April 9, 2026 Speaker, Charlie Flanagan

Charlie Flanagan will talk about restoring a classic sailboat in a backyard.

He is a retired history educator who earned a Ph.D. in American Studies with a concentration in material culture studies. He also has about 60 years of experience of backyard wooden boat building and repair. His academic pursuits led to spending the mid-1970s to 2025 teaching in various places, concluding with 15 years as an Outreach Supervisor at the National Archives in Washington. The love of boats has engaged Charlie in messing about with a long sequence of small boats since a childhood spent watching his father rebuild various boats in Somerset, MA and Portsmouth, RI. Since 1979, the center of Charlie’s boating life has been his ownership of, and twice rebuilding, a 1935 Herreshoff 12 1/2 which he still sails in the South River.