Category: Traditional carvel

Traditional carvel plans and boatbuilding

Gadfly II is back on the water – but has anyone got any unwanted iron for ballast?

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blackwater sloop, gadfly II, gaff cutter, iron ballast, simon papendick, whitstable

blackwater sloop, gadfly II, gaff cutter, iron ballast, simon papendick, whitstable

Whitstable-built Blackwater sloop lookalike Gadfly II is afloat once again after a period of restoration, reports boat builder and repairer Simon Papendick. Here’s what he says about the East Coast gaff cutter’s progress:

‘It has been a hard over the last few months, but I have finally got Gadfly II back in the water. After a few days of all hands to the pumps, she is now all but watertight.

I took her for a sail the other day and it was good to get her underway with new sails. The boat felt good and so did I after all the hard work I’ve put  in over the past three years.

The only problem I have now is working out how much internal ballast she is going to need to get her to sit on her lines and not be so lively. So far I have put in 300kg of ballast, which has made things better – but she is still way above her lines, so possibly I will have to find about another 300kgs. I think that should just about do for the moment.

So if any of the readers know or have any old iron they want rid of that I can pick up and use please I would be most  grateful!’

Well done that man!

Simon runs a boatbuilding and restoration firm (J-Star Boat Services) and a sailing school (J-Star Sea School), so if you have any suitable ballast please contact him directly via his business websites.

Perhaps of particular interest to intheboatshed.net readers are some small boat maintenance workshops Simon is running designed to help boat owners to increase their knowledge and do small jobs themselves. These start form removing seacocks to replacing boat windows and anything in between. They are run on a
weekly basis on a four:one basis. Contact Simon on 07799401650 or email simonpapendick@btconnect.com.

Where is Erik the Red?

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donald ridler, erik the red, dory, boat plans, eventide owners, dory, boatbuilding, transatlantic voyage, sailing boat

donald ridler, erik the red, dory, boat plans, eventide owners, dory, boatbuilding, transatlantic voyage, sailing boat

Cover and illustration from Erik the Red

Nick Duffy of Paget, Bermuda is travelling to the UK shortly and wishes to see Donald Ridler’s home-built dory  Erik the Red, as immortalised in the epic book describing how he constructed the boat in his paerents’ garden and then sailed it across the Atlantic.

Erik the Red was last heard of at the Exeter Maritime Museum, which closed some years ago. Does anyone know the whereabouts of this boat and whether it will be possible for Nick to see her?  I would guess that she’s likely to be in store somewhere, but if any reader has information please contact me at gmatkin@gmail.com and I will pass it on.

By the way, the Eventide Owner’s Group, which sells the Mouette plans from with Erik was built, has its own story about what happened to the boat, and this small snippet of information about a larger boat built using the same plans.

A number of Amazon sellers have copies of the Donald Ridler’s original book Erik the Red.

400 18th and 19th century drawings now at the National Maritime Museum website

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Storm at Mazatlan, Mexico, painted by Admiral Sir Edward Gennys Fanshawe, 1851. As usual, click on the images for a closer look – but expect this one to send a shiver up your spine!

national maritime museum, mutiny on the bounty edward gennys fanshawe schetky, gabriel bray, website, royal navy, national maritime museum, mutiny on the bounty edward gennys fanshawe schetky, gabriel bray, website, royal navy,

Two male figures, one with a large cocked hat and a quizzing glass painted by Gabriel Bray; Ovolu [Ovolau], Feejee Islands painted by Admiral Sir Edward Gennys Fanshawe 1849

A grant from the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation has allowed the National Maritime Museum to make part of its collection of 70,000 prints and drawings available online for the first time.

The newly digitised drawings are mainly by Royal Navy officers in the 18th and 19th centuries, and give a glimpse of tropical islands, exotic cities and indigenous peoples at a time when the ability to draw a landscape was not just a pastime but also a means of intelligence gathering.

Highlights from material recently added to the NMM’s online collection include over 100 working sketches by John Christian Schetky (1778-1874), an album of drawings by Gabriel Bray recording his voyage as second lieutenant of HMS Pallas to West Africa in 1775, and over 100 watercolours from albums by Admiral Sir Edward Gennys Fanshawe (1814-1906), covering his service in the Pacific from 1849-52, in the Baltic during the Crimean War, and in the Mediterranean.

Schetky and Bray’s works are very rare drawings of everyday shipboard life in the age of Cook and Nelson as well as some unique depictions of street-life ashore, while the much less well known Fanshawe was an amateur artist who recorded his varied and distinguished career with a skilled hand in highly finished watercolours.

The journeys Fanshawe depicts include an investigative diplomatic voyage during which he visited Pitcairn, where he met the last survivor of the Bounty mutineers, Susan Young, and heard first hand the account of how she killed the last Tahitian crew member with an axe during the island’s conflict; Fiji, where he drew what are possibly the earliest portraits of Seru Thakombau, founder of the modern state of Fiji; and Samoa, where his drawings of women show the enduring influence of English fashions on their Sunday-best costume.

The prints, along with commentary, can be accessed through the relevant pages of the museum’s website.