GREG RÖSSEL grew up cruising on the waters of New York Harbor and spending time in the boatyards on the south shore of Staten Island where economics (more than anything else) made wooden boats the craft of choice. He makes his home in Maine where he specializes in the construction and repair of small wooden boats. Since graduating at the top of his class in boatbuilding technology from Washington County Vocational Technical Institute, Greg has had a multifaceted career. For several years, he was an assistant restorer for a major private collection of antique runabouts and airplanes. Then he spent another couple of years as an instructor and assistant director at Maine Maritime Museum's Apprenticeshop program. All the while, he was building his own shop at home in Troy, Maine, and tackling a wide variety of small-boat construction and restoration projects. For over 30 years, Greg has been able to work for himself full-time, aside from a few odd jobs like setting up a wooden Whitehall factory in Mexico, custom lines taking and documentation for museums and other customers, and writing over 200 articles for numerous marine publications. He is a contributing editor for WoodenBoat and Maine Boats, Homes, and Harbors magazines.

He has also written and illustrated Building Small Boats, The Boatbuilder's Apprentice, and co-authored with Ted Moores Kayaks You Can Build: An Illustrated Guide to Plywood Construction. Since the late 1980s, Greg has been an instructor at WoodenBoat School, teaching lofting, skiff building, and the Fundamentals of Boatbuilding. Also, for the nearly 30 years he has been producing a weekly two-hour radio program about world music, which (mercifully) has absolutely nothing to do with boats.