Category: Events

Events such as historical events, races, exhibitions, processions, regattas and so on.

BBA invites readers to student launch

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Boat Building Academy student launch day invitation

Student launch invitation, showing a Pettersson motor launch made by student Lars Herfeldt and launched last December

The Boat Building Academy down at Lyme is inviting intheboatshed.net readers to attend its big student launch on the 9th December. The event starts from around 8am, with the boats going in the water at around 9.30am.

It will be possible for visitors to see the Academy premises, so long as they don’t get in the students’ way.

Some 18 students are launching boats, and the photos below show the current state of some of them. It looks like very nice work, but there’s still some way to go. Will they make it? I’m sure they will. I won’t be able to make it myself, so if any readers take their cameras, I would be grateful for photos I can publish please!

Click here for the BBA’s short course prospectus for 2011 – in addition to the established offerings, it is offering Colin Henwood of Henwood and Dean instructing a five-day course on renovation and finishing, a two-dayer on rope work and wire splicing, and a three- or five-day half-model making course, the length of which depends on whether you want to make a standard model or one of your own choice.

Last year’s course on building a West Greenland kayak is back, and there’s a new introduction to woodworking skills course, which might reasonably be described woodworking for the petrified.

Wooden boat building in progress at the Boat Building Academy Wooden boat building in progress at the Boat Building Academy Wooden boat building in progress at the Boat Building Academy

Wooden boat building in progress at the Boat Building Academy Wooden boat building in progress at the Boat Building Academy Wooden boat building in progress at the Boat Building Academy

Video: hot-nailing a traditional crab and lobster boat’s timbers into place

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Over at the Boat Building Academy at Lyme, Ian Baird has been making progress on his replica of the Dorset crab and lobster boat Witch of Worbarrow. The timbers of the new boat named Witch of Weymouth have gone in, the gunwales are now in place and the spars almost completely made.

He also gave me the link to this splendid Youtube film clip of the process of hot-nailing her steamed timbers into place. It looks wonderfully frantic to me!

On the boat herself, what’s left to complete are the knees, thwarts and finishing, which must all be in place by the time of the grand student launch on the morning of the 9th December. If you’re in the area and are interested in boats and craftsmanship, do get along!

For more posts in this interesting boat and its origins, click here. Also, look out for a series of three articles describing the build, the first of which is scheduled to appear in the magazine Water Craft in January.

Calshot tender tug trust seeks 20ft lifeboats for Titanic maiden voyage 100th anniversary

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Tender tug Calshot with Olympic, sister ship to the Titanic

Tender tug Calshot with Olympic, sister ship to the Titanic

The Tender Tug Calshot Trust is seeking two 20ft ship’s lifeboats for the tender tug Calshot in time for an event marking the 100th anniversary of the day the liner Titanic left Southampton and set off on her maiden voyage.

Sadly, the Calshot’s original lifeboats were left in a yard by the former owners, with the result that they deteriorated to a point where they had to be scrapped.

The anniversary is on the 10th April 2012, and I gather television historian Dan Snow is scheduled to present a live television programme.

In addition to the two replacement lifeboats, the trust is also seeking information about whether any of the original Titanic lifeboats have survived, as it has learned that they were reallocated to other White Star liners following the ship’s famous and tragic sinking.

The Tender Tug Calshot Trust was set up in 1997 with the prime aim of restoring Calshot to the way she was in the 1930s.

She’s included in the National Historic Ships list of 200 vessels of pre-eminent national significance, and in fact she’s no ordinary tug. Built in Southampton by Thornycroft’s at Woolston, she was a tender as well as a tug, and was certified to carry 566 passengers in first and second class saloons: often the larger liners would anchor offshore as it was uneconomic to negotiate into the docks to transfer a few passengers, and Calshot would then ferry these passengers and small items of freight.

In her time, she also manoeuvred the world’s greatest ocean liners, including the Queen Mary, the Queen Elizabeth, the United States, the France and the Olympic, sister ship of the Titanic.