intheboatshed.net

Chiles is an extraordinary character who has often chosen to live life on the edge, including long trips by sea in a 18ft Drascombe lugger yawl.

There’s a lot to read in this unusual, slightly dreamy website, and some nice photos too.

http://www.inthepresentsea.com/

Grand dames of the sea Lulworth and Mariquita to slog it out in racing at Cowes Classic Week in July organised by the British Classic Yacht Club. I gather this will be the first time that Lulworth has raced in British waters since the 1920s.

There’s a handsome gallery of photos from this year’s event here, and results and reports can be found here. It all seems a world away from the muddy, low-budget East Coast sailing we know so well, but still it looks like a hell of a lot of fun!

It’s Christmas in the workshop where Cem Gür and colleagues are building two boats to Thomas Gillmer’s Blue Moon design

Cem Gür is a boatbuilder in Turkey who usually specialises in building Francois Vivier designs, which might give some readers one or two interesting last-minute Christmas present ideas. See www.classicboats-turkiye.com .

Of the two boats being built, one is for Cem himself, while the other is for a customer. Frames, stern and stem are laminated in oak, with akajou planking. The customer boat is getting SiBrz screws, although Cem’s will have to make do with galvanised nails.

The plan is to finish planking in January, and to launch this coming spring.

For more on the widely admired Blue Moon design at intheboatshed.net click here. For a gallery of another Blue Moon build click here.

*Heard this before somewhere? I’ve borrowed the title of a popular Christmas reading about life in the dreadful institutions the Victorian used to house and feed the poor, and which staggered on some decades into the ‘civilised’ 20th century. Maybe we should all download the poem and read it to the kids this year!

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