Dan Lee

Dan Lee has an astonishingly high profile for someone who only became a full-time boatbuilder two years ago. Regular readers of WoodenBoat have encountered him and his classic speedboat MISS ISLE since March 2023 on the back cover, as the poster boy and boat for Epifanes varnish. Elsewhere, the same boat has been used as the face of WEST System epoxy. And anyone with an interest in wooden speedboats can’t have missed his YouTube series on building and restoring various boats, the most popular installment of which has had over one million views. All of this attention got me to wondering: Who is Dan Lee?

It so happens that Dan’s workshop in Gloucestershire in southwest England is only a two-and-a-half-hour drive from where I live, so I set off early one morning to seek the answer to this burning question. I expected to find a busy workshop, with machinery whining, wood shavings flying, and dust everywhere; the usual sights and sounds of a bustling boatyard. Instead, what I found was a super-tidy space, big enough for at least half a dozen people to work in, with a couple of speedboats in mid-restoration, a CNC machine dominating one corner, a circular saw, and a huge old planer-thicknesser lying idle. Upstairs, there was a small stack of lumber, half a dozen boat frames made up, a large office and, tucked to one side, a very professional-looking umbrella light. And silence.

For, despite the amount of equipment packed into this space, the workshop is used by just Dan and his wife, Sasha. With Dan busy being interviewed and Sasha busy on the computer fulfilling orders for another joint business, the workshop was eerily quiet. And that is just as it should be. This isn’t a regular boatyard churning out dozens of new boats and restorations. This is a multimedia craft workshop, where building boats is only part of the picture and where the actual earning part of the business happens online. Welcome to the world of cyber boatbuilding.

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