sloop, plus prams, Windmills and daysailers.
Though Mills' forte as a builder was in wood, his most successful design besides the pram was a 16-foot fiberglass sloop called the Com-Pac, built by Hutchins Yacht Corp. Mills designed the daysailer for a friend who wanted to build boats. The builder has sold nearly 3,000 of the 16-footers and expanded the line to include a 19, 23 and 27-footer, one of which Mills also designed.
Mills' royalty on the 16-footer is one free boat for every 1,000 built - a fair swap as far as Mills is concerned. He hasn't collected a nickel in royalties for either the Optimist dinghy or the Windmill. Both designs were charitable donations.
"I started school over there," said Mills, shifting easily into the role of tour guide and storyteller. "I bought the marina and lived in a house next door to it. And here's the funeral home, just waiting for me. I haven't gone very far, have I?"
Mills, one of Florida's master boatbuilders, has seldom strayed from Clearwater. He moved there with his family - his father was a successful Ohio grocer - when he was 3 years old. Clearwater was just awakening to the siren call of the Florida land boom. Many of its leading citizens would amass fortunes in real estate speculation, only to lose everything later in the crash.
The lesson was not lost on Mills. He passed up easy money for a lifelong apprenticeship as a boatbuilder and designer. Mills never stopped learning about his work, so he never grew tired of it.
"Each boat has its own special mystique," he said. "Every facet of it is just as interesting as it can be, right through lofting, fairing, lining up the planking. Every step of the production has to be just right, even the caulking.
"Then when you slide it into the water, it's almost better than sex. It's a wonderful feeling."
Mills conceived the Optimist pram, a practical, economical dinghy that has been a training boat for thousands of children around the world. He also designed the ultralight Windmill, a one-design for teens who have graduated from the pram and want "the fastest, most dangerous, go-faster-than-hell boat you can think of."
He designed the wooden pram in the early '50s for the Clearwater Optimist Club's youth program. His aim was to design a sailing boat, suitable for children, that even an unhandy father could build for less than $50.
The result was a square-bowed, flat-bottomed "little Sharpie… a dumb-looking boat, nothing beautiful to look at," Mills recalled. "But it sailed fast, and it was useful."
Mills also designed and built party fishing boats and sleek sailing yachts, a popular line of daysailers, and a 42-foot tugboat adapted for use as a motor-yacht. The yacht was built for a wealthy citrus grower - "an old Florida cracker," as Mills describes the friend - who preferred the look of a tug over the ostentation of a conventional yacht. He so admired its builder that he christened the tug Clark Mills.
Mills' latest project is designing a 13-foot catboat for his youngest son Fred, 29, who wants to build and sell them.
"It's slow-going, and he's an impatient man," said Mills, pushing an amorphous black ball cap back on his head.
Fred had learned that building a fiberglass hull-mold was not nearly as romantic as he had thought. He found the tedious hours of sanding and wallowing in resins distasteful. Mills wondered if his son's temperament might be ill suited to such an exacting job.
"I loved boats all my life," he said. "It always seemed to me a privilege to build one."
As a boy, he used to scavenge rolls of corrugated tin and fashion the curved metal into hulls, boarded up at the ends to keep the water out. Mills designed and built his first sophisticated craft, a canvas-hulled rowing shell, when he was 10 or 11.
"I didn't know the Irish had been building boats like that for hundreds of years," Mills said. "I thought I was pretty clever."
Mills worked in naval shipyards during World War II, and after the war opened his own boatyard, Clark Mills Boatworks, in a tumbledown tin shed in Dunedin, Near Clearwater.
In the '50s, he joined in partnership with Frank Levinson, twice the national Flying Dutchman champion and son of a well-to-do Indianapolis haberdasher, to buy Clearwater Bay Marine Ways.
The yard seldom employed more than a dozen people, but it took on surprisingly large boat building jobs: among others, a 52-foot auxiliary-powered ketch, two 65-foot catamaran party fishing boats, a 42-foot tug, a 31-foot John Alden-designed sloop, plus prams, Windmills and daysailers.
Though Mills' forte as a builder was in wood, his most successful design besides the pram was a 16-foot fiberglass sloop called the Com-Pac, built by Hutchins Yacht Corp. Mills designed the daysailer for a friend who wanted to build boats. The builder has sold nearly 3,000 of the 16-footers and expanded the line to include a 19, 23 and 27-footer, one of which Mills also designed.
Mills' royalty on the 16-footer is one free boat for every 1,000 built - a fair swap as far as Mills is concerned. He hasn't collected a nickel in royalties for either the Optimist dinghy or the Windmill. Both designs were charitable donations.