Free boat plans online – Page 58

Follow the duck – plans and boatbuilders’ stories at Duckworks magazine

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Duckworks Magazine’s monthly bulletin linked to an intheboatshed.net reference to Joe Dobler yesterday, and I’d like to repay the compliment.

For years now, Duckworks Magazine editor Chuck Leinweber has maintained a steady stream of fascinating posts about boats and boating, mainly concerning small boats and in particular home-built boats and occasionally restored older craft.

What makes it stand out is that it’s a real miscellany, and that it’s made up of so many obviously genuine stories about real people. Some of the material is inspirational stuff about building and cruising small boats, but you can also find tutorials on how to perform particular tasks and dire warnings about how to avoid repeating someone’s mistake.

If you’re inspired to get into building small boats, I think it’s essential reading – as is Duckworksmagazine’s sister site Duckworks Boat Builders Supply. A good place to start might be the Duckworks BBS plans page.

Duckworksmagazine: http://www.duckworksmagazine.com

Duckworks Boat Builder’s Supply http://www.duckworksbbs.com/

A new boat along long-forgotten plank-on-edge racing sailing yacht lines

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Tiny 1880s-style plank-on-edge dayboat Molly at the Beale Park Boat Show

One of the more amazing sights at the Beale Park Boat Show was Molly, an extraordinary toy-like plank-on-edge dayboat being built by boatbuilder Peter Graham.

At the time, I thought that seeing a boat like this would be a once-in-a-lifetime event as few people would build boats like this, and I’ve been saving it for a rainy day as a treat for intheboatshed.net readers when there wasn’t much else going on.

But a doubly amazing thing has happened – an enquiry from a boatbuilder in the US who says he is building a boat to the same lines, and has asked for contact details for Peter after seeing the boat in a magazine. Of course, as I had photos to share I was happy to help. So now we know that two of these amazing little boats are being built.

But perhaps the most surprising thing about the enquiry is that it seems to have come from the US – a land where in the 1870s and 80s racing yachts were so shallow and beamy they were nicknamed ‘soap dishes’ while the British were busy building to ‘plank-on-edge’ or ‘leadmine’ lines. The two styles of yacht regularly fought it out until a kind of compromise between the two extreme hull types eventually won out.

But compromises can have a dull quality, and it’s the lack of compromise that makes a boat like this exciting, at least to me. I urgently need to know how this boat sails – I hope she sails as well as she looks, for when I saw her it was clear Peter had done an outstanding job.

After I put this post up, Peter got in touch with two more images, one of Molly, and another of the sailplan from the plans he’s working to:

Irish curragh skin fishing boats on the Dingle Peninsula

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The legendary Irish curragh skin boat is still used for fishing and racing on the remote and beautiful Dingle Peninsula

My good friends Jim and Eileen Van Den Bos recently visited Eileen’s family in Ireland, and along the way Jim managed to bag these photos showing important details of modern curraghs.

There are some features to notice here: the traditional square-section, non-feathering oars are still clearly in use for auxiliary power, but the boats have outboard wells in what is otherwise very much the hull form you see in old photos and books. Also, these are long, narrow hulls with very round sections, and they also have no skeg and no more than a very slight rubbing strake. These features will allow seas to slide under the hull rather than throw it around, and their low wetted area will also contribute to these boats’ speed under oars or outboard. I’ve several times heard these boats described as canoes, although they’re not really paddling boats.

I’d guess that on such an exposed Atlantic coast these are exactly the characteristics that have enabled this amazing ancient boat type to survive into the 21st Century.

I’m also struck that there may be a suggestion that these boats may have a Continue reading “Irish curragh skin fishing boats on the Dingle Peninsula”

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