Events – Page 244 – intheboatshed.net

Bob Telford’s first race sailing a dinghy with a standing lug

Standing lug sail from W P Stephens classic Canoe and
Boatbuilding for Amateurs

Bob Telford called by the yard currently restoring his impressive Maurice Griffiths-designed Idle Duck (type the word Idle Duck into the search box top left for more on this boat), only to find himself roped in to what sounded like an interesting round-the-buoys outing. Instead, though, it turned out to be a learning experience…

‘I knew something was afoot when I trundled into the inner sanctum known to some as Alan’s Community Center, for Retired Shipwrights, Dockyard Mateys and Associated Layabouts, and saw him and Peter look up, saying ’just the man…d’you fancy sailing in the Swale Match in me dinghy?

‘”Yes,” says I, without thinking.

‘The boat is a 10-ft lug rigged clinker job, so there I was, on my own, in a dinghy I had never rigged, let alone sailed, heading for the line for a race against four 16-ft fully crewed gaff-rigged dayboats.

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Read the rest of Bob’s story: Continue reading “Bob Telford’s first race sailing a dinghy with a standing lug”

Wooden boat day at Bewl Valley Sailing Club

Jim Vandenbos with a well deserved special award
for bloody-mindedness in racing his sailing canoe
in a Force 5 wind

Like most sailing clubs, the club we belong to focuses strongly on racing modern boats. No doubt the racers have a lot of fun, and without them the club would have no officers to run it.

But this concentration on racing and modernity leads, as always, to great conformity, with fleets of practically identical boats. (Historians of boating say that one of the great examples of how racing leads to conformity is the development and improvement of the Thames barge through the latter half of the 19th century, by the way.)

Bewl Valley Sailing Club nevertheless has a small band of eccentrics who don’t quite fit the stereotype, either because they cruise and won’t race; choose to sail old class dinghies from the days when they were typically built from plywood; are weekend craftsmen, some of whom build their own traditional boats with great skill and care while others build in plywood and epoxy; and a very few both design and build.

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Read more on this and check the photos: Continue reading “Wooden boat day at Bewl Valley Sailing Club”

A feast of rowing boats at the Beale Park Boat Show

Click on the headline above before bookmarking. Click on the images below for larger, clearer pictures. For more photos from the Beale Park Boat Show click here: http://intheboatshed.net/?s=beale