intheboatshed.net

Photos of the new pilot gig Rebel, built at the Boat Building Academy -
in the first Gail McGarva sits under the boat she project-managed.
As usual, click on the thumbnails for much larger photos

Lyme Regis’s well known Boat Building Academy agreed to build a pilot gig for the newly formed Lyme Regis Gig Club just over a year ago. It doesn’t normally undertake commercial work but this was a commission the Academy couldn’t refuse, according to principal Yvonne Green.

Former student and British Marine Federation Trainee of the Year 2005 turned instructor Gail McGarva project-managed the build and involved as many students and members of the local community as possible, including evening classes for members of the gig club to make their own oars - all of the school contributed even down to knocking in a rivet.

The students were not involved on a day to day basis as they were busy with their own boats but because the gig was in the main workshops it seems to have made a useful teaching aid, and Yvonne reports that the gig was launched on the 29th June with due ceremony. The mayor, the vicar, the town crier, students and the town all came, blessings were read, salt was strewn and the gig was rowed successfully across Lyme Regis’s sizeable bay.

‘The pilot gig measurers said it was one of the best gigs they had seen,’ she adds with pride.

Lyme Regis Gig Club named the new boat Rebel after the Duke of Monmouth, who started his 17th-century rebellion against the Crown on Monmouth beach, where the Boat Building Academy now stands.

Follow the link for more on the Boat Building Academy.

The Telegraph newspaper recently published a long feature on the Academy. I’m envious by the way - I wish people would commission me to write pieces like that!

For more intheboatshed.net posts including material about pilot gigs, click here.

Postcard showing Thurne Mill, dated 1954

Jeff Cole has sent another photo from his collection - this time a postcard showing Thurne Mill on the Norfolk Broads dated May, 1954. Funnily enough, just three summers later my parents spent a holiday in the area in what my father has described as a fat little old tub that would barely sail. Most traditionally built  wooden boats on the Broads may be quaint, but it seems they weren’t all classics!

I’m very happy to report that although a photo taken at the same spot today would include mainly plastic  boats, the mill looks much the same today as this photograph shows.  I should say that the Broads remain a stronghold of traditional sail, despite the plastic cruisers.

Read more about Thurne Mill at the Wikipedia.

For more photos from Jeff’s excellent collection click here.

Learn more about The Broads.

Some photos from earlier Home Build Boat Regatta Meetings

The Home Built Boat Regatta’s annual jamboree at the Cotswold Water Park is scheduled for the weekend of the 6thand 7th of September this year (2008), and a new meeting is planned for following weekend of the 13th and 14th September at the north end of Ullswater in the English Lake District.

Full details are at the HBBR’s snazzy new website. HBBR meetings over the last couple of years have been dogged by bad weather, but I hope for their sake that they’re about to strike meteorological gold - for they deserve it.

I happen to know that Watercraft Boatbuilding Competition winner Chris Perkins is to launch his new boat, Stangarra on the 6th Septemer, which should be well worth seeing. She’s built to Iain Oughtred’s new Stickleback canoe design. At the time of writing, varnishing is well under way. See Chris’s project.