Category: Modern boatbuilding

Modern and plywood boatbuilding and plans

Boat Building Academy students Martin Nott and Alistair Munro build a 6.5m Charles Sibbick Half-Rater

Victorian Half Rater built in strip plank Victorian Half Rater built in strip plank - Martin Nott - DT

Photos by Derek Thompson and Emma Brice

Two students at the  Boat Building Academy have built and launched this remarkable skimming dish designed by Charles Sibbick.

The story began in 2006 when after a 30-year career in sports magazine publishing Isle of Wight-based Martin Nott decided he needed a new challenge and restored a 1902-built boat  Sibbick boat, Witch.

When he became the proud owner of the National Register of Historic Vessels-listed boat, he enrolled on the  Academy’s one-week boat restoration course to gain more knowledge and skills relating to the construction of traditional boats.

He then became increasingly fascinated by wooden boats and joined the Boat Building Academy in September 2010 to start the 38-week boat building course during which he was able to build another Sibbick design, Diamond, a 6.5m fin-and-bulb keel carvel-built skimming-dish half rater dating from 1897. He worked from an old set of lines and from photos.

Alistair Munro, who helped Martin build Diamond, was previously managing director of an advertising agency. The boat building course was the start of a major career change.

A mixture of traditional and modern construction methods were used in building Diamond: she has a red cedar strip-planked hull with a yellow cedar deck and mahogany coamings. She is partially decked, has a cockpit and is fitted with a traditional lug rig, and bronze fittings, many of them custom-made. See Martin’s weblog of the build here.

Diamond is now on the Isle of Wight, where Martin plans to race her, and to build a 30ft Sibbick Rater. He is currently working one day a week for Classic Boat and Yachts & Yachting, while looking for work as a shipwright or boat builder.

A sailing Ella skiff project goes together in Mauritius

Moffett family build sailing Ella skiff in Mauritius Moffett family build sailing Ella skiff in Mauritius Moffett family build sailing Ella skiff in Mauritius

William, Marie and Josef Moffett are building the sailing version of the Ella skiff on what looks like the verandah of their home in Mauritius – see photographs here, here and here. To get the latest instalment, click on the ‘boat’ button for a menu of galleries.

I always have my fingers crossed when an early example of a boat is being built, but so far I’m very pleased – she’s turning out to be a sweet little thing, and everything seems to have fitted as it was meant to do!

Free plans for building the sailing version of the Ella skiff can be found here; plans for the rowing boat version are here. The Ella also has two larger sister ships: the Sunny skiff and the Julie skiff.

Old Pulteney Row to the Pole reaches its destination!

Row to the Pole arrives

The Old Pulteney Row to the Pole expedition led by Jock Wishart has made it to the magnetic North Pole – and only had to drag their boat over an ice field for the last two miles. Now perhaps people will recognise how much ice has gone.

Click on the picture above to visit the site for more, including videos.

‘The final leg of our journey started on Wednesday night when a possible route through the disintegrating ice began to open up,’ said Jock. ‘We’d been pinned down for days by ice and heavy winds. But the conditions suddenly changed and we were able to pick our way through. The last three miles proved to be the hardest of all when we had to take the boat out the water and then haul it over the ice.

‘We’re all absolutely exhausted, but elated. No one’s ever even tried to do this. In fact most people did think it was impossible. But we’ve done it!’

For most of the voyage the crew rowed through open water, taking advantage of favourable weather to make good headway, but the biggest challenges lay in the second part of the expedition, which involved rowing across to Ellef Ringnes Island. In the last few weeks of summer, this area was slow to melt and break up, so the crew was confronted with both solid and floating sea ice which they painstakingly picked their way through.

The Row to the Pole team has lived for almost a month on the specially designed ice-boat, sleeping in shifts between rowing stints and living on dry rations containing an amazing 7000 calories per day. They have also had some close encounters with some of the Arctic’s most impressive species, including beluga whales, walrus and polar bears.

A BBC cameraman was with the rowing team, so I’m looking forward to seeing the TV documentary…