Category: Events

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

BBA Academy students build and launch a Beer beach boat

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Beer lugger 'Steadfast' at sea off North-West Scotland Alasdair Grant

Beer beach boat Steadfast at sea off North-West Scotland

Beer beach boat Steadfast Beer beach boat Steadfast

Beer beach boat Steadfast Beer beach boat Steadfast

Beer beach boat Steadfast on launch day

Another craft launched in July by Boat Building Academy students was a 16ft 5in Beer beach boat, built to lines taken from a boat on the beach at Beer, Devon, by one of the students, Alasdair Grant.

The youngest student in the Boat Building Academy’s Class of September 2009, Alasdair first contacted the academy when he was 14. Four years later at the end of his course he was given a special BBA award in recognition of his outstanding dedication and hard-work during the build of his aptly-named boat Steadfast.

The award was a brass plaque reading ‘Made in England’. Alasdair, it should be understood, is a proud Scot – so I hope he appreciated the well meant joke…

Alasdair is from a fishing family in Aultbea in the North West Scotland, and wanted to build a working boat. After seeing and taking the lines from the Beer beach boat, Alasdair brought some his own Scottish influence to the construction, including very heavy framing.  He and another student building the boat, Jim Walsh, went on to include seven big frames in the build and the finishing touch, and Scottish-style tyres for fenders.

Steadfast is now being used by his family as their water taxi to and fro the Scottish mainland and the Isle of Ewe, and is said to have coped well in recent gales.

Since graduating in June, Alasdair has began work with Cockwells in Cornwall.

A classic work on the beach boats of Britain is this book: Beach Boats of Britain.

Dylan Winter’s Keep Turning Left continues despite a brief stay at Wainfleet

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Dylan Winter of Keep Turning Left fame has been at Wainfleet for a little while now, so hopefully he’s been able to make some headway with some of the problems his boat has collected in recent weeks. The poor fella’s had to take the Slug out of the water to fix a doomed and leaky cutlass gland, foresail roller reefing that needs replacing, a hatch with a nasty long crack and – worst of all – a hole in his boat’s keel where it struck something hard under water. The next few stretches up the East Coast promise to be hard sailing, so the Slug needs to be in very good shape, as Dylan himself points out.

Our KTL film-maker and sailor doesn’t seem to be at all discouraged, but I’m sure he would be grateful for more subscriptions, both to help pay for the repairs and to give him encouragement in his quest to sail round the UK very slowly, close to the shore and with plenty of stops.

There’s no reason to think the videos will dry up, by the way, for he says he’s got nearly a year’s worth of filming footage with which to make more of his covering The Alde, Butley, Blakeney and the rest. So, KTL fans, there’s no doubt his subscriptions will continue to be well worth the investment, not least because of the encouragement they’ll provide!

Meanwhile, I do hope he’s also enjoying his time in the land of my ancestors and my own growing up, and of course he’s near to a brewery that happens to make some of the best and most flavour-filled beers to be found anywhere in the country – Bateman’s. Heck, I’d almost be tempted to take a trip up there and help him myself if I wasn’t so busy with the freelance journalism. And sailing, of course…

See the latest KTL Youtube videolog here.

PS Have you used the little logos below yet? They allow you to share this post via Twitter or Facebook, save the link in Google or your own web browser, and finally you can email the link to a friend. Handy, I’d say…

An extraordinary launch at Lyme for Gail McGarva’s lerret Littlesea

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boat, boat building academy, clinker, dorset, gail mcgarva, launch, lerret, littlesea, lyme regis, vera

boat, boat building academy, clinker, dorset, gail mcgarva, launch, lerret, littlesea, lyme regis, vera boat, boat building academy, clinker, dorset, gail mcgarva, launch, lerret, littlesea, lyme regis, vera

Launch day for Gail McGarva’s lerret Littlesea. Those Boat Building Academy folks certainly know how to organise a party!

Gail McGarva’s lerret named Littlesea was launched at Lyme with all due ceremony on the 31st July, during the town’s Lifeboat Fortnight. Vera, the last seaworthy original lerret built in 1923 and the model for the new boat, was in attendance, along with two local racing gigs and what from the photos looks like half the town.

The lerret is a boat wholly native to Lyme Bay going back to 1682, and is a beautiful beamy double-ended clinker vessel of 17ft, built in elm on oak. Designed to be launched and landed from the area’s steeply-shelving stony beaches, lerrets have remained virtually unchanged from their beginning.

Although primarily used for mackerel fishing, lerrets also earned such respect for their seaworthiness that in the early 19th century the newly formed RNLI adopted two for service as lifeboats. Archive material recounting their stories of saving lives at sea is said to be extensive and quite remarkable, and Littlesea was launched during Lifeboat Fortnight in order to celebrate the connection.

As an earlier post about the project explained, Gail was awarded a scholarship to build a lerret from the Queen Elizabeth Scholarship Trust, funded by the Royal Warrant Holders Association.

Gail built this boat by eye – that is, without designer drawings – under the mentorship of Roy Gollop,one of the last remaining boatbuilders in Dorset with this particular skill.

Littlesea is to be actively used as a training boat to enable young people to gain confidence at sea,develop their rowing skills and work together as team.

The new lerret and procession, complete with an oar salute from Lyme Regis Gig Club, journeyed from the Boat Building Academy,which  housed the building of the boat, to the harbour slipway. The boat bearers and rowers were dressed in Sunday best of white shirts and waistcoats in a deliberate echo of boatyard launches of the past, and were accompanied by a brass band.

Gail gave a speech and presented Roy with a traditional yard foreman’s bowler hat in appreciation of his guidance and support, and the new lerret was named by Queen Elizabeth Scholarship Trust president William Gunn. The boat was blessed, a local songwriter performed a song for the occasion, and the boat was then carried through an archway of Cornish pilot gig oars, scattered with sea salt for safe passage at sea and launched behind the protective arm of the harbour’s sea wall, known as the Cobb.

Littlesea was then guided out to sea by the RNLI lifeboat The Pearl of Dorset, accompanied by Vera and escorted by Lyme’s two Cornish pilot gigs,which were also build by Gail in 2008 and 2009.

Littlesea is the local name for the Fleet behind Chesil Beach, as Gail learned from 90-year old Majorie Ireland. Marjorie’s family worked the lerrets along Dorset’s shores.

There are many references to lerrets in Basil Greenhill’s Working boats of Britain: their shape and purpose and also a nice description, a drawing and photos in his Chatham directory of inshore craft.