Bayou La Batre Company Specializes In Wooden Boats

By Chad Petri Reporter

Landry Boat Works Inc. is one of the few places around that works on wooden boats. Bayou La Batre becomes the temporary home for old sea vessels from across the country. Bayou La Batre Company Specializes In Wooden Boats

Published: Tue, March 25, 2008 - 5:50 am Last Updated: Thu, July 31, 2008 - 12:45 am

Chad Petri

Once a year, the 80 year old Ersa is pulled ashore. The guys at Landry Boat Works give this wooden wonder a "shave and a haircut."

“You have to do it on a regular basis they have a lot of worms in the water and wood and worms don't mix,” says company President Darrel Landry. He’s been sanding and saving wooden boats for more than 30 years. The crew has cleaned and repainted the hull. Repairing wooden boats is a dying craft.

“They're getting older and older between the hurricanes and dying of old age they're just getting fewer and fewer boats,” says Landry. Darrel builds impromptu scaffolding around the boat. With boards only about a foot wide. It's a balancing act with power tool in his hand. In all these years, Darrel says he never fell.

“Woodworking is one board at a time you kind of have to grow up in it and learn the art from the bottom up,” says Landry. A lot of modern boats are made with a fiber glass hull that means they come out a mold in one piece so their less susceptible to the elements. Things made out of wood, like a boat pier can get damaged from wind rain and other things.

“The cost of labor and material is too high and fiber glass came along and fills that hole in between,” says Landry. If you hammer out boat problems early, Landry says it's smooth sailing. Filling the space between planks with cotton stops leaks. He says there's a reward in working on old sea craft.