intheboatshed.net

The first of the two Blue Moons built by Cem Gur and colleagues in Turkey is launched. This one  is going to an owner in Greece.

Designed by Thomas Gillmer, the Blue Moon is such an attractive boat that even my kids are oohing and aahing over the pictures!

For more Blue Moon posts at intheboatshed.net, follow this link.

Dylan Winter’s engaging vlog Keep Turning Left

- A grand naming ceremony for two new Shetland sixareens

•Flyer’s Boat Yard restores the Old Pro

•Three Buzzards Bay 30s restored in Maine

•Ian Best traditional Shetland boatbuilder

•Catalogue for the 2008 Woodenboat show at the Mystic Seaport Museum, Connecticut

•Dylan Winter’s engaging video log Keep Turning Left

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.