Designs and designers, boat plans,books of plans – Page 42

Faversham Nautical Festival 2013 – a sunny affair with more boats and a good crowd

The boats turned out, the sun shone, the tide rose (until it lapped over the top of the sound engineer’s feet – terrifying!) folks played in the water. There was a good crowd and there were more boats than last year. Well done the Kentish Sail Association.

The event was only marred by the sense of struggle people are having with the aims of local developers and planners I heard someone say there are folks who wish to replace one of the black sheds near the spot where these photos were taken with an eight-storey block of flats. The fight to save the Creek will have to go on and on – and yet in any reasonable world it should be regarded as so precious, it should not require this block-by-block protection.

All in all, the festival was probably exactly as you might expect. Or it was until a chap who sailed up the creek in a little standing-lug rigged flat-bottomed homebuilt dink with lapped ply sides.

‘What is it,’ I asked him.

‘It’s my own,’ he said. ‘I designed it and made it.’

‘Is it based on anything?’

‘No. It just came out of my mind. You should see what it happens when I put out the bowsprit and fly the spinnaker,’ he said.

‘How does it go?’ I asked. ’18 knots, easy,’ he said…

So it’s a flat-bottomed boat of 13-14 feet with a standing lug that sounds like it could outrun a Laser (or a Torch, now Bruce Kirby has renamed his famous design). In a country where few people even consider making their own boat let alone designing it for themselves, and an even tinier number would consider a standing lug, still fewer combining that an asymmetric spinnaker, I think that boat was today’s big surprise. And a challenge to home designers and builders everywhere…

Faversham Nautical Festival 2013

Blakeney folks build the UK’s southern-most St Ayles skiff

Photos by Ian Duffill

A rowing club set up under the aegis of Blakeney Sailing Club is well on the way to completing the UK’s most southerly St Ayles rowing skiff for racing under oars. Read about the smart-looking build here.

The Scottish Coastal Rowing movement imagined and then realised by kit manufacturer and boat builder Alec Jordan and Iain Oughtred, who designed the seaworthy four-oared plus cox, fixed-seat boat St Ayles skiff, continues to amaze with its success. For one thing, it has been remarkably popular – the number of kits sold for these good-sized community-built racing skiffs this month topped 100.

We’ve seen these boats built in other countries – there are now St Ayles skiff kit suppliers in the Netherlands, the Antipodes, and North America – but there’s something a bit special and unexpected about the movement extending itself to Norfolk.

The story of how it happened begins in 2012, when Dr Victoria Holliday, an avid and competitive sculler persuaded Blakeney Sailing Club to run an early morning race for a collection of sculling boats kept in the club’s boat park. It was evidently a success – more races were held, and, encouraged by the club led by Commodore Joe Carr, CraBlakeney (Coastal Rowing Association Blakeney) has been formed under the sailing club’s umbrella.

The question of what the local coastal rowing history and traditions of North Norfolk, but few answers were forthcoming, and the idea of building a St Ayles skiff and taking part in the Scottish Coastal Rowing movement came to the fore.

Dinghy sailor and would-be rower Ian Duffill joined forces with Victoria Holliday to sponsor a kit from Alec Jordan, and this has taken shape over the past five months in Ian’s workshop, where an enthusiastic group of 20 or so volunteers, mainly drawn from the sailing club are aiming to launch the boat on the 25th May, to exhibit her at the Beale Park Boat Show near Reading in June, and to take part in the Skiff World Championships at Ullapool in July.

The skiff has been named Hoi Larntan, a Norfolk dialect phrase used by seafarers to indicate a boat or skipper of superior quality. It’s also an example of the local taste for punning names – it also means ‘high lantern’ or ‘high learned one’.

After the skiffies’ world championship at Ullapool she will back at at Blakeney to be used for exercise and recreation.

Photos by Ian Ruston

A reminder: Ben’s book is out now!

This photograph on Ben Crawshaw’s weblog The Invisible Workshop gives me another opportunity to plug his book, Catalan Castaway, published by Lodestar Books.

Here’s something of what Ben has to say about it:

The… ‘writings focus on the seaborne adventures of Onawind Blue rather than her construction and include material that hasn’t appeared here at The Invisible Workshop. The trip to Ibiza and OB’s close shave with a fishing boat appear in full, illustrated with hand-drawn maps…

‘Not only have I had a lot of fun building and sailing OB but also writing about her. And to some extent when I became ill with cancer my solo experiences on the water helped me through. At least my memories of sparkling Mediterranean waters and a lively little hull were a place I could escape to during the gruelling days in hospital. I’m proud and pleased that my writing has been considered printable, and to see this part of my life neatly bound in book form gives me a good solid point to move on from.’

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