A fabulous day with the craftsman boatbuilders at Beale Park

Beale Park Thames Boat Show

Beale Park Thames Boat Show Beale Park Thames Boat Show Beale Park Thames Boat Show
Early morning at Beale Park; a Wharram catamaran; Joan Jardine-Brown with a boat she designed when she was just 19; a classic Thames skiff

We’ve had a great, if tiring day today with the professional and amateur boatbuilders and boat clubs at the Beale Park Thames Boat Show. As always it was quite an event, with boatbuilders finding spare moments to socialise between visitors, and the clubs devoted to particular types of boats enjoying their own extended picnics, while the general public oohed-and-aahed over the boats themselves. We oohed and aahed quite a lot ourselves, and I discovered later that I had taken 480 photographs, and my partner Julie took a fist-full of good shots too – that’s one of hers at the top of this post.

There were some nice surprises, the best of which was that we met [ad name=”intheboatshed-post”] Continue reading “A fabulous day with the craftsman boatbuilders at Beale Park”

This weekend – the Beale Park Boat Show

Beale Park Boat Show Salmon boat Currach 3 enlarged

Gena c2.jpg Children in canoe

Previous years at the Beale Park Boat Show

The Beale Park Boat Show held each year on the Thames near Pangbourne is a treat – a great opportunity to see some beautiful craftsman-built boats and try them out, and also to meet their builders and the people who provide designs, plywood, timber, glue, chandlery and the rest. The show starts today, and lasts all weekend.

You can bet I’ll be there, and in fact we’re planning to arrive on Sunday – let’s hope for great weather for photographs.

For information on a great day out follow this link: www.bealepark.co.uk

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A feast of photos from the Oostende voor Anker festival of sail

Oostende voor Anker

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Boeier at the Oostende voor Anker festival; photos by Wim Netens
Wim Netens kindly got in touch this morning to alert me to the Oostende voor Anker festival of sail held at the Belgian port of Ostend recently, and to let me have a link to his splendid photogallery of the event. I picked out the ornate old boeier above as one of the most striking boats I could see, although I guess it’s decorations and distinctive shape will only seem remarkable to those of us who don’t live in Belgium or The Netherlands.

This link takes you to Wim’s photogallery Continue reading “A feast of photos from the Oostende voor Anker festival of sail”