People who only slightly know Dr. Paul S. Koch would be surprised to learn that, when it comes to making wooden water craft, he can be much less the perfectionist with a boat and woodworking tools than he is with a scalpel.

“We belong to the ‘Monet School’ of boat making,” he said of himself and his brothers in miters. “We adhere to the belief that, if it looks good from 20 feet away, that’s perfectly acceptable.”

Koch belongs to a seemingly endless list of professional societies but the boat club is the one that makes him smile. The loosely organized guild of unfussy shipwrights is located in Brooklin, Maine, which is the same town that writer E.B. White moved to from New York to be inspired to do stories like “Charlotte’s Web,” among other classics. The pace in Brooklin is just about right for a boat club that doesn’t demand anything “except that you are working on an all-wood boat,” according to the doctor.

Koch, who has been the foundation of the Koch Eye Associates for the last 26 years or so and is currently awaiting clinical trials for an invention of his partners and himself to treat macular degeneration, formally belongs to the Wooden Boat Association, a group of full- and part-time shipwrights who are devoted to building and preserving wooden vessels. Koch has one of his nautical “patients,” a 40-year-old catboat from Cape Cod, hull side up in a friend’s garage in Potowomut. It is not a museum piece by any means. The common issue with wooden boats is warped boards that must be straightened out or replaced to make the craft seaworthy.

“Almost all of the boards on this boat were warped and the hull had gaps everywhere,” said Koch. “We had to take each board off, fix it and put them back, hopefully without leaks. It takes a lot of time.”

But Koch doesn’t mind the time. He says it’s a way to get his mind off his full-time work, and it relaxes him.

Gratefully, he has higher standards when it comes to the microscopic world of eye surgery, where Koch is recognized as one of the top ophthalmologists in the world.

That’s a large claim but one that has been purchased with a career devoted solely to making people’s eyes better. He already has two patents for ophthalmologic devices and has a third pending, all of which are designed with increasing the possibility of happy outcomes for eye surgery.

“One of them makes softening cataracts for removal much easier,” he said. “That minimizes the chance of an error while removing cataracts from the most sensitive part of the eye. The other is an improved lens implant for cataract patients. Most cataract patients have fixed focus, which means they need glasses for close up and for far away. This [the invention] allows them to use the muscles in their eye to bend the lens and focus on nearby or far away objects. Less people will need glasses with it.”

The other invention is an improvement on a common medical device that takes advantage of nano technology that allows for making precision devices on a microscopic scale. This time it is super-thin cannula for treating diseases like macular degeneration. The tubes approach the size of small veins and can bypass everything else in the eye to deliver medicine exactly where it is needed.

“Right now, we have to medicate the whole eye if we want to threat the macula [the message passes from the eye to the brain],” said Koch, who explained that the small tubes are inserted into the eye directly to the diseased macula. “With the cannula, you can use as much medicine as you want without affecting the other parts of the eye. You can use stronger medicines with fewer side effects. You deliver more medicine exactly where it is needed.”

It’s almost fun to watch the genial and soft-spoken doctor intensely strain to explain about 30 years of ophthalmology in a few sentences. His face almost falls and his hands make intense little cuts in the air, as he speaks to an audience in a space as small as the space he operates on.

But he does speak up. He probably spends more time than most ophthalmologists on the lecture trail. The Tufts Medical School graduate has addressed other doctors and students all over the world.

He belongs to: The American Academy of Ophthalmology that made him an Honor Award Recipient; the American Society of Cataract & Refractive Surgery; the Outpatient Ophthalmic Surgery Society; International Lens Implant Society; the New York Intraocular Lens Society; the Rhode Island Medical Society; the Kent County Medical Society; the Kent County Memorial Hospital Medical Staff; the Landmark Medical Center Medical Staff; and the medical staff of St. Joseph’s Hospital.

“I have been to Europe several times,” he said. “I was recently in Milan, where I spoke to a group of doctors as I performed an operation that was broadcast to a large screen. I expect to be doing the same thing again soon, or at least I hope it’s soon.”

But Koch isn’t the stereotypical medical scientist who ignores his business to spend all his time in a laboratory. He said his brother Peter runs all satellite offices of Koch Eye Associates throughout the state, some of which are devoted to particular ophthalmology specialties.

“Peter pretty much runs everything,” Koch said of his brother. “That gives me the time to be out of the day-to-day operation and allows me to do other things.”

Right now, Koch is awaiting the start of clinical trials for his cannula device. He said most of the new devices or procedures for inventions like his start clinical trials outside the country, usually in a country with little expertise in his field.

“We have a board of doctors who review the ethics of everything we do in another country,” he said. “They ensure that everything that’s done does not hurt the people involved in the trials. They are very strict, and they realize that the trials are sometimes giving their people treatment they wouldn’t have had otherwise. Actually, it’s a win-win situation. In fact, clinical trials have become an industry in some countries.”

Clinical trials of the cannula will be finished in about a year and a half. If the FDA approves it, Koch will have to hit the road again, training doctors to install the focus-friendly implants. Koch said he and his research buddies will probably come up with yet another device to help the world see more clearly. It’s back to the research, which Koch says he’s fond of.

“I could do that,” said Koch. “I can see myself in a lab doing nothing but research. I think I would be happy, but I’m not sure I could ever give up my clinical practice.”

Even the prospect of spending all his time working on boats wouldn’t lure Koch out of the operating room. He says there are people out there who need his skills, which he hasn’t been stingy with. He has been on medical missions to other countries, and he has been known to restore eyesight for the uninsured right around here now and then. But Koch has too much class to brag about things like that. He doesn’t need to. He’s willing to let his career speak for itself and keep his soft-spoken mouth shut about it.

“I keep going back to what it is I really want to do,” he said, “and I have to say I love the feeling of coming out of surgery, knowing that I just improved or restored someone’s sight. That’s a feeling I can’t get from doing anything else.”