Month: June 2008

The Carvel Project, of Norway

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Sterns from book about Norwegian carvel book

Sterns illustration from the Carvel Project

The Carvel Project

In 1999, the Hardanger Ship Preservation Center began a project to systematically review carvel boat building in Norway, including the history of the technique, its introduction and dispersion, variations within the technique, and technology. The Carvel Project does not cover all of the differing types of carvel-built vessels in Norway.In this document we have limited the discussion to vessels that have been least documented; working vessels between 35 and 100ft in length. Such vessels have often been built by smaller, family-owned boatyards. They are built with relatively simple tools, and designed by the master of the boatyard, using half-models or drawings.

The Waveneys of the Norfolk Broads

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Waveney One-Designs in action

Waveney One-Designs in action. Photo from Alan Davies
of the Museum of the Broads

Alan Davies of the Museum of the Broads has kindly agreed to allow us to republish a short article telling the story of the Waveney boats that he wrote for the museum’s newsletter. Many thanks Alan!

Waveney One Designs

Length 20ft, beam 6ft 2in, draft 2ft 11in, sail area 290sqft, gunter rig

Designer W S Parker

The Waveneys were designed in the early 1920s by William Parker of Oulton Broad, after the Waveney Sailing Club proposed to have a one-design boat. The first four or so boats were built along similar lines and developed into a consistent set of drawn plans in 1928.

The first seven were built before World War II and, instead of sail numbers, had the letters A-H in alphabetical order of build. This was later changed to numbers with a ‘W’, both in red. They are all named after wild marsh flowers.

The first six were built by the Evans Yard at Kirkley. Horace Jenner built Number 7 and Number 8 was built at Richards’s Shipyard. The rest were built by Tim Flower and his sons in a boat shed in their Lowestoft garden with exception of Number 24, which was built by Selwyn Watson.

WODs are occasionally mistaken for the more numerous Yare & Bure One Designs, but an easy way to tell them apart is the red sail numbers of the WODs and the fact they have two shrouds on each side as opposed to the Y&BODs’ single shroud. Another difference, only seen when the boat is out of the water, is that the keel is a ballasted metal plate rather than a ballasted wooden one.

By the early 1990s many of the 26 boats had already had to undergo major restoration and it was felt that as with the Y&BOD and the Broads One-Design the cost of building and maintaining new wooden boats would be too expensive. so local boat builder Jimmy Toplis decided to take a mould of his WOD, Penny Royal. By September 1994 the first GRP Waveney, Celandine (Number 27) was launched.

The new boat had to be assessed to make sure its performance was similar to the wooden boats, and once the weight was corrected the new boat’s performance was on a par with the older boats.

To date five more GRP boats have been built, taking the numbers to 32, with orders for two more. One of them has gone to Lake Windermere, and interest has been expressed in developing the hull as a small two-berth Broads cruiser, as has happened with the Thurne Class, which is based on the Y&BOD’s hull.

Notes on rowing by Dr Edmund Warre

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How to row by Dr Edmund Warre

From the Wiki Books, Dr Edmund Warre talking about how to row in 1909:

‘The moment the oar touches the body, drop the hands smartly straight down, then turn the wrists sharply and at once shoot out the hands in a straight line to the front, inclining the body forward from the thigh joints and simultaneously bring up the slide, regulating the time by the swing forward of the body according to the stroke. Let the chest and stomach come well forward, the shoulders be kept back; the inside arm be straightened, the inside wrist a little raised, the oar grasped in the hands, but not pressed upon more than is necessary to maintain the blade in its proper straight line as it goes back and without constricting the muscles of the arms as they go forward; the head kept up, the eyes fixed on the outside shoulder of the man before you. As the body and arms come forward to their full extent, the wrists having been quickly turned, the hands must be raised sharply, and the blade of the oar brought to its full depth at once. At that moment, without the loss of a thousandth part of a second, the whole weight of the body must be thrown on to the oar and the stretcher, by the body springing back, so that the oar may catch hold of the water sharply, and be driven through it by a force unwavering and uniform. As soon as the oar has got hold of the water, and the beginning of the stroke has been effected as described, continuing the movement of the body and the simultaneous use of the muscles of the legs, keep up the pressure of the beginning, uniform through the backward motion of the body. At the beginning of the stroke let the arms be straight. The elbows should not then be bent. When the body reaches the perpendicular, let the elbows be bent and dropped close past the sides to the rear — the shoulders dropping and disclosing the chest to the front; the back, if anything, curved inwards rather than outwards but not strained in any way. The body, in fact, should assume natural upright sitting posture, with the shoulders well thrown back. In this position the oar should come to it and the feather commence.

‘N.B.– It is important to remember that the body should never stop still. In its motion backwards and forwards it should imitate the pendulum of a clock. When it has ceased to go forward it has begun to go back.

‘There are, it will appear, from consideration of the above directions, about 27 distinct points, articuli as it were of the stroke. No one should attempt to coach a crew without striving to obtain a practical insight into their nature and order of succession.

‘Let the Coach also remember that, in teaching men to row, his object should be to economize their strength by using properly their weight. Their weight is always in the boat along with them; their strength, if misapplied, very soon evaporates.’