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

Boat Building Academy students build a good looking Joel White-designed Haven 12 1/2

Boat Building Academy Haven 12 and a half

Boat Building Academy Haven 12 and a half Gary Thompson and helpers Boat Building Academy Haven 12 and a half

This lovely-looking shiny new boat is a Joel White-designed Haven 12 1/2 built in epoxy glass and foam with a traditional fit-out and spars. She was made by three Boat Building Academy students, Gary Thompson, Yoann Henric and Nick Lawther (see second photo).

Sadly the Haven 12 1/2 was one of two boats that did not make the water on the students’ summer launch day – Lyme’s harbour master decided the wind was a bit too frisky.

Gary is at the far left in the second photo; he is to start work with Wessex Resin’s technical expert David Johnson; Yoann in the centre of the photo has returned to France to find work near Marseille,  and Nick plans to set up a small boatyard in Australia in a few months.

PS – On launch day boat builder, occasional instructor, very good friend of the academy and former Royal Marines sargeant major Roy Gollop donned his bowler hat and did the honours in getting the twelve boats organised and down to the harbour with something approaching military promptness.

Boat builders? Military promptness? It sounds marvellous if slightly implausible, but  a bowler-hatted Mr Gollop is probably not someone to argue with!

Boat Building Academy Roy Gollop Launch

Bert van Baar’s Hanze Yawl rowing and sailing boat – some computer modelling images

Bert van Baar Hanze Yawl

Bert van Baar Hanze Yawl Bert van Baar Hanze Yawl

Bert van Baar tells me that the prototype of his Hanze Yawl design drew a lot of praise at the Beale Park  Boat Show. The images above were produced using the Rhino modelling software.

Plans for the ply and epoxy boat are for sale for €199, and I gather a plan is being hatched to a kit to build the boat available by the end of the year.

Another piece of news is that in February 2012 Bert plans to run another boat building course in which the project will be to build another Hanze Yawl – he’s offering a discount of 10 per cent off the €825 cost to any British student.

See an earlier post on this boat including photos of the prototype Hanze Yawl here.

Contact Bert via the De Bootbouwschool website.

Photos from the Beale Park Boat Show 2011

Pierette at the Beale Park Boat Show 2011

1894 Desvignes-built steam launch Pierette, photographed by Pete Williamson

Cordless Challenge entrant Beale Park Boat Show 2011 Water Craft amateur boatbuilding competition Beale Park 2011

Unknown dinghy


Reader Pete Williamson has sent in some snaps of this year’s Beale Park Boat Show, including this shot of the wonderful steam launch Pierrette, and some entries for the kit section of the Water Craft amateur boatbuilding competition (Pete’s boat is the dark blue Selway-Fisher coble made from an Alec Jordan kit).

Also there’s something very unusual here: an entrant for the cordless challenge, in which entrants were asked to race each other around a course on the water using motor power derived from by battery driven cordless power tools. There are a couple of jolly pieces of video showing some of the entrants craft’ at Graham Neil’s weblog and at the Water Craft website. It makes you think, doesn’t it? At least some folks found a use for some old tools…

Finally, I’m not quite sure what the boat in this collection may be or who made it, but I remember being told that it contains a lot of old timber from somewhere, and thinking that the builder had done a nice job when I dropped in at the Barton Home Built Boat Rally meet at Barton Turf at Whitsun. I’ve posted some of my own photos of this craft taken at Barton below.

Thanks Pete!

Youjay dinghy at Barton Youjay dinghy at Barton Youjay dinghy at Barton