Category: Modern boatbuilding

Modern and plywood boatbuilding and plans

Stop Ofcom billing the RNLI for its comms

I gather there are moves afoot to charge the Royal National Lifeboat Institution commercial rates for using its communications equipment. If, like me you think this isn’t right, please sign this petition on the issue.

In a country where the Lifeboats are the one essential rescue service manned by volunteers and supported wholly by charity, I think this proposal is an unnecessary blow to a great institution that should be dear to the heart of every boat owner.

What proposition am I asking you to sign? It’s simple and harmless enough: We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to Protect the RNLI from paying licence fees for using Maritime radio frequencies.

The story from the petition organisers is that Ofcom wants to bring ‘market forces’ into maritime and aviation communications, and that RNLI will have to pay £250,000 a year. Apparently, smaller search and rescue charities fear they may have to close. See a report published a few weeks ago by the Daily Telegraph newspaper.

I’m hoping that none of this is true, and that if it is Ofcom will come to realise that what it wants to do simply isn’t politically acceptable while the Lifeboats remain dependent on charity alone.

Jordan Boats supplies Iain Oughtred boatbuilding kits to the USA

Iain Oughtred’s Arctic Tern

Cut-out ply component parts and MDF frames and full-sized patterns for Iain Oughtred’s legendary catalogue of boat plans are now available in the USA from Jordan Boats.

Alec Jordan of Jordan Boats based in Fife, Scotland rang this week to say that the kits are being supplied in the USA by a company in Maine. Apparently, the same outfit also supplies for Woodenboat magazine.

The boat components are made from Bruynzeel and Shelmarine BS1088 marine plywood, which are not Lloyds Type Approved, but have an excellent reputation – Lloyds Type Approved ply kits are also available at an added cost of about 30 per cent.

Jordan Boats’ bank will not yet allow payment in US Dollars through its website, so the only way to order is by getting in touch through Jordan’s contact page and asking for a confirmed kit and shipping quotation. For shipping please remember to include your Zip Code, so please remember to include this together with your phone number and Skype name, if you have one.

Alec says it will take a day or two for his contractors to obtain the shipping quote, but when he has it he will will email it to you together with payment details.

Typical kit prices at the time of writing are: Ness Yawl, $2,208; Fulmar, $3,029; Feather Pram, $744; Badger, $1,254; Auk, $1,076; Acorn, $1,076; 13ft 6in Tammie Norrie, $1,346.

Kits are also available for Acorn 12, Acorn 15, Elf, Granny Pram, Guillemot, Humble Bee, Mole, Puffin, Skerrieskiff 15, 15ft Tammie Norrie, Tirrik, Wee Rob and Wee Seal. At the time of writing, Alec was working on adding the Shearwater and had plans to offer the Caledonia Yawl.

New designs can be added to order.

Jordan Boats

For more on Iain Oughtred’s boat designs, including photos of Chris Perkins’ award winning Macgregor canoe and his new Stickleback canoe, click here.

Don’t miss something good – subscribe to intheboatshed.net.

Build a sailing canoe for $15

[ad name=”intheboatshed-post”]

How to build the $15 canoe, 1876-style

The $15 figure is at 1876 prices, I’m sorry to say. In this excerpt from a Scientific American Supplement dated that year, Victorian-era writer Paddlefast provides offsets and the rest for a canoe with a simple hull that looks eminently buildable by  either clinker or strip-planking methods.

In our time, we’d build it with water-tight compartments fore and aft, but many details could easily remain the same. For example, clever details here including halliards that are led forward through a block to provide forestays, and the drawings include outriggers for rowing.

Thanks here go to Craig O’Donnell, proprieter of the always-intriguing Cheap Pages.

Follow this link for more on sailing canoes at intheboatshed.net.

Don’t miss something good – subscribe to intheboatshed.net!