NEW BEDFORD — From the themes of the street art to seeing the real thing in action — a walk around the city’s downtown is likely to reveal two aspects of New Bedford: a love of sailing, and of skateboarding. So it’s only fitting that the Community Boating Center embraces both, teaching skills that will prove useful far beyond either in the process.

Throughout the winter season, Community Boating Center staff members participate in programming with local schools — including Our Sisters’ School in New Bedford — that has students building their own skateboards, requiring them to think in terms of mathematics and visual design, as well as use plenty of “elbow grease” as one Boating Center staff member put it.

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“I started off building skateboards for my senior project. That’s where I really started to fall in love with carpentry and woodworking,” said Boating Center staff member Erik Reuther, who is credited with first proposing the skateboard-building project six years ago.

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Through a company called Roarockit, the boating center was able to purchase individualized kits containing the pieces and hand tools to build one skateboard deck each. From there, the Center needed a way to provide the other components required to construct a skateboard. That’s where downtown New Bedford skateboard shop Solstice came into play.

“When we first started the project I went down to Solstice and they set us up with the trucks, grip tape, wheels, bearings and really all the other hardware we needed,” Reuther said of the shop’s at-cost provision of the high quality materials.

In constructing their own skateboards, students learn that there’s more to a skateboard than a single slab of wood with wheels attached to it. For instance, to construct the decks, students must sand and shape several thin veneers which stack together to form a durable board that can withstand the weight of a rider and the stresses that will be put on the wood while skating. However, to accomplish this, it takes more than a simple laying on of glue between pieces, Community Boating Center Education Director Richard Feeny explained.

“The kits we buy come with a vacuum bag device which is what clamps the veneers together with vacuum pressure. This is also how composite boats are built,” Feeny said. “Students get to see how this … creates an object that is both stronger and more flexible than a solid object and can have complex shapes, compound curves and so forth.”

Feeny also noted other built-in educational components, from geometry to earth science. “There’s a lot of math hidden in these things, from finding center lines, being able to make a right angle — things like that,” he said. “And this creates a beautiful object with non-toxic materials and is also an ecologically friendly form of transportation.” 

Feeny also noted the project’s hands-on nature serves as a way to expose students to working with tools.

While the working relationship between Our Sisters’ School and the Community Boating Center has rolled into new territory, Our Sisters’ School Head of School Sarah Herman said it all started with traditional sailing almost a decade ago. 

“Our school name comes from the women who went off in whaling ships in the 1800s — they were called ‘sister sailors' — so connecting with the Community Boating Center made a lot of sense,” Herman said. “Since my first year here nine years ago, our students have been learning to sail in the fall and spring.” 

Our Sisters’ School teacher Donna Phillips, who has been hosting the project sessions during her eighth-grade Nautical Animal Sciences class, explained that the skateboarding project has been picked out specifically for the school’s eighth-graders as part of a trajectory of annual hands-on projects done in collaboration with the Boating Center. The projects are sequenced so that the work increases in difficulty each year a student attends the grades 5-8 charter school.

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“The first three years the work is focused on model boats, and there are different challenges with that each time. Then with this project they’re kind of taking all of those skills they learned and using them for something completely different,” Phillips said. “We’re in our last three weeks, so after this and after they varnish it’s going to be about creating their art and applying it onto the board.”

While skateboards are known for serving more as décor for some who don’t partake in the activity but appreciate the aesthetic, more than one class member said they look forward to using their fully functional work of art.

“I skateboard out of school so being able to keep the skateboard I created is cool,” said eighth-grader Rhea, who noted the design she has planned will pay tribute to her father. “I did have a skateboard but it broke so I’ll be using this.”

“I’ve wanted to learn. I started in the summer but I fell out of it,” said classmate Giselle. “I’ll get back into it now with the new board.”

Eighth-grader Terry said she looks forward to adorning her board with a depiction of an original character she created “fading into stardust.”

When asked if they learned anything new or interesting about skateboards, all three girls noted being surprised at the level of complexity involved. “I didn’t know it was multiple layers. Honestly, I thought it was all one piece of wood,” Rhea said.

Looking forward, Reuther — who graduated from Tiverton High in 2014 and became involved with the Boating Center as a Bishop Stang freshman — says the reaction and level of interest he’s observed while working with students on the project makes him think there’s more work to be done relative to skateboarding. “My future goal is to work with Solstice to get a community skate day going where we go to the skate parks throughout New Bedford and kind of greet people, tell them who we are and try to help promote and build up a community culture around skateboarding,” he said.

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For more info on the Community Boating Center, visit www.communityboating.org. For more info on Our Sisters' School, visit www.oursistersschool.org.