This is a great programme – and includes canoe making and wild salmon smoking. Do watch it if you can…
Gavin Atkin's weblog for the sort of people who like looking inside boat sheds. It's about old boats, traditional boats, boat building, restoration, the sea and the North Kent Coast
This is quite something: the log is dug out and the exterior shape cut, then the log is opened out and framed, and then a sheer strake is added.
This is ancient history in action – and arguably marks the change in direction in boat evolution that eventually led to the very earliest beginnings of clinker construction.
Ranjan Mitra took these photos of fishing boats on the coast of Goa, a small and relatively affluent Indian state with an Arabian Sea coastline.
Ranjan is a colleague of my brother Matt Atkin and seems to have been inspired by Matt’s habit on business trips of slipping down to the nearest beach or harbour to take shots for intheboatshed.net. Thanks Ranjan! (Matt’s photos can be found by following this link.)
The motorised fishing boats take the classic form of a high bow for dealing with rough water and low sides aft to allow the fishermen access to work with nets and gear, while the outrigger dugouts seem to be a fascinating link to prehistoric times.
Goa bears many signs of its domination by Portugal from the 16th century, including a city named after the Portuguese explorer Vasco de Gama. The state was annexed by India in 1961.
There are a couple of interesting articles online including this paper, which describes the local craft, and another describing a visitor’s experiences in the mid-1990s, including ancient types such as dugouts and sewn plank boats caulked with tar.