2011, Dir Jeffrey Kusuma-Hinte, 96 mins

This film charts the life of the Gannon & Benjamin boatyard on Martha’s Vineyard – the island off Massachusetts, where they restore wooden boats and have built a series of traditional schooners. Charlotte was the project for partner Nat Benjamin, designed and built as his own boat and launched in 2007.

The film is about her build, from Nat drawing her plans through to her launch from the slipway at the yard with the assembled company of colourful characters who have made up the cast, as she came into being over several seasons.

The story is not about the boat though and it’s a wonderfully observed tale as Jeff Kusuma-Hinte returns to the yard in all seasons, over the years it takes to get her afloat. Wooden boat people enter and leave the frame and the wider story of Vineyard Haven, and the effect that the wooden boat community has had since the yard began in 1980 all serve to create a pleasantly elegiac tone as we witness the type of craftsmanship that has largely gone from the world, as well as being able to watch the close island community life of the yard and its neighbours. We also see the launchings of other boats that the yard is working on and these serve to punctuate the time that it takes to complete the project.

There are wonderful moments when Nat and Ross (Gannon) talk about why they came to MV to set up their yard and how their families, their wives and children seem spliced into the very fabric of the place – it lends a guileless authenticity that carries a greater story – the human endeavour of designing and building boats out of wood in a world that had almost totally embraced plastic.

In that sense the film, rather poetically, carries the history of the wooden and classic boat movement, as a social documentary as much as being about wooden boats. And you can find yourself re-watching it from time to time – hence this review eight years after it was made. Dan Houston

You can now find DVDs on ebay or Amazon or stream it via Amazon Prime.

DVD 96 mins, Antidote Films, $25, www.charlottethefilm.com