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

The September/October issue of Water Craft magazine will be out soon

[ad name=”intheboatshed-post”]

Water Craft magazine September October

Editor Pete Greenfield has sent us his preview of the September/October issue of Water Craft magazine.

Click here to subscribe to this excellent publication!

Here’s what he says about the next issue:

‘In our September/October 2010 issue – in good newsagents from 26 August – you’ll find….

•Some 16 years designer Nigel Irens launched his radical 30ft (9m) lugger named Roxane. Now Dick Phillips has built a not-so-conventional gaff-sloop version in wood and Peter Goad has sailed her….
•Did you see the BJ17 at the Beale Park Boat Show? Bart Jan Batts asked Nigel to redesign his 3-masted 17’ (2.2m) King Alfred School Expedition Boat– with a Roxane-style lug rig. Kathy Mansfield sailed her.
•And talking of 17-footers, Alice Driscoll says the new water-ballasted BayRaider 17 from Swallow Boats is two boats in one.
•Designer Paul Gartside presents home builders with full plans and offsets for an easy-to-build 9ft (2.74m) tender.
•It’s less than a year since Alec Jordan launched his first kit-built 22ft (6.7m) St Ayles skiff for the Scottish Coastal Rowing Project. Now as many as 22 are in build, and six community groups have completed – and raced – their own boats.
•And, talking of Scotland, did you know that when Robin Hood wasn’t up there riding through the glen, he was surfboating in Wales? We didn’t either. And when Ridley Scott’s new film Robin Hood needed a fleet of mediaeval surfboats, Mark Edwards’ Bridge Boathouses had to make them without chopping down Sherwood.

Plus the best of the Beale Park Boat Show, Water Craft’s own Amateur Boatbuilding Awards and all our regular features.’

Once again, Water Craft offers excellent value – the tender plans alone will be worth ten times the cover price. Get your subscription now!

BBA students launch racy Wolstenholme Mallard dinghy

[ad name=”intheboatshed-post”]

andrew wolstenholme , boat building academy , dinghy , dominic frankis , epo,y ply , glued clinker , Lyme , mallard , mallard dinghy , steve bramley , students

andrew wolstenholme , boat building academy , dinghy , dominic frankis , epo,y ply , glued clinker , Lyme , mallard , mallard dinghy , steve bramley , students andrew wolstenholme , boat building academy , dinghy , dominic frankis , epo,y ply , glued clinker , Lyme , mallard , mallard dinghy , steve bramley , students

Another boat launched at Lyme Regis Harbour by Boat Building Academy students this summer was an Andrew Wolstenholme-designed 12ft 5in glued clinker Mallard dinghy.

Named Born Slippy, she was built by Dominic Frankis and Steve Bramley, along with other students.

Dominic took a sabbatical from work in London as a management consultant in the health sector. He’s never sailed before but now has no excuse. Now back behind his desk, he also says it’s only a matter of time before he’ll be boatbuilding again.

Steve worked as a tree surgeon and builder before joining the course, and is now using the skills he gained on the course to renovate a house.

The Mallard should prove to be a lot of fun; the rigging is more modern than is usually employed on these Mallard dinghies, which the Boat Building Academy folks say makes it quite a racy little sail boat.

BBA student to build replica of Dorset crab and lobster fishing boat Witch of Worbarrow

[ad name=”intheboatshed-post”]

Witch of Worbarrow Dorset crab and lobster fishing boat

Witch of Worbarrow

A student at the Boat Building Academy is appealing for information and old photos relating to the Witch of Worbarrow, built in Weymouth in around 1902.

Student Ian Baird is building a replica of the rare Dorset crab and lobster fishing boat as part of his 38-week boat building training.

Now in the National Maritime Museum Cornwall, the original boat was rowed from Weymouth to Worbarrow Bay by Jack and Tom Miller, where it worked the crab and lobster grounds for many years, before becoming a gaff-rigged pleasure boat. In 1979 she was bequeathed to the National Maritime Museum by her late owner, Philip Draper of Arne, near Wareham. She is of historical interest because she is believed to be the only boat of her type still surviving.

Ian says that he wanted to build something that was unusual and local to his home county of Dorset. Recreating Witch of Worbarrow offers just that opportunity, and he wants to know much more about her history and the people who worked in her.

‘Apart from her life in Weymouth Bay and Poole Harbour we also know that she spent some time in Southampton Water or the Solent as there are old pictures of her close to the bows of the Queen Mary at Southampton,’ he says.

The project has attracted great interest from the National Maritime Museum Cornwall, which is planning to put the new boat on display alongside the original. The museum’s interest is that the original Witch is far too old to put on the water: ‘We don’t really know how she would have behaved on the water,’ says curator of boats Andy Wyke. ‘Ian’s reconstruction of the boat, which will follow as closely as possible to the original, will help us to learn a great deal about this historic fishing boat.’