Boat Building Academy students launch their boats in broad sunshine – and entertaining winds

Brilliant sun shone on the Boat Building Academy’s  Class of September 2013 big launch day at Lyme Regis’s harbour last week.

The students launched six boats and a paddle board built as part of their 38-week course, while a crowd of around three hundred including previous graduates, students’ families and friends, boating enthusiasts and other well-wishers gathered at the harbour.

The boats entered the water following a few words from BBA director Tim Gedge and Lyme Regis’s Mayor, Sally Holman.

Champagne corks popped as the students launched their boats, which were:

• a 12ft traditional clinker dinghy designed by Paul Gartside
• a Selway Fisher-designed 12ft 6in Northumbrian Coble
• a 14ft 6in Rock Pipet composite sailing canoe designed by Richard Lyford in partnership with Solway Dory
• a Don Kurylko-designed 18ft 1in Alaska  yawl-rigged beach cruiser
• a Richard Dongray-designed 20ft Golant Ketch with cabin and twin masts
• a 16ft  F16 composite-built catamaran
• 14ft paddle board designed by Chesapeake Light Craft

A brisk breeze meant that sailing was a little challenging, I’m told, although a ducking that the Northumbrian Coble sailors received seems to have owed more to human error than to the wind or the boat.

The graduating students joined the course from the UK, Jersey and Norway. Their backgrounds are equally diverse. Some start work almost as soon as the course ends:

• Reuben Thompson is going to Cockwells
• Tony Corke is going to Mussett Engineering in Norfolk
• David Rotheram returns to Liverpool after a career away from home in the RAF, to work for Douglas Marine Ltd
• Richard Lyford’s sailing canoe will become part of the Solway Dory range when Richard returns to designing submarine systems
• Keith McIlwain, who built the Golant Ketch, will return to Bristol where he will soon start his own boat building/restoration/repair business, Daydream Boats

Student Ask Serck-Hanssen is to go to Brunel University to study engineering.

More information about the students who make up the Class of September 2013 can be found here, while photographic diaries of the build of the boat projects can be found here.