Category: Rowing,paddling and sculling

BBA student launch December 2013 – catch up with the ITV News report

BBA December student launch covered by ITV

The Boat Building Academy’s December student launch seems to have gone off beautifully – ITV News was there to cover the story, and principal Yvonne Green reported 200 people turned up at Lyme Harbour to watch, the weather was stunning, the general mood benevolent, and the students jubilant.

‘There was only just enough wind for the sailing boats, but Brian Reford’s speed boat (see the Intheboatshed.net post annoucing the event) went like the clappers across the bay.

‘The speedboat was the last to be launched, and as it left the harbour the other boats gracefully fell into line and followed. Someone said: “Blimey, that must have taken a bit of organising,” but it was a moment of synchronicity.

‘All in all it was a stunning day and utterly deserved by the students who have just grafted from early morning until late night since they started in March.’

For information, see the BBA website.

Philippines fishermen find a way…

Phillipines fishermen

The folks of the Philippines will have been using all their ingenuity and determination to keep themselves and their families alive following the dreadful typhoon a few weeks ago – and this set of photos reveals a tremendous example. Check the use of outriggers.

Brave, brave souls… See the Disaster Emergencies Committee appeal for the Philippines.

My thanks to Iain McAllister of the Peggy Bawn Press for the heads-up.

What happens when you have a completely round boat propelled using three oars…

This is what happened when the round boat built at the Boat Building Academy for artists JocJonJosch was launched in London some days ago, with JocJonJosh at the oars.

The boat is the centrepiece of a project called Worstward Ho, which the artists explain like this:

Worstward Ho! is a project under construction and is part of JocJonJosch’s series of Investigations into Collaboration.

Worstward Ho! takes the form of a round boat with three oars, symbolic of the collective’s dynamic, in which Joschi, Jonathan and Joc wrestle towards a destination. There is a sense that each time one member attempts to move forward his movement and the direction in which he would like to travel is countered by the action of the other two. It is an exhausting exercise and the collaborators often feel as if they are going nowhere, that they are turning in circles.

The boat is a useable sculpture, that is to say it is a boat built to be rowed on water. It’s significance however, is not in any specific journey that we take or plan to take in the boat but instead in the ambiguous and challenging journey that it suggests.

‘My heavens!’ as my granny would have said.

I can’t help feeling this thing is a kind of monument to the frustrations of working as part of a collaboration. I’m also reminded of coracles, which definitely go where the pilot intends, and, of course, the round Vietnamese fishing boat that my brother Matthew Atkin photographed a little while ago, and which Pete Williamson also captured.

By the way, connoisseurs of these things might be interested to see JocJonJosh’s portfolio and Facebook page. But it’s back to boats for this weblog…