Category: Modern boatbuilding

Modern and plywood boatbuilding and plans

March/April issue of Water Craft out soon

Water Craft March-April 2011

That’s an impressive looking lot of sail!

The March/April 2011 issue  of Water Craft will be in the newsagents from 24 February.

Inside, you’ll find:

  • Colin Buttifant’s latest Broads yacht is fast – she can hold her own with the stripped-down local racers but she’s as cosy as a country cottage down below, according to Kathy Mansfield.
  • In Pen-Hir, leading French naval architect François Vivier has created an elegantly simple cruising yacht he calls a ‘Folkboat for the Future’ – and his son’s boatyard Icari is building her in sustainable birch plywood.
  • Boatbuilding materials are rarely – if ever – cheap, so when Ian Parsons decided to build his first boat, a stitch-and-tape Stornoway 14 dayboat, in order to avoid expensive waste he bought a pre-cut kit of plywood parts.
  • When Dick Phillips took over Phil Swift’s Willow Bay Boats range, he was undecided whether to offer the popular dayboats as bare hulls for home completion. So he went to see two of Phil’s customers who had done just that..
  • Gentleman-chandler Moray MacPhail leads a fact-finding mission of East Coast luminaries to Klassieke Schepen, the Dutch traditional boat show.

This is not to forget all Water Craft’s other features, regular and irregular, and – inevitably – a reminder from the editor about the Cordless Canoe Challenge at the Beale Park Boat Show, in which contestants compete to win a bag full of brand new Makita power tools worth over £1200.

Click here to order your subscription now!

News from my inbox: SS Shieldhall appeal, crossing the Atlantic by raft and surfboard building

SS Shieldhall on the Clyde 2005

Government grants for historic ships have dried up and the SS Shieldhall urgently needs £80,000 if she is to continue sailing

Just a few items from my inbox today.

Historic steamship SS Shieldhall needs £80,000 to keep sailing

One of the country’s most important historic steam ships has launched and appeal for survival, amid ongoing concerns that Britain’s maritime heritage is in decline.

Registered charity The Solent Steam Packet is appealing for £80,000 to secure the future of SS Shieldhall, a historic steam-driven cargo and passenger ship that some time ago was named ‘Flagship of the National Historic Ships Fleet’. In spring 2011 she will require dry-docking, which is necessary if she is to continue to sail – however the cost will be £80,000 to £100,000.  The charity says that budget cuts mean that grants are no longer routinely available to pay for maintenance work on heritage ships, and that our seafaring nation now risks losing many of its most significant vessels.

I sincerely hope they’re overstating the case or we could be in big trouble where some very important vessels are concerned.

Antiki – crossing the Atlantic on a raft made of plastic tubes

People try to cross bodies of water in a variety of craft both crazy and otherwise.

On this occasion part of the twist on this occasion is that the skipper, author Anthony Smith, is in his mid-80s and the vessel is made up of industrial plastic tubes tied together. The link above goes to the expedition weblog.

As you’d expect from the writer of the best-selling book The Body (The Human Body in the US), this silly-sounding voyage has several serious aims, including raising money for Water Aid, studying plankton in the age of global warming, and as a reminder of the dreadful bu often forgotten losses suffered by the merchant navy during World War II.

Surfboard building

Paul Reisberg has written to say that he’s hosting a three-day workshop by Rich Blundell on how to build a hollow wooden surfboard in Pembrokeshire at half-term this month – if you’re going to have a little time on your hands around then, love surfing and woodwork this might be for you. More information is available from the link above, and from Rich’s website.

Keith Johnston and friend saved from a dunking by a Selway Fisher-designed tender

Selway Fisher designed Skylark dinghy

Many of us become very attached to craft that serve us well – but tenders aren’t usually the object of our deep affections. However, Keith Johnston tells a story about an experience that taught him the value of his tender in a big way.

‘My friend and I have been sailing Devon Yawls for more than twenty five years simply because they are a modern fibreglass moulding of the Salcombe yawl.

‘Salcombe yawls are now hand built in top quality timbers and are £20,000 16’ dinghies that sail like serious deep sea boats and are a fiercely competed class in Salcombe. More importantly for me, they are based upon a very much tried and tested local inshore fishing boat. The locals know when a boat is good, and the Salcombe yawl is the best, so we’ve been sailing the Devon Yawl is an equivalent boat made in GRP from a mould taken off an a Salcombe yawl. (In fact, I have now graduated from the Devon Yawl to the Devon Dayboat, which is a Devon Yawl with a small cuddy) that provides a little shelter in rough weather or a camping shelter for two. Some of the original Devon Dayboats, like mine have a Stuart Turner 5hp inboard, which makes them reall useful all-round cruising boats.)

‘But back to my story. When we first started sailing yawls we moored the boat at various points on the River Tamar on the border between Cornwall and England. To get to her, we used a Fairey Duckling, which is a superb moulded double diagonal ply built dinghy loosely based on the World War II airborne lifeboats. These were made by Fairey Marine and were dropped from search and rescue planes so that ditched air crew in the North Atlantic and North Sea could rescue themselves. (For more on airborne lifeboats, click here; for more on Fairey Ducklings, click here.)

‘Believe me, the little Ducklings take after their big sister airborne lifeboats and are tough little boats, and we could just about carry the Duckling from the car to the tide line, which was sometimes 150 or 200 yards. As time went by, however, the Duckling seemed to get heavier (or had we got older?) and we realised the Duckling had become a collectors boat and was too valuable to be used as a general beach dinghy any longer. So we decided to try and find a cheap dinghy as a replacement.

‘The first boat I ever built Continue reading “Keith Johnston and friend saved from a dunking by a Selway Fisher-designed tender”