Gavin Atkin's weblog for the sort of people who like looking inside boat sheds. It's about old boats, traditional boats, boat building, restoration, the sea and the North Kent Coast
The real story of the Amaryllis and the first racing catamarans. It seems the tale is not quite as some folks have liked to tell it in the past, and the cat did not attract universal opposition… And, as always, Amaryllis designer Captain Nat Herreshoff’s part in it is fascinating.
The excellent Spitalfields Life takes a trip to Chatham Dockyard, and meets and ancient mariner… See also the Gentle Author’s outings to Sheerness and the Old Royal Naval College at Greenwich.
My thanks to Malcolm Woods for spotting this one.
Reader Ken Preston has just had a substantial paper published about the basket-built vessels of the Vietnamese coast and you can read it for free online. I’d guess most of us have seen photos, but this is a serious description of the various sorts of boats either purely built of bamboo basketry, or a composite structure consisting of the bamboo basketry supported by greater or lesser amounts of wooden structure.
It seems the boats are more resistant to shipworm than wooden boats, and more able to survive work in surf, and of course they are cheap to make.
Some variants have a long history, while some are localised or widespread. I have to say I do find the outboard-driven round boats quite surprising…