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Chris Perkins shots of Aluna Ivy at Portsoy. As usual, click on the images for larger photos

These photos of the Aluna Ivy at Portsoy come from Intheboatshed.net supporter and award-winning amateur boatbuilder Chris Perkins, and follow some earlier shots provided by John Lamb. Thanks Chris!

Chris is currently heavily involved in building the first St Ayles skiff, an Iain Oughtred-designed rowing skiff developed for the Scottish Coastal Rowing Project, which plans to foster rowing racing.

Chris has also pointed out a web page showing and naming the parts of a traditional yole.

Click on this image for the fascinating background of the Aluna Ivy

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Ness yole Iluna Ivy

Intheboatshed.net reader John Lamb has kindly given me permission to put up these photos of the wonderful Ness yole Aluna Ivy, which appeared at the 2008 Scottish Traditional Boat Festival at Portsoy. See the programme for the festival here and take a look also at John’s excellent galleries of Scottish traditional boats.

The Scandinavian influence in Aluna Ivy is unmistakeable: notice the lack of ribbing, the high ends and the almost casual way she’s framed with partial frames here and there. She could almost be an architectural find – but she was built in 1993.

There is a Flickr photo set of one of another of these striking boats being built here.

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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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