by Dave DeMars
news@thenewsleaders.com
Dave Terhaar likes to keep busy even though he spends most of his time in a wheelchair.
He builds model ships and even has one on display near the front office at Ridgeview Place & Prairie Ridge Assisted Living in Sauk Rapids.
“Some people come down here and eat their meals and go right back to their rooms – not me,” Terhaar said. “I spend five or six hours a day here everyday (in the workshop).”
Prior to becoming a model shipwright, Terhaar spent much of his time carving blocks of wood. But his shoulder began to give him trouble and that was how he came to building model ships.
He is working on a replica of the Bluenose II; its more famous namesake, the Bluenose, was a Grand Banks schooner that sailed the Atlantic from 1921-1942 when she sank in Haitian waters. The Bluenose raced starting in 1928 and was never beaten, and the ship was commemorated on the Canadian dime.
Terhaar has built seven other ships, including the Manatee, a large three-masted ship modeled after the carrack that will be given to his nephew. He has three other ships in his apartment and one he gave to his brother.
He says he hasn’t really given much thought to selling any of his work.
“(There are ) too many brothers that would like one,” he said with a wide grin.
All of the parts for his ship-building are handmade to scale by Terhaar. In the hull of the ship, he has to cut all the pieces, the ribs, in order to maintain the integrity and accuracy of the ship’s structure.
“The whole hull is hollow,” he said. “It’s not a single block of wood.”
It takes a while to complete some of the pieces – given his physical challenges, but Terhaar is also somewhat of a perfectionist, so he carefully considered how to improve the top spar on a sail of the Bluenose II.
While Terhaar admits he has never sailed the seven seas, it’s not for lack of trying; he forged his father’s signature, so he could enlist in the Navy.
“I just wanted to get around and see the world,” he said as he adjusted the controls on his electric wheelchair.
After graduation, he broke his neck in a car accident, which is why he is confined to a wheelchair. But there is no self pity or anger in him.
“Well, what do you do?” he asked and then chuckled a bit. “A lot of them get angry at everybody. I never did. It wasn’t their fault. It was my fault.”
More than three feet long, the three-masted Mantis is one of the ships Dave Terhaar of Sauk Rapids has completed throughout the years. It took him more than two years to complete.
The unfinished Bluenose II is nearing completion. It’s taken about a year to get to this point, but it won’t be much longer before the Bluenose II will be able to be on display.
Dave Terhaar of Sauk Rapids contemplates the angle of the spar and the sail on one of his model ships. He started crafting the ship models following a car accident that left him confined to a wheelchair.
