Ray's Dreamboats

Ray's Dreamboats

After teaching a 12-year-old boy to build a canoe, Ray Klebba of White Salmon, Wash., (pop. 2,193) realized he had done something special. “He was from a single parent family,” Klebba says. “His mother asked if I could help him build a canoe to give him some direction and self-confidence.” Klebba did just that, and two years later the troubled youth is a straight-A student.

The youngster’s turnaround had such an effect on Klebba that he sought more involvement with young people needing direction, hoping to help children find something positive in their lives before they get into serious trouble.

“The local high school’s Special Education program places disadvantaged youths with me,” says the 55-year-old Klebba. “One boy comes in every Tuesday after school.”

Ray Klebba’s White Salmon Boat Works is a modest venture, a place where people come together to build their own wooden canoes, kayaks, and rowboats. In the three years since it opened, the small workshop has become a community attraction and gathering spot. It actually began unintentionally.

“I was looking for a place to build a canoe,” says Klebba, who worked as a newspaper pressman for 30 years before turning his love for boat making into a vocation.

“I rented a building that had a lot of windows in front, and people would come in out of curiosity. Eventually, I had so many people coming in asking if I’d show them how to build a boat, and I kept saying yes, that I had to start charging for materials.”

Klebba charges a nominal fee for his expertise, above cost of materials, but donates his services to the disadvantaged youth and special school programs he works with. This fall he will be setting up a woodworking scholarship for Columbia High School in White Salmon.

The wood-strip boats, so named for the fine strips of cedar, redwood, mahogany, and other contrasting woods used in their construction, are finished with a heavy gloss lacquer, which enhances their striking good looks. With such a visible product, word spread quickly about the man who could make dreams come true. “I nicknamed my business Dreamboats because many people dream of building a boat,” Klebba says. With space so limited in his classes, he has a waiting list of people hoping to build the boat of their dreams.

Klebba’s reputation has traveled west to the suburbs of Portland, Ore. “I’ve had people from as far away as Sandy and Scappoose,” he says. The 120-mile roundtrip drive to and from these Portland-area towns doesn’t deter folks who have discovered a special service not offered elsewhere.

“I’ve had people ranging in age from 12 to 70,” he says, “including father-son and mother-daughter teams, and all skill levels.”

Klebba, like his young charges and adult clients, finds that he too is affected by each newly created boat. “They feel like my children; I’m like a proud daddy,” he says. “We have picnics a couple of times a year to celebrate the boats because we’re all friends, we all helped build them.”

This past summer, Klebba’s skills netted the Best Paddleboat and Best Rowboat awards at the Portland Wooden Boat Show—one built by Klebba, the other by one of his students. He credits the success of his Dreamboats business to the people of the region. “White Salmon is such an outdoor community, with windsurfers, mountain bikers, snowboarders, boat sailors, and more,” he says. “I’m successful because of the people who live here.”

Martin D. Trees, a freelance writer and essayist, lives in the Columbia River Gorge.

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