The latest Water Craft will be with us any day

It’s almost time for the next edition of Water Craft magazine to land on our doormats – so what’s in store this time around? Lots of boating goodies as usual – including the first of two big features by our friend Ben Crawshaw in which he reports on his adventures sailing his Light Trow named Onawind Blue. That feels like a real privilege, I must say, even though I’d prefer to seem my design used for rather less extreme adventures…

Here’s what Water Craft editor Pete Greenfield has to say about the upcoming issue:

So – how has boat craftsmanship, amateur and professional, fared through the long hard winter and the much longer and harder recession? In W80, we seem to have some of the answers.

Interestingly, for many professional wooden boat builders, the answer seems to be they are managing rather nicely thank you… though mostly with repairs rather than new builds.

At Peter Freebody & Co, for example, spiritual home of so many traditional Thames craft, Melanie Freebody tells Kathy Mansfield there may be snow on the roof but the boatshops beneath have rarely been busier.

Giving up the well-paid but stressful job in IT to learn to build wooden boats is a good idea for some. Certainly, on a dark dank morning in December when the students of 2009 launched the fascinating variety of craft they’d built at the Boat Building Academy at Lyme Regis, our Dick Phillips detected little stress… though maybe the champagne helped.

No nerves on the part of our tame amateur boatbuilder Peter Goad either, when Messrs Phillips and Chesworth turned up to sail the Cape Henry 21. Perhaps, as Peter explains in his final fit-out article, a five-year project encourages a relaxed and patient frame of mind.

Watch, on YouTube.com, Ben Crawshaw’s reports on sailing a small boat in the Med and you’ll see rather more evident anxiety. And reading about how he built his first boat, a slender lugger called a Light Trow intended for more sedate waters, in a public garden in Spain, you’ll encounter few manyana moments.

More sail than oar but definitely a craft to cope with exhilarating sea sailing, we think Paul Gartside’s free plans, complete with lines and offsets, for his 20ft (6m) lugger will persuade many a putative backyard boatbuilder to stop saying manyana and take the plunge.

As may the editor’s outdoor boat….

But outdoors, as Colin Henwood of Henwood & Dean Boatbuilders explains in his masterclass on painting and varnishing is not the ideal place to give your boat the finest finish for the new season. You need a big tent, kind-of like Water Craft itself.

Buy a subscription now (see the link in our right-hand column here at intheboatshed.net and pay with your credit card via PayPal) or find the March-April Water Craft in your local newsagents – to find a stockist in the UK see http://availability.mmcltd.co.uk

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Photos from Raid Finland some years ago (photos from Richard Wynne); there’s a report on the latest Raid Finland at Duckworks

Henley Whalers group members George Trevelyan and Geoff Probert have organised a rowing and sailing ‘raid‘ event on the English South Coast for modern and wooden boats. It’s scheduled for the few days between 28th July and the 1st August 2010, starting from the Western end of the Solent.

A raid is an organised rowing and sailing passage in company in open boats, sometimes made of wood and traditional, sometimes more modern, powered by sail and oar, and supported by an organiser’s launch or rescue boat. In addition, arrangements are made to carry participants luggage from one overnight stopover to another!

Raids are generally non-competitive events, but often include fun prizes to recognise special qualities and achievements, and there are sometimes short sailing or rowing races.

I should explain that the word ‘raid’ here comes from the French organisers of the pioneer events and isn’t meant to imply anyone plans to attack homes and villages en route.

The idea of the raids first became popular in Portugal and Scotland in the 1990s and successful events have been held on the Douro River in Portugal, the Great Glen of Scotland, and in Sweden, Finland, Italy and Holland. To enter boats need to be equipped for sail and oar, and must be able to support their crew out of water after a capsize, and to be righted unaided to carry on sailing. They will be expected to cover around 15 miles daily.

One of the organisers’ objectives is to attract users who own traditional open sailing boats on the Solent, particularly scows and prams, along with the whalers, gigs, yawls and so on more frequently seen at raid-style events. The maximum number of entries for the new event is 20 boats, so I would expect the places to sell out quickly. It you’d like to be involved, contact English Raid via its website: http://www.raidengland.org

It’s almost impossible to pick out my favourite posts of the year – there are simply too many, and for too many different reasons.

For example, the editor-residents of Intheboatshed.net Towers would have no difficulty picking out the students’ launch at the Boatbuilding Academy in December, but for entirely different reasons we’d equally easily choose the astonishing details of the wherry yacht Hathor, or the various posts on the zulus of the Scottish West Coast, or the review of the lovely new book Holmes of the Humber, or, for that matter, the story of the Iain Oughtred-designed St Ayles skiff and the Scottish Coastal Rowing Project.

And how remiss would we be if we failed to mention Ben Crawshaw’s awesome sailing exploits in his Light Trow, or Dylan Winter’s wonderful Keep Turning Left videos about sailing anti-clockwise around the coasts of Great Britain? I’d like to offer my apologies if I’ve left out your favourites here, but I’m working from memory here – I simply haven’t got the energy required to re-read the 250-or so posts I’ve put up this year.

With the hit-counter below cruising gently towards our millionth, what were readers’ favourite posts? There seems little doubt that the posts that have caught most people’s interest have been about free boat building plans. For example, the post announcing the boatbuilding plans for the Julie skiff 15ft 8in plywood flattie rowing boat has been viewed a whopping 27,647 times. We think it goes to show how powerful is the draw of free plans – but also how effective an advert on this site can be.

A little behind that comes a favourite with model makers and admirers of small Scottish skiffs, A challenge for home boatbuilders: a sweet 10ft clinker-built double-ended skiff, our boatbuilding plans for the sailing version of the 12ft plywood Ella skiff and for the boatbuilding plans for the Sunny 14ft plywood rowing flattie.

Why not let us know what your favourites of the year might have been? We’re very friendly and can be reached at gmatkin@gmail.com.

What will next year bring at intheboatshed.net? It’s impossible to say who will be in touch and what they may send me for publication. I only hope they continue to do so. In the meantime, I can tell you about two projects that are in the works here, the Low -power outboard skiff, and a mark II stitch and glue version of the well tried Light Trow rower-sailer in both its rowing and sailing versions.

I’ve raved about Channel 4’s Classic Ships series before – but this episode on the go-betweens – pilot boats and other boats serving the old sailing ships – is even better than anything we’ve seen so far.

Narrated by the lugubrious-voiced John Peel, it includes footage and informative discussion of a personal barge built in 1740 and used by generations of aristocrats; the development of the tosher, including a lot of talk from a retired Fowey pilot; and also a long segment on the Scillonian pilot gig including material from legendary gig builder Ralph Bird.

If you’re in the UK, I’d recommend you watch it at your first opportunity – the adverts are irritating of course but the programme is well worth the wait, and you never know when these TV gems will be taken down. If you’re not in the UK, I’m told you may be able find a proxy server somewhere if you Google around…

The St Ayles skiff slices the water; Dr Robert Prescott speaking at the launch; David Tod with Alec Jordan; proof that St Ayles skiff designer Iain Oughtred was present. All images used with Chris Perkins’ permission

Last Saturday provided pretty well perfect conditions for the press launch of the Scottish Coastal Rowing Project’s first St Ayles skiff, says Chris Perkins.

He has kindly written the following report, sent the photos above and provided the video links below. Many thanks Chris! It’s particularly good to hear that the project seems to be snowballing in various locations around Scotland – and even abroad.

‘Among the notables present at the press launch were Alec Jordan, whose original brainwave kicked the whole thing off and whose superb effort in the workshop over the past two months culminated in Saturday’s event. Scottish Fisheries Museum trustee and chair of the Scottish Coastal Rowing Project David Tod introduced Dr Robert Prescott, chair of the Advisory Committee on National Historic Ships and vice president of the Scottish Fisheries Museum, who gave the project launch speech. It was great that Iain Oughtred was also able to attend the launch and try the boat out for himself after the formalities were over.

‘The Forthsailoar weblog author Osbert Lancaster was also present along with naval architect Richard Pierce who has provided some very useful analysis on the prototype’s performance. Boat Building Academy graduate and now professional builder Charlie Hussey also put in an appearance.

‘My snaps suggest around 50 were at the speechifying. Having a goodly sized group including some who were very experienced trying the boat has helped fine-tune the design: the principal tweak will be to spread the thwarts to give more room for the oarsmen.

‘This will also benefit the trim of the boat when coxed by an adult with a fuller figure!

‘Representatives from some of the groups planning to build a St Ayles skiff were there including the Portobello Sailing and Kayaking Club, the North Berwick group and Anstruther RNLI. The ripples from this project keep expanding: apart from the prototype now on the water, the Scottish Fisheries Museum boat is now in build in the viewing gallery at the museum, and Ullapool 1, Portobello 1, and The North Berwick Rowing Club have placed orders. There is strong interest from Achiltibuie (Coigach), Anstruther RNLI, Glasgow Schools Pilot (Galgael), Herdecke, Port Seton, Portobello 2, Portsoy Faering Project 1 & 2, Tollcross Centre, Edinburgh and even Germany. The breaking news is that there is now strong interest in in building four boats in the Western Isles, but more likely and interest has been expressed by another Loch Broom group.

‘Alec was tweaking the cutting files yesterday to expand the rooms and will then start cutting the kits already ordered.

‘The boat had at least four different sets of crew so that means not less than 20 took the opportunity to try her out – though I may have missed another group because I couldn’t resist inspecting the museum, very worthwhile for anybody visiting Anstruther. And, of course, I thought it was also getting dangerously close to Alec suggesting I have a turn at the oar!

‘Cheers

‘Chris’

Interested readers may also want to see some snatches of video of the skiff at Chris’s YouTube channel:

Charlie Hussey (mentioned above) also got a good clip of the boat in action that’s worth seeing.

And, finally, for much more on this project at intheboatshed.net, click here!

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The moment of truth

Some time ago Australian surf rower Bill ‘Woofa’ Barnett wrote a manual explaining the facts of life for new sweeps – the people who steer surfboats.

Being a sweep is a highly skilled activity in which experience counts for a lot, and I gather good sweeps continue in the role for many decades.

However, for most boat users, the manual  will be an extraordinary, jaw-dropping document. It’s divided into two main sections covering coping with surf and competing in races. The first section is the one that caught my attention. Here’s a couple of quotes:

‘Going over a big greenie

‘This is spine chilling and the boat will land with a thud on the other side of this wall of water. Your job is to land well balanced, on your feet controlling the sweep oar, so that it does not slam down on the quarter bar or stroke’s head. Calm your crew and get them going again at top speed… Remember you are never safely through surf until you are atleast 100m past the regular break line.’

And:

‘Surf sense

‘Some of the greatest sweeps of all time could not swim, had no original surf sense, broke many boats and nearly killed themselves, many times. They succeeded with pure guts and determination.’

Read more at the Australian Surf Rowers League website: Sweeps Manual

After reading some of this manual, it comes as no surprise that the publishers accept no responsibility for anything that might go wrong when following these instructions. You only have to see a few photos to understand why!

My thanks to Dale for pointing this out!

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The St Ayles skiff meets the water for the first time – as usual click on the images for larger shots

The Scottish Coastal Rowing Project’s first St Ayles skiff hit the water for the first time on Sunday, and had her first try-out with a set of borrowed oars.

Builder and key powerhouse behind the project Alec Jordan reports that the Iain Oughtred-designed boat is a joy to row, as she’s stable and fast at the same time. The photos above are courtest of Alec, who must be very proud.

The boat is to be officially launched at the Scottish Fisheries Museum in Anstruther on Saturday 31 October at 11am. Once the formalities are over there will be a chance to row the boat – if you’d like a go, please contact Alec by email at kits@scottishcoastalrowing.org.

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Water Craft’s latest issue marks the beginning of the boatbuilding season, which editor Pete Greenfield says begins when the sailing season ends.

It has pretty well ended here in the temperate zone of the Northern Hemisphere, but I’m not so sure that the boat building starts quite yet. But I do think November and the run up to Christmas is a time when many of us get into some serious boat-dreaming and boat noodling – my name for the delicious process of thinking through what kind of boat we want, what we’re capable of building and what would use it for?

As usual, the latest Water Craft is full of interesting crumbs to feed our obsession.

Designer Paul Gartside presents the first of a series of complete plans, including offsets, for boats you can build; this time it’s a shapely double-ended 12ft  rowing boat for traditional carvel (or clinker) construction.

Fancy strip planking? Read how Nick Paull built the Canadian canoe that won him Water Craft’s special prize for the most professional-loooking home-built boat at the Beale Park Thames Boat Show.

More, Patrick Curry explains how he made hollow wooden spars for his traditional Dutch yacht, Bob Lloyd shows how to make a razee.

Pete  is still working on his Phil Bolger-designed Chebacco boat in the outdoors (brrr! – rather him than me!) and Dick Phillips has been sailing a Chebacco built by Connie Mense that many of us saw on show at Beale. (For an intheboatshed.net post on this boat click here.)

Jo Moran has been sailing another boat we saw at Beale, the electric day-sailer Cirrus and Kathy Mansfield has been to Portsoy’s Traditional Boat Festival.

Subscribe to Water Craft now – the drawings for that Gartside pulling  boat alone will make your investment worthwhile!

Chris Perkins’ and Alec Jordan’s latest photos of the first St Ayles skiff build, including some more shots of the increasingly well exposed Alec Jordan – I hope he enjoys his new celebrity!

These are Chris Perkins’ and Alec Jordan’s photos showing the latest progress on the Iain Oughtred-designed St Ayles skiff currently  going together in Alec’s workshop for use by the Scottish Coastal Rowing Project. For more on this story, click here.

Here’s what Chris has to say this week:

‘A belated catch up report, for which apologies, on the progress of the St Ayles Skiff.

‘My last week on the project was spent cleaning up the inwales, building a temporary cox perch and generally helping fit the furniture and titivating. Each time this stage is reached in a build I am amazed at how much time is absorbed removing material. Work that will never be appreciated by anyone who has not got that particular T shirt but is immediately apparent if it is neglected. The route to a respectable finish always lies in the preparation – a truism that can never be said often enough in my view.

‘The snaps include a couple of high level shots showing the almost structurally completed boat, just the breasthooks to fit at that stage (now done), obtained after some precarious ladder work by Alec in the upper reaches of his workshop.

‘The cox’s seat is a temporary affair until the positioning of feet and seats are proven on the water, after which the buoyancy compartments will be retrofitted – space is pretty tight and it would be easy to get positioning wrong in a static environment – we really need to see the dynamics of the interaction of the various bodies to establish best position.

‘The week passed all too quickly and my time on the build was over. Altogether it has been a fascinating few weeks that has transformed my view of kit boats. I am extremely grateful for Alec’s invitation to join in the build which I hugely enjoyed – so much so that I have put my name down for the Ullapool group aiming to build the first West Coast St Ayles skiff, although I’m not sure I have the spine to be an oarsman.

‘Alec has now started applying the finish, varnished gunnels and thwarts with the rest of the hull painted so it shouldn’t be too long before I head down to the other end of Scotland to see how she looks on the water.

‘Chris’

Thanks once again Chris!

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The St Ayles skiff at the 25th of September. The chap hamming it up on the thwart is Alec Jordan himself

The first Iain Oughtred-designed St Ayles skiff currently being built in Alec Jordan’s workshop continues to make steady progress as the construction team worker on her interior joinery. For more on the St Ayles skiff and the Scottish Coastal Rowing Project, click here.

Here’s what Chris Perkins, our correspondent on the project, had to say over the weekend:

Not much obvious progress over the last week, attached snaps show the state of play as at last Friday. I think the week has demonstrated the obvious: kitting a clinker ply hull only saves time in skinning the hull, the internal fitting out with all it’s joinery challenges still takes as long as it ever.

Some deep thinking is going on during the fitting out to help make this part of the build as easy as possible for novice builders. We have already partly moved away from Iain’s glorious sweeping taper of the inwale, planing that down on all three laminations has proved very time consuming; the twisted grain in larch hasn’t helped as deep cuts tend to tear out, so fine cuts and very keen plane irons are the order of the day.

Our modification does recognise tradition as study of a traditionally built Fair Isle skiff shows – though I just wish I had taken far more snaps of Aluna Ivy at the Portsoy Festival this year! If only I had known what I would be getting involved with!

The trial of seating positions by Alec was very useful. The cox is going to have to be a pretty short lightweight as there is not a great deal of room in the stern, but we are now comfortable that the spacing of the thwarts is going to work well.

Cheers,

Chris

Thanks Chris! I look forward to hearing more about the project next week.

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Chris Perkins’ photos used with permission. Click on the thumbnails for much larger images. Please do not repost on forums and elsewhere without permission from the photographer

The first St Ayles skiff currently being built in Alec Jordan’s workshop has reached an important landmark – turnover day. For more on the St Ayles skiff and the Scottish Coastal Rowing Project, click here.

Award winning amateur ply lapstrake boatbuilding specialist Chris Perkins has been involved, and here’s what he has to say about it:

‘Week three has passed with less visible progress: scraping and sanding the surplus epoxy eats away at the hours without appearing to advance the build significantly. Hopefully care at this stage will show in the finished result.

‘The “significant event” for this week occurred on Thursday evening when, after some delay assembling the strong arm bunch, the skiff was turned up the right way for the first time. She looked pretty good while on the mould but achieved a step change in the looks department when seen from a “proper” perspective for the first time. Iain Oughtred has produced yet another stunning design; I think she is a real beauty.

‘Cromartie Timber have produced some excellent larch for the thwarts and thwart beams, and it is probable that the internal fit out will be completed by the end of next week. There will still be lots of the interminable sanding and scraping to do but the boat should be painted and on the water in the first half of October. A few more volunteer helpers would be very welcome to move things along!

‘Cheers

‘Chris’

Thanks Chris! See Chris Perkins’ weblog here.

If you’re in the Fife area and feel like getting involved in an exciting project, why not contact Alec Jordan at alec@jordanboats.com?

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The St Ayles skiff takes shape in Alec Jordan’s workshop

I’m delighted to be able to report that our friend prize-winning amateur boatbuilder Chris Perkins has regained his usual confidence and interest in plywood lapstrake boatbuilding.

Chris’s standards are high, and a recent stitch and glue project left him feeling a little down – not I think because there was anything wrong with the project itself, but because it  just wasn’t Chris’s kind of project.

What’s brought the old passion back has been spending time in boat kit supplier Alec Jordan’s workshop, where he’s been working on the first St Ayles skiff.

The St Ayles skiff is a new Iain Oughtred design intended for use as part of the Scottish Coastal Rowing Project, which aims to inject new life into the sport of competitive rowing  on the sea in Scotland, rather in the same way that gig racing has taken hold in the South-West of England and beyond. There’s more about this project at intheboatshed.net here and a post about Alec’s initial model here. There will be more coverage in an upcoming edition of the excellent Water Craft magazine.

You can follow Chris’s reports on the project’s progress at his weblog: http://strathkanchris.wordpress.com/ . In the meantime, I though intheboatshed.net readers might be interested to read what Chris has been saying about the project this week:

‘It’s the end of week 2, and the hull is fully planked up. The whisky plank went on on Thursday afternoon but we were too knackered to celebrate appropriately!

‘Keel and outer stems should be on by close of play Monday next and off the mould and right way up very soon thereafter. If Cromartie Timber have done their stuff by the time I head south at the crack of dawn on Monday I will be taking some very nice larch down for the thwarts and their support beams (good and strong so that larger rowers can be accommodated without fear of breakage) so that we can install them during the week.

‘The inwale and breasthook timber is already in the workshop so given a fair wind the structural work should be just about done by the end of week three. Then it will be just a bit of a paint job and then we’ll throw it in the water for a propulsion test – any volunteers?

‘The biggest delay the build is facing (and it’s a very satisfying cause!) is the stream of interested groups and individuals dropping by to see how she is coming along – there is a real buzz about this project locally and it seems to be developing a momentum of it’s own. If all the enthusiasm turns into boats, then the Firth of Forth may well have a spectacle on a par with the gig racing of the South within the next year or so.

‘I’ve included some snaps of the fully planked hull this morning – I think they say a lot about how pretty this design is turning out, and how very slippery she will be.

‘Cheers, Chris’

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Alec Jordan’s model of Iain Oughtred’s new design, the St Ayles skiff. Note the liberal use of clothes pegs – Alec’s using pretty well the same building method he would in the real thing!

Jordan Boats proprieter Alec Jordan has built this model of Iain Oughtred’s St Ayles skiff, the boat at the heart of a project to bring competitive coastal rowing back to Scotland.

See an earlier intheboatshed.net post on the Scottish Coastal Rowing Project.

Jordan Boats is to supply cut-out ply kits for the project and like a good boatbuilder, Alec’s first step has been to make a model. Here’s what he says about it:

‘Hi Gavin

‘Attached are some pictures of the skiff model.

‘With the model having gone together successfully, I have now started on the
construction of the real thing in the past couple of days – I’m doing the donkey
work of laminating stems and frames at the moment. I will hopefully have
the moulds up on Saturday and start the planking next week.

‘The boat, I think, is absolutely sublime – I just hope that it rows as well
as it looks!

‘Best regards

‘Alec J

‘BTW, My Dad made the model of the Cutty Sark in the background, not me!’

Thanks for the pictures Alec – Iain’s design looks super and great good luck to all of you involved in this project.

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Faroese rowers working hard

The past few weeks have been an amazing time for interesting boats on BBC Television – and the latest sighting, racing Faroese rowing boats on an episode in the Coast series, is available on the BBC iPlayer.

I can hardly believe I’ve beaten the usually alert Chris Partridge of Rowing for Pleasure to posting about this, but the programme shows the interesting and elegant boats in action and includes an interview with a group of attractive if powerfully developed Faroese women rowers. It’s noticeable that their English is excellent – and we’re told that they learn the language using the Internet.

Way up north of Scotland, Orkney and even Shetland, the Faroes are remote but these days far from isolated, as the presenter points out.

Like their tall, blonde rowers, the Faroese craft are clearly the result of the Viking era, and even the modern fishing boats in the harbour show a close kinship to Viking ships.

Click here for a photo of a Faroese women’s rowing team taking part in a race.

Click here for a Flickr gallery of Faroese boats.

Click here for still more photos of Faroese boats on the Wikimedia Commons.

Modern motorised Faroes boats still show their evolution from Viking ships: taken from the Wikimedia

‘The other guys thought I’d seen a seagull… ‘ This isn’t what you might normall expect from intheboatshed.net but I thought these rowers deserved special credit. Catch up with them at http://www.gbrow.com/

Please scroll down for:

* Plans for making a model of the 10ft double-ended McLachlan skiff
* Progress on the sailing version of the 12ft Ella skiff – free plans to come
* Griff Rhys-Jones falls out of a coracle and explains the disappearing salmon
* Mickey Mouse orders a boat kit
* King George the Fifth, the king who was first yachtsman in the land, and his
love for a boat
* Dr Strangelove goes gunning – H C Folkard’s scary wildfowling boats
* Johnny Tyson builds a 14ft Whitehall at the Boat Building Academy

Iain Oughtred: a life in wooden boats examines an unusual individual. Revered designer and small boat sailor Oughtred is an uncomfortable loner who has often felt at odds with many elements of his upbringing and his home country Australia, a wonderful designer’s eye and a clear sense of purpose. He’s also a man with almost incredible amount of determination and focus.

If you don’t already know Oughtred’s work, you probably should: he draws beautiful boats and his highly detailed plans have earned huge respect from those who have built them. One of a small group of designers and boatbuilders who pioneered the clinker or lapstrake approach to plywood boatbuilding during the 1970s and 80s, his designs borrow heavily from traditional craft, which he studies closely.

Yet there are some paradoxes here. Unlike other designers whose work draws from the tradition, almost all of his boats have a certain something that makes them instantly identifiable as being from his board. Another contradiction is that although Oughtred has over time drawn and re-drawn his boats with the aim of making them easier to build, few dinghy sailors building a boat for the first time feel confident enough to tackle one.

In fact, the home boatbuilders who seem most attracted to Oughtred’s work are at the most craftsman-like end of the spectrum of amateur builders. It’s certainly not always so, but these folks are quite often mainly interested in building a boat that seems to them a work of art – for some, actually sailing a lively small boat designed by a dinghy racing master is quite often a frightening prospect.

In writing Iain Oughtred: a life in wooden boats, author Nic Compton has explained much of this. He’s written a strikingly personal biography that shows clearly how Oughtred’s difficult childhood and dislike of a foreign and brash commercial culture led the boat designer to escape as far as possible from his Australian roots, becoming first very English and later very Scottish.

However, I’m less sure that he has managed to link the life to the boats themselves.

We expect biographies of composers or artists to link life events to their output – but the trick is difficult if not impossible when we’re talking about boats, and it’s perhaps harder to justify some of the public exposure Compton has included. Yet exposure is what we often ask from celebrities nowadays, and journalist Nic Compton’s instincts will all have been pulling strongly in the direction of more, not less disclosure.

Has he got the balance right? On balance I think he probably has, if only just. Reading this book, I find I’m glad to know more about this gentle man. I’m not remotely autistic, but I can identify strongly with his school life blighted by asthma and his sense of being different from other people, both of which I’ve also experienced to an extent. I’ve always respected his ability painstakingly to go on drawing more and more achingly beautiful boats, but now I know how he has struggled to keep going I have to admire him all the more. I just hope that publicising the sometimes difficult story of his life has not made the man himself uncomfortable.

Buy it or not? I say go ahead and expect to learn a lot about the wooden boat movement in general as well as an important boat designer. Iain Oughtred: a life in wooden boats

For more posts relating to Iain Oughtred’s work, click here.

Also, see 70.8% on the new Oughtred biography, together with a bundle of photos.

I won’t be able to make the Thames Traditional Boat Rally this weekend but I’d like to make it one day – and no doubt Julie would love what looks like a rather genteel event.

In the meantime, I’ve been enjoying this fabulous gallery of photos. I recommend you just hit the ‘play’ button at the top right of the page and watch the boats go by for a few minutes.

Iain Oughtred’s initial drawings for the St Ayles skiff

The Scottish Coastal Rowing Project is a new initiative intended to encourage boat building and rowing racing in Scottish coastal communities.

Based at the Scottish Fisheries Museum in Anstruther, its plan is to re-start the intercommunity rowing competition that for many years was a strong feature of life in the coastal communities of Scotland.

Until the 1960s there was a considerable interest in boating in the mining communities in Central Fife, and a strong fisheries industry in the East Neuk, and these communities held their own regattas on a regular basis using their own local boat types.However, where these regattas have continued, they are generally run by sailing clubs using largely mass-produced GRP yachts and dinghies, with the exception of Dysart Sailing Club, where I gather a few traditional boats are still raced.

There are, we’re told, no rowing races in Fife apart from the Newburgh World Coble Boat Championship.

I guess the organisers have looked long and hard at the wonderfully successful resurgence and spread of interest in racing pilot gigs from the Scilly Islands and Cornwall – no doubt there was a danger that this kind of racing could have appeared in Scotland, but in Cornish boats!

The folks behind the SCRP have wisely commissioned Iain Oughtred to design a suitable clinker ply boat based on the lines of the Fair Isle skiff and to be called the St Ayles skiff, while kit supplier Alec Jordan of Jordan Boats is on board to supply the cut parts for the project. Iain’s beautiful initial drawing appears above.

The first boat will be made from a kit cut by Alec over the winter of 2009-10. The process will be recorded and placed on a website as a tutorial for other builders to follow, and the kits are estimated to cost about £1350, with the complete boat costing around £3000 in materials. I should add that a sailing rig is also planned.

For more, read the leaflet and prospectus. I gather the building project will be covered in Water Craft magazine.

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The skiff in question – photo published with the permission of photographer Walter Bachteler. Thanks Walter!

A reader has been in touch to ask what this boat might be. Does anyone know? And why does it have windows to allow the rowers to see the level of the water?

See the photos in question at Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/65538230@N00/3405009991/in/set-72157616150345313/ and http://www.flickr.com/photos/65538230@N00/3428080202/

PS It turns out this is a Jersey skiff used in lifeguard competitions, and that the ‘windows’ are holes intended to free the boat of water when it starts to fill in surf.  The point is clearly made by a series of astonishing photos from the 2008 Asbury Park Lifeguard Challenge – thanks to Jim Mason for indicating the way, and to everyone else for a splendid set of comments and links.

PPS

Jim later sent me some more links, which are too good to miss.

http://www.lifeguardart.com depicts the men and women of the South Jersey beach patrols using the version of the Jersey beach skiff that originated in Atlantic City and environs. It is round-bilged and fuller-bodied than the flat-bottomed Seabright skiffs used up on the northern beaches. It is also heavier by 50 lbs. and not self-bailing.

Also check out the http://www.lifeguardraces.com galleries at http://web.sendtoprint.net/proofbook/galleries.asp?CouponID=Lifeguard

Thanks Jim! Some of the Lifeguardart images in particular are superb.

London Whalers at rest

The London Whalers have put up a page explaining how to row, and I like what they say. Feathering is optional but regarded as helpful in a headwind! Well, I do it sometimes, and sometimes I don’t. Either way, the site’s well worth a look.

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Probably Phil Bolger’s most frequently built boat, the Gloucester Light Dory is
a plywood classic that will continue to be built, re-worked and adapted for
many years to come. Writing of its popularity, he joked that it would one day
secure his entry into heaven. Photo by Susan Davis, taken from the Wikimedia

After an idyllic few days on the Norfolk Broads we’ve just returned home to the sad news that the designer Phil Bolger has ended his own life at the age of 81.

I’d like to add my tribute to the many obituaries appearing around the World Wide Web.

Phil Bolger was a man who inspired many people by alternately drawing beautiful boats, utilitarian boats, and utterly original boats that could only have come from the drawing board of someone who had a special gift for ruthlessly teasing out the logic of a design brief.

He was also a superb communicator – in his articles and books he would often excite readers about the ideas behind his designs as much as the designs themselves, and this won him many, many fans.

Bolger was often a controversial designer and frequently misunderstood by those who could not see past the boxy appearance of some of his more easily built designs. However, I think it should be clear to all that he was touched by greatness.

I never met him, but have copies of most of his many fascinating books, which I’ve read and read again many times. I’ll miss him and his writing, as will countless others, but I’m confident his influence and legacy of boat designs will live on for a very long time to come.

For more intheboatshed.net posts on Phil Bolger and his boat designs click here.

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Thames barges on the Blackwater – one of the first photos
to appear at intheboatshed.net

It feels a little funny when I think of it, but some time in the next two or three days in the boatshed.net will rack up its first half million hits.

Those with long memories will recall that this weblog began in a very small way at the end of 2006, and benefited early on from the support of various weblogs and online magazines, most notably Chuck Leinweber’s Duckworks Magazine and Tim Shaw’s Chineblog.

Ben Crawshaw’s wonderful The Invisible Workshop followed as did Chris Partridge’s Rowing for Pleasure, and so did a host more I won’t mention just now because if I do this post will become too huge for words.

We’re now all part of a community of interconnecting weblogs and online magazines, and I’m grateful to all of them both for their assistance in helping readers find their way here, and for the entertainment and interest they have given us in our household. If you come to this site and happen to land on this post, therefore, I’d like to suggest you take a little time to explore the sites and weblogs, as well as the rest of the intheboatshed.net blogroll.

But I have another request: please send me pictures and stories that you’d like to share! We’re particularly interested in old boats, traditionally built boats whether old or new, in boats that bear the influences of the past, in the history and culture of boating, in influential individuals and in alternative ways of enjoying boating rooted in the past. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a proud owner or not, or a boat builder or other boat related craftsman, or even if you simply have something interesting to sell. And the occasional story about a boat-related shed doesn’t go amiss either!

Finally, I’d like to pay tribute to my family and wife Julie, who has shown immense understanding and enthusiasm over a long period. I know that I’ve been very lucky to have their support and I hope they feel the result justifies the effort and time that goes into the inthboatshed.net project.

Reach me either at gmatkin@gmail.com or by using the intheboatshed.net contact page, which you can get to using the page tab above the title line.

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Sailing canoe Sara is for sale

I’d like to draw attention to a crop of interesting posts over at the Albert Strange Association website.

The first is a rather sad announcement but represents a great opportunity for someone. Due to poor health, ASA technical secretary Rick Powell has reluctantly decided to sell his 15ft, 4ft 6in beam sailing canoe Sara, which he designed and built a few years ago. She’s said to be a modern take on George Holmes’ Ethel concept; her construction involves ply-epoxy planking with strip-planked curved bilges, oak trim, hollow mast and boom, and built-in buoyancy. She has lots of stainless steel fittings Ronstan fittings, and comes complete with cover and road trailer.

ASA site editor Dick Wynne says she has been sailed just four times, and that her performance matches her good looks. She’s on the market at what seems to me to be a very reasonable price.  See more here.

The ASA site is always well worth a visit, but at the moment there are some corking stories about some legendary boats, including Eel,  Betty (the Strange boat that won the 1927 Fastnet Race), and Sea Harmony.

PS Dick tells me he’s very concerned about the loss of mud from the River Thames, which has led him to moor his boat away from its usual spot at the Greenwich Yacht Club’s moorings. There’s an interesting Wikipedia entry on the subject.

Do you have an interesting boat for sale? Please tell us about her: gmatkin@gmail.com .

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The Montagu type K whaler

The post announcing that Dick Wynne’s restored whaler Vancouver is up for sale has attracted quite a lot of attention in the last day or two, so I’ve decided to share these snaps from a copy of the 1937 Manual of Seamanship published by the Admiralty.

The rudder and centreboard seem remarkably small, don’t you think? By the way, the trysail in the upper photo is supposed to double as a spinnaker!

Montagu whaler Vancouver is now sold

Dick Wynne is selling his 27ft 6in type K Montagu whaler. I’m sure it has been a painful decision and it’s a damn shame for all those who have enjoyed crewing her, but no doubt two traditional boats like this is too much for one man!

This could be the offer of a lifetime for someone. Here’s what he says about the boat:

‘Vancouver is an ex-Royal Navy ship’s boat built in 1943 and lovingly restored and maintained over many years regardless of expense.

Construction is mahogany and larch on oak, with gunwales, thwarts etc in solid teak. She is probably the finest example of the type in existence. Her equipment includes:

- five matching 15ft spruce Admiralty oars plus many spares

- full sailing rig – lug main, jib and mizzen

- 6hp Mariner outboard on a lifting quarter bracket, with lock, and separate fuel tank mounted in sternsheets

- two bilge pumps

- ample buoyancy

- 12 x 150N automatic XM lifejackets with recharging kits

- two paddles for tight spots

- Admiralty pattern anchor

- mooring lines, fenders, full-length tent/cover

- nearly new four-wheel braked trailer with sealed hubs and brake flushing system

All her external paintwork was renewed in 2008, and all her exposed timber stripped of varnish and oiled (with Deks Olje #1 and #2) for ease of maintenance. Although of traditional timber construction, she is in superb condition and is easily maintained so. A faultless recent professional survey report is available to serious enquirers.

She is a robust, stable and versatile workhorse fully equipped for pulling, sailing and motoring in a variety of applications including raids, races, expeditions, pleasure trips under power, race/committee boat use, etc. She would make an excellent school or club boat.

Vancouver has plied the tidal Thames in London under oar and sail for the past few years, and is a regular in the annual Great River Race. She has been trailed farther afield to locations including the East Coast, Western Highlands, and Milford Haven, and attracts much attention wherever she goes. She is only reluctantly for sale as, rather improbably, she is my second boat and I can no longer find the time to do justice to two traditional wooden boats. She is currently lying afloat in London.’

For a pdf including more photos from last year click here, and for more on the boat and what he’s been doing with it, click here.

Also, if you’re curious about what his other boat might be, this photo and the knowledge that he’s a leading member of the Albert Strange Association will probably tell you all you need to know.

Complete with a full inventory including trailer, Dick is asking for £9,500 or offers. Call him on 07990 573160.

We don’t often see whalers, but for some photos of one I spotted in the Fal Estuary some time ago, click here.

Inclusion criteria for the National Register of Historic Vessels change from the 1st April this year to include vessels built abroad but with strong UK associations.

The size requirement is also reduced from 40 to 33ft overall.

The latest National Historic Ships e-News explains the changes, which stem from concerns that important vessels have been excluded including the Bombay-built HMS Trincomalee and more recently HMS Stalker.

The rule on length has been changed to fill a gap that existed between the National Register of Historic Vessels and the National Maritime Museum’s National Small Boat Register.

If you’re wondering whether your boat may qualify, length overall is defined as the length between the forward and aft extremities of the hull: spars and projections are not included.

Other criteria for including a vessel remain unchanged: the craft must have been launched more than 50 years ago, it should be currently lying in British waters and must be substantially intact.

PS I’ve just heard from NMMC trustee George Hogg that all the 33ft and over currently on the NSBR will be retained on it until the NRHV site is up and running again.

Boat builders’ projects featured at intheboatshed.net. From left to bottom left: Nick Smith,  Win Cnoops and the Slipway Collective, Will Stirling and Fabian Bush

Traditional-style boat buyers are life-time enthusiasts who seem to buy a ‘fresh’ boat every three to five years.

This maybe because their life circumstances change often enough to require a different boat, because they like novelty of trying something different – or it may be that they are searching for the perfect boat they never quite manage to find.

Does this any of this describe you? If not, I imagine it describes quite a few people you know!

It’s just one key finding from a survey commissioned by the Wooden Boatbuilders’ Trade Association, which intheboatshed.net has been sent in return for helping to recruit a significant number of people to fill out the survey questionnaire.

The survey was carried out and written up by Alison Kidd and Peter Williams of www.prospectory.co.uk.

It turns out that some 11 per cent of traditional-style boat buyers’ purchases are new boats, most of which are built using modern rather than traditional techniques, and the vast majority buy second-hand boats that may be either ready to sail or in need some repair or restoration. These are often found via the Internet.

It also seems that second-hand boat buyers are as likely to buy plans as they are to buy boats.

What concerns me more is that just 10 per cent of the survey group who had bought boats since 2000 were first-time buyers. Taken together with the fact that boat buyers tend to be an older group this rather suggests that boatbuilders, magazines and suppliers in this area are failing to make headway in appealing to new, probably younger customer groups.

I think that’s a frightening thought.

However, it’s nice to be able to report that those who do buy new traditional-style boats are heavily influenced by exhibitions in general but particularly by the Beale Park Thames Boat Show, which is a tremendous annual exhibition of fine boat building. However, it’s striking that the Internet isn’t much used as a means of finding new boats, even though it is a popular route to buying older boats.

The survey’s authors therefore suggest that a better gateway site or even a means of searching for and comparing different options, features and prices online would be helpful. I couldn’t agree more, for while the second-hand boat sales sites are well organised and effective, when you’re looking for a newly built boaqt the picture is very different. As the survey authors put it: ‘unless you know the name of the new boat you’d like to buy or the name of its builder, you are unlikely to stumble across it in the Internet. Many of the WBTA boats are not widely known classes of boat’.

Clearly it would be helpful if the WBTA or someone else were to establish a gateway site that would list traditional style boat vendors’ new boats – but we haven’t got that yet. In the meantime, however, we do have intheboatshed.net. For more than two years, we’re been offering to publish stories about boatbuilding and boat restoration projects, and even for sale notices about particularly interesting traditional old boats, and to do this for free.

All we ask for is photos and some information – some sense of the story, of the people and as appropriate about history behind the boat, and its use now and in times past. We’re also interested in technical issues that impact on these things, even down to discussing lines, boatbuilding methods etc. Follow this link and this link to see how it works – these aren’t lectures but in addition to the pictures, there’s usually a little to learn from each post.

In fact, there is a short roll-call of traditional boatbuilders who have made good use of intheboatshed.net’s offer, and their names will be familiar to regular readers of this weblog. With their help, intheboatshed.net has become popular and has reached a point where it gets around 500 visitors and a thousand hits a day, by conservative measures.

I’d say thank you to those boatbuilders – and I’d encourage other traditional boatbuilders to get involved.

What’s more, it seems to make sense to set up a page here offering a good list of boat types and specialist types of restoration, together with the boatbuilders contact details and weblinks where possible.

What do you say? Contact me at gmatkin@gmail.com.

Photo by Kathy Mansfield

The harbour at the Scottish Traditional Boat Festival, Portsoy

This year the Scottish Traditional Boat Festival at Portsoy has been extended by two days this year to include a symposium of fascinating speakers from around the world, in addition to the boating programme.

Special seminars on shanty singing, boat design, sail weaving and gansey knitting will take place around the harbour, and the renovated Salmon Bothy opened last year will host exhibitions, demonstrations and entertainments, and there will even be a genealogical research facility for those wishing to explore their roots.

The Bothy, which opened at last year’s festival, is now a fully fledged museum of Portsoy’s history and the salmon fishery.

The programme of music, song and dance will feature internationally renowned shanty expert and singer Bob Walser. Bob is a hugely experienced performer, speaker and tutor, and is currently researching sea shanties and sailors’ songs as part of an international team preparing a heavyweight critical edition of the James Madison Carpenter folklore collection, funded by the British Academy and the National Endowment for the Humanities (USA) with the cooperation of the Library of Congress, the American Folklore Society and the Elphinstone Institute at the University of Aberdeen.

Click on this earlier intheboatshed.net post on James Madison Carpenter to hear some sailor’s voices from the past.

In fact, the more I look at the various bits of information available, the more I realise that Bob is just one of a stellar collection of speakers at Portsoy this year. Son of Aberdeen and now resident in the US, singer, knitter and weaver Noman Kennedy will demonstrate and perform.

Singer-demonstrators Bjorn Lunde and Johanne Tvedten from Norway will teach and demonstrate boatbuilding skills to children, while Fair Isle boatbuilder Ian Best will speak on the origins of Norwegian and Scottish traditional boat building.

Aberdeen Maritime Museum keeper John Edwards will discuss the great clipper ship traditions of the North East, while world-renowned yacht designer Nigel Irens will describe current and future development in boat design.

Wooden Boat magazine editor Matt Murphy will speak on the great classic yacht designs and small boat design legend Iain Oughtred will talk about the influences that create the best boat designs.

Read all about it at the Scottish Traditional Boat Festival website.

The March/April issue of Water Craft. As usual, click on the thumbnail for a bigger photo

The bi-monthly Water Craft is a great magazine and, after talking with folks who edit it, I’ve decided to publish previews of each issue. Hopefully they will remind people to nip down to their newsagents – or, better still, to buy a subscription for themselves or a loved one.

Editor Pete Greenfield reports that ’small is beautiful’ has emerged as the dominant theme of Water Craft number 74, which is due out on the 26th February.

It’ll include a reprint of an article by Moray MacPhail first published 14 years ago, which now seems more relevant than ever, particularly in the light of the evidence of the WBTA Boat Buying Survey also included in the issue.

Also,there’s a piece from canoe builder John Floutier describing a sailing canoe cruise in company in the Western Isles. Also Kathy Mansfield impressed by the 14ft GRP Devon Yawl, and Jo Moran down in Cornwall sails the similar-sized and equally gutsy GRP Bristol Jolly Boat.

Smallest of them all in this issue, however, is Chris Perkins’ latest home boatbuilding project, the 10ft Stickleback canoe designed by Iain Oughtred.

Look out also for Dick Phillips sailing Secret, a 20ft Edwardian-style ‘gentleman’s cruising yacht’ you can build from a pre-cut plywood kit, and the beautiful 20ft Laurent Giles Sandpiper named Surprise, built by Tom Naismith in his garage.

The Grand Designs series features Nigel Irens’ 15-knot electric speedboat, which made her debut at the London Boat Show and Australian designer Michael Storer introduces his Radical Raid Boat, which will make her debut on the Water Craft stand at the Beale Park Thames Boat Show.

Subscribe to Water Craft now using the button below – with the pound so cheap now, this must be a real bargain for many of our international readers!

Water Craft subscriptions

UK six issues £21.50 UK twelve issues £39.00 Europe, USA and Canada six issues £23.50 Europe, USA and Canada twelve issues £43.00 Rest of world six issues airmail £37.50 Rest of world twelve issues airmail £67.00 Rest of world six issues by Surface £25.50 Rest of world twelve issues surface £47.00

Check this website to find a newsagent in the UK: http://availability.mmcltd.co.uk

Here’s another YouTube presentation of some footage made public by the British Film Institute. The film shows a number of coxed fours and a single or two, one of which capsizes, and what I take to be a working boat. But what’s the source of power here – is it a steamer, or is she just drifting with the tide? There’s steam or smoke or both coming out of a small chimney, but I’m unable to decide what’s happening here. Answers via the comment link below please!

Follow the link for more boats from the Humber Estuary.