Category: Rowing,paddling and sculling

Boat Building Academy students launch a sleek cold-moulded kayak

Touring kayak - Ewan Thomson - Jenny Steer 154

Lars (14) web Emma (296) Ewan Thomson - touring kayak - Jenny Steer

Students Ewan Thomson and Patrick Hughes built this cold-moulded 19.6 by 1.4ft fast touring kayak, ready to hit the water at the Boat Building Academy’s December student launch.

Ewan, who is from Isle of Skye, has worked in various practical roles from timber framing and gardening to boat repair, but it was the latter that grabbed his attention after he fitted out a plastic dinghy, repaired a clinker boat, did some boat painting and a spot of fibreglassing.

He then joined the BBA’s 38-week course to gain more experience with different construction types and designs.

A keen kayaker, Ewan had seen a kayak that he wanted to adapt and build as a prototype for a potential business and with help from group lead instructor Mike Broome he drew up new plans.

The finished kayak is made from 1.5mm sapele veneers – not an easy material to work with in so slender a hull form – and is finished bright.

Ewan’s next project is a GRP Orkney longliner, but he also hopes to start his own business on Skye and build more kayaks. Academy staff report that he feels a sense of relief that he now has the skills he needs to start a business of his own.

Fellow student Patrick’s background is in graphic design and communications. He joined the long course after completing the eight-week woodworking skills course, during which he was impressed by the achievements of some of the students on the 38-week course. I gather Pat now plans to start his own business, offering boat repairs, maintenance and storage in France.

A photo diary of the build can be found here.

Matt Atkin photographs boats and river life in Cambodia, part 2

 

 

More of Matt Atkin’s photos from the Cambodian floating village of  Tonle Sap on the River Mekong. To see more photos, click on part 1.

The boats of The Gambia

 

Our friend Vic Smith has sent us this striking set of photos of boats – dugouts and pirogues with built-up sides – in use along the coast of The Gambia in Western Africa, and along the country’s major river, also called The Gambia.

Vic and his wife Tina live in Sussex, but have strong links with the small African country; they’re involved in supporting a local school and have friends among local musicians, some of whom play in the UK from time to time.

For those of us with a particular interest in the evolution of water craft, these photos of ancient boat types illustrate one of the key ways in which boats have evolved around the world. In this case the ancient dugout leading to the pirogue, which here is the name given to a dugout hull with built-up sides providing improved carrying capacity and improved seaworthiness.

One could almost draw a parallel between the turf boats of Somerset used on the Levels, and the possibly related but more sophisticated and high-sided flatners developed for fishing in the bays along the Bristol Channel – which by chance also sport spritsails not unlike the one shown in the gallery of Vic’s photos below.

It’s also interesting to me that some of the larger pirogues seem to have been motorised without having requiring much adaptation that I can see. And again, notice how the boats are pulled up the beaches on rollers and skids in much the same way that people still haul craft up on the English South Coast, for example at Hastings and Beer. However, in The Gambia this operation involves a great many more people.

Thinking about this operation, it’s wonderful to see whole communities cheerfully working together in this way, but the other side of this coin is very low per capita incomes that must result from so many people having to be involved.

From the Wikipedia I learn that about a third of the population in the country lives below the international poverty line of US$1.25 a day, despite the country’s undoubted advantages of fertile soil for farming, and busy fishing and tourism trades. It makes you think…

Thanks for the photos Vic!