Month: May 2007

The Working Guide to Traditional Small-Boat Sails

The Working Guide to Traditional Small-Boat Sails

The forest of Bermudan-rigged white plastic boats in every marina and creek might lead one to think that the methods of the golden age of sail are close to extinct – but so long as there are people like David L Nichols around, I don’t think there’s any need to worry just yet.

This is a nice little book that reflects the author’s long experience with traditional small boat rigs, and with the craftsmanship he has developed over the years, and includes general chapters on sails, making sails and sail-making tools, followed by more specific sections on the sliding gunter, the sprit, lug sails, the Chinese lug sail and gaff sails. Each of them are illustrated with Continue reading “The Working Guide to Traditional Small-Boat Sails”

Was the Cutty Sark dead before she burned?

Belem

Belem – the ship Adam Nicolson will never forget.
Photo via the Wikipedia Commons and taken by Georges Jansoone

There’s an interesting and highly opinionated feature article in yesterday’s The Guardian that made me stop and think, and may interest many readers of intheboatshed.net.

Article author Adam Nicolson compares the static state of Britain’s great old sailing ships – HMS Victory, HMS Warrior and of course Cutty Sark imprisoned in its dry dock at Greenwich – with the French cocoa boat Belem, which still sails regularly with the support of a substantial financial trust.

As he writes about his experience of sailing on the Belem, it’s clear that she made a huge impression on him; he says he would have wept Continue reading “Was the Cutty Sark dead before she burned?”

The launch of the John Nash skiff

The launch of the John Nash skiff

The launch of the John Nash skiff The launch of the John Nash skiff

The John Nash

It’s a small world, they say, and I constantly find that the people in it are connected in unexpected ways. So I really shouldn’t have been surprised when my not-especially-boaty musician buddy Richard Goodwin reported that his jazz-tinged Welsh country dance music Twm Twp had just played a gig to celebrate the launch of a new boat he thought might interest me…

As it turned out, the project had been designed and built by two people whom readers who have used the intheboatshed.net links page may well have come across: Andrew Wolstenholme and Fabian Bush.

The boat in question, the John Nash is Andrew Wolstenholme’s design for Continue reading “The launch of the John Nash skiff”