Author: Gavin Atkin

Photographs of the Hudson folding boat at the Beale Park Thames Boat Show

Hudson folding boat at the Beale Park Thames Boat Show

Hudson Folding Boat on the National Maritime Museum stand at the Beale
Park Thames Boat Show this year. Click on the images for a larger photograph

One of the most fascinating objects on show at the Beale Park Thames Boat Show this year was this amazing folding boat. I’ve posted a photograph of this boat once before, when the National Maritime Museum Cornwall included it in a display of folding boats.

However, I hadn’t realised it was such an exquisitely complicated piece of engineering. This is a real mass of hinges and brackets, sealing wax and string, and deserves admiration!

The folding boat was designed by a gent called Dick Hudson in the early part of the 20th Century. Intended for use as tender that could be tied onto a yacht’s roof without obscuring the helmsman’s view,  it folded down to 20cm in thickness and with the help of a couple of brackets would sit on the running board of a car of that era.

Hudson folding boat at the Beale Park Thames Boat Show

Hudson folding boat at the Beale Park Thames Boat Show

An alternative folding boat

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Handy Andy folding boat plans

10ft folding dinghy plans at the Svenson free boat plans site

Attention boating enthusiasts – is this folding boat the half-forgotten answer to the eternal tender problem?

Tenders tend to be be a nuisance as we all know – the nasty rubber things cost a fortune, take ages to inflate, take up a lot of space on board and row like psychopathic milk jugs, and of course a solid tender is a can be a pain to tow.

So some people might like to consider this folding alternative, which I’ve just spotted. Plans can be downloaded at the Svenson website.

Follow this link for more free boat plans.

Uffa Fox’s airborne lifeboat at the Museum of the Broads

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Uffa Fox\'s airborne lifeboat at the Museum of the Broads

Airborne lifeboat at the Museum of the Broads. Notice
the unusual Saildrive engine it used on a stand in front,
and also the Norfolk punt on display beneath. Click on
the photo for a larger image

This airborne lifeboat is one of the Museum of the Broads’ great treasures.  Note the Saildrive engine on a stand just in front of the boat – I gather many of these were volunteered by yachtsmen for use in the the airborne lifeboats, which couldn’t use anything else.

These boats were designed to save the lives of bomber aircraft crew – if a crew ditched in the sea and could be found, a bomber aircraft would drop one of these in the hope that the men below would be able to climb into the boat and sail or motor it home. In practice they saved many lives and made something of a hero out of the the inventor.

After the war, along with many other bits of war surplus equipment they were often bought for small sums and and converted into something more conventional – in this case they often became fully rigged sailing boats, and were frequently used for racing. You can’t keep a good Uffa Fox hull down, can you?

For more posts on topics relating to Uffa Fox, click here.

Uffa Fox airborne lifeboat poster at the Museum of the Broads

Poster showing lifeboat equipment. Click on the photo
for a larger image