Category: Designs and designers, boat plans,books of plans

Plans for boats, sailing yachts, motor yachts, rowing boats, sailing boats, dinghies, dories, canoes, skiffs, oars, sails – may be free or paid-for

Is anyone building the stitch-and-glue intheboatshed.net skiff?

[ad name=”intheboatshed-post”]

cutting-coordinates-sheet-3

The intheboatshed.net post offering free plans for the Julie skiff has been the most popular individual element of this weblog for some time. It’s been viewed by thousands of people and, naturally, we’re delighted at all the attention it has been receiving.

But although we’ve heard that various people have planned to build it, we’re not aware of anyone starting a Julie skiff project, let along finishing one. Is there anyone out there building this boat? If you are building this spring, please let us know at gmatkin@gmail.com – We’d be especially grateful for reports of how the building goes, and for photos of both the building and the completed boat that we can post here at intheboatshed.net.

I’d also be very pleased to receive any photos of models anyone may have built. Both Ben Crawshaw (thanks Ben!) and the designer have had a go, and in any case it’s always good to build a model before building a boat like this.

In case you’re wondering, I do still intend to draw a couple of traditionally-inspired sailing rigs, a more traditional chine-log version, and also a 17ft version for two rowers. It’s just that I’ve been very busy organising both a small folk festival and a wedding. In addition the usual ups and downs of work, music making and family life, they’re more than enough to keep a chap busy, I can tell you!

Don’t miss out on something good – subscribe to intheboatshed.net for a weekly newsletter

Share your boatbuilding and restoration stories

[ad name=”intheboatshed-post”]

a-new-moustache-1 dsc_0627 2009_0109ninthjanlisa090015

00380005 birch-bark-canoe roger-shipwright-working-on-pz-425-470

Some recent boatbuilding posts at intheboatshed.net, including making a moustache, boats built to plans by Iain Oughtred and Tad Roberts, a birch bark canoe and photos from Newlyn. Click on the images above to see them all

Amateurs and professionals If you’ve got a restoration or boatbuilding project you’d like the world to know about, why not send us something about it we can post? We will of course link back to your website or weblog, if you have one, or include contact details if that’s what you’d like. It’s a great way to get a project weblog or new website known to the tens of thousands of visitors who drop in at intheboatshed.net each month* – and it’s entirely free.

All we need from you are photos and some interesting words – the background to the the project, perhaps a little history about the boat type or the boat itself, something about the interest the boat holds for its owner and builder.

Of course there’s more to boating than boats, and more to the sea than water, and intheboatshed.net ranges broadly in its boating-related topics. However, the beating heart of it is its interest in old boats, boat restorations, and boatbuilding projects with just a little of the traditional about them – and so that’s what we’d love to hear about from you.

*As of this morning, Statcounter reports that intheboatshed.net has received 13,596 visitors in the last 30 days. Send us a story at gmatkin@gmail.com and some of them could be coming your way.

Don’t miss something good. Get regular bulletins from intheboatshed.net now!

More on the book Cockleshell Canoes by Quentin Rees

[ad name=”intheboatshed-post”]

mk-7-on-trial-1944

cockle-mark-7

Mark 7 military canoes. Photos supplied by Quentin Rees
and published with permission

Quentin Rees’s recent book Cockleshell Canoes is a thoroughly researched and well illustrated celebration of a group of people who have become part of canoe history.

Some, such as Blondie Hasler and the team of commandos who took part in the daring Operation Frankton are already well known. Commemorated in a major film titled Cockleshell Heroes, it was an attack by ten commandos in canoes on Bordeaux Harbour in occupied France during December 1942. British Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill believed the mission shortened World War II by six months, and Admiral the Earl Mountbatten deemed it as the ‘most courageous and imaginative of all the raids ever carried out by the men of Combined Operations Commands‘.

Sadly, most of the brave individuals involved were eventually captured and shot by the Germans, who at that time regarded commandos as equivalent to spies.

However, the roles of many others have previously remained unsung. In this book Rees has weaved together real-life testimonies from the stories of the courageous soldiers who used the canoes, their military commanders, and the canoes’ inventors and designers, and tells of an epic journey of progress that took canoe development took from Cornwall, all along the Southern English Coast and beyond – even to the tropical island of Ceylon.

The canoes proved to be valuable in many of the theatres of WWII, and thousands of the various models were sent worldwide, often being used by the various Special Forces, including by the the espionage specialists of Special Operations Executive (SOE).

Click here to buy a copy from Amazon – The Cockleshell Canoes: British Military Canoes of World War Two.

Don’t miss something good. Get regular bulletins from intheboatshed.net now!