Category: Boatbuilders and restorers

Professional and amateur boat builders and restorers

It’s wonderful to be appreciated, Part II…

The Truant Romance Keith Kendrick, singer of sea songs and concertina player

intheboatshed.net has been doing particularly well in the past couple of months, not least in terms of the numbers of people calling by to read our daily posts. As I write, we’ve had almost 34,000 hits, which I’m told makes us very successful for a weblog about a minority activity. While I would agree that we’re not doing too badly, I’d also suggest that perhaps the people who admire traditional boats constitute quite a large minority, as minorities go…

I’m particularly pleased today as we’ve had a delightful message of support from the great US writer and editor Peter H Spectre, as you can see at Continue reading “It’s wonderful to be appreciated, Part II…”

Ben Crawshaw’s Light Trow makes a mysterious journey

Trow sub frames

Ben’s deck-support sub frames

Well, I think it’s mysterious. First he works by lamplight. Then we see all the deck subframes in place (hoorah, by the way). Then there’s a photo of a bug so strange it’s clearly an extra from a Dr Who set. (I must say I enjoyed the Daleks’ Pig-people this week, by the way.) Then we see the boat sitting under a cafe parasol, presumably sipping a quiet daiquiri. Can anyone guess what our beach-boat-building hero Ben Crawshaw is telling us?

He’s doing a nice looking job, though, isn’t he? And, praise be, he hasn’t made any serious changes to the design that I can see. The prototype Light Trow is going to be the real thing.

Ben Crawshaw’s Invisible Workshop weblog: http://theinvisibleworkshop.blogspot.com/2007/04/some-photos.html

Download the Light Trow plans: http://www.duckworksbbs.com/plans/gavin/lighttrow/trow.zip

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Where does the romance of old boats spring from?

Romance

I sometimes think it comes as much from the books we read as children as from anything. A longstanding friend says that he already knew how to sail from reading Arthur Ransome – and that he astounded his the secondary school master who took him sailing for his first time by stepping smartly into a dinghy and sailing off without instruction. He’d learned all he needed from Continue reading “Where does the romance of old boats spring from?”