Category: Modern boatbuilding

Modern and plywood boatbuilding and plans

Special offer: one-to-one tutoring from BBA instructor Justin Adkin for just £125/day

 

Traditional clinker Yachting World Dayboat build instructed by Justin Adkin, and a composite, wood fit-out sailing and rowing skiff designed and built by Justin. Click on the photos for a much bigger view

The Boat Building Academy is making an offer that’s unlikely to be repeated too often – one-to-one tuition with instructor Justin Adkin at the rate of £125.00 per day – the BBA’s usual charge for a short course.

The story is that Justin took a sabbatical to build an ocean rowing boat to be rowed through the North West Passage in one season. However, at the last moment the funding fell through and so Justin has an unexpected gap in his diary.

Anyone who would like some personal coaching in traditional or modern wood or composite construction, repair or restoration can book from one to five days of private tuition with Justin at the Academy – to find out more, email office@boatbuildingacademy.com or ring 01297 445545.

Skol ar Mor – a new boat building school in the Loire-Atlantique

This photo shows their first student launch day of a new international boat building school at Mesquer in the Loire-Atlantique department of France – François Vivier told us last year that it was being established and that he was associated with it.

Skol ar Mor is led by a boat builder from the USA, Mike Newmeyer, and recently celebrated the opening of its premises, a restored salt warehouse.

Read all about it at François’ weblog Boats to make the sea more beautiful – the relevant posts are here and here.

By the way, the sweet little grey skiff in the photo is a Vivier design – the Charlotte skiff.

Also, see videos here, here and here.

 

Sailing Canoes – a brief history, published in 1935

 

This 1935 history of sailing canoes originally published by the American Canoe Association is well worth a look.

It has been republished online by the editors of the excellent Skinny Hull magazine. (There’s another link to this document at the Dragonfly Canoe Works website (I’m guessing this may be the original source).

The photos in the brief history may be a little fuzzy, but they tell an amazing story of early diversity before the uniformity of the ACA classes was established, and extreme sailing long before the invention of the wetsuit.

The text itself is US-oriented, as might be expected, but interesting nonetheless, and makes a good job of summarising the development of the decked sailing canoe on both sides of the Atlantic, starting with John Macgregor’s Rob Roy.

I wonder what happened to Nathaniel Herreshoff’s beautiful but scary-looking proposed class of 1935?

Turning to Skinny Hull magazine itself, I’m particularly taken with an article in the first issue – it’s by John Summers of the Canadian Canoe Museum in Peterborough, Ontario, and features what I think is a fabulous little craft. There are supposed to be stitch and glue plans to buy too, though it might be necessary to contact Mr Summers directly as I can’t see them where they’re supposed to be.

Finally, there’s this sequence of photos on YouTube to consider…