Here’s a short video showing Dutch sailors racing barges in what looks like tough competition – and this time there’s no annoying announcer braying patronising nonsense.
Category: Events
Events such as historical events, races, exhibitions, processions, regattas and so on.
Sephira the Musical Ark comes to Scotland to race – and to serenade whales
There seems to be no limit to the rapid growth of the Scottish Coastal Rowing movement – and perhaps there’s no limit either to its ambition and imagination.
A case in point is Sephira the Musical Ark – an Iain Oughtred-designed St Ayles skiff built by students and teachers at Moravian Academy, a school at Bethlehem in Pennsylvania.
Most of these boats are built by communities, but the difference in this case is that the boat is rigged with eight long piano wires from stemhead to stern with the aim of making it a kind of sea-going harp – the string lengths and tensions are said to be designed to play notes in the frequency range of whale song.
That’s the imagination bit. The ambition bit is that the school is raising money to transport the boat over the Atlantic to Ullapool for the Skiffie World Championship on the 8th-14th July – and it seems they’ve done sufficiently well that the boat has actually begun its journey.
While in Scotland, the boat will also row to an area where whales are known to congregate, and play music for a while… It will be interesting to see how they respond.
The whole thing sounds like a lovely, exotic idea to me. If you fancy chipping a few dollars to help pay for the expedition, click here.
First shots from the Boat Building Academy spring student launch
Photo by Becky Joseph
Photo by Becky Joseph
Photo by Becky Joseph
Photo by Becky Joseph
Photo by Paul Dwyer
Photo by Paul Dwyer
Photo by Becky Joseph
These shots from from a wet, grey and blustery Boat Building Academy student launch at Lyme earlier this week. I gather it was a great day, with several past graduates joining in the fun with their own boats – and everyone tipped their hats to one of our student who despite the weather bravely launched his West Greenland kayak for the first time and managed to paddle a short distance across the harbour. It was built at the BBA during a 10-day short course in March this year.
Reports on the individual boats are to come, but photo-records of the builds can be seen here.