The boats were always the least of it. The aesthetic appeal of traditional smallcraft was but a heady bait to lure a wondering people into a reconsideration of values that had gone by the wayside.

The America of forty years ago into which Lance Lee hatched his vision of craftsmanship was an intense place - dominated by military-industrial corporate giants, besotted with a blind consumption of fossil fuels, and deeply divided by a failing war in Vietnam.

By 1972, a decade of assassinations, segregation, riots, and civil disobedience was still throbbing, but there were signs of change.

The first Earth Day blossomed in 1970; Henry David Thoreau was again in fashion; a back-to-the-land ethos emerged as the idealistic chaos of the Sixties communal movement was shocked by the 1973 Arab oil embargo.

(credit: Steve Brauer photo)

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