Gavin Atkin's weblog for the sort of people who like looking inside boat sheds. It's about old boats, traditional boats, boat building, restoration, the sea and the North Kent Coast
Porthleven – read about this fishing port near Helston in Cornwall here. As you may have realised, we’ve got our Internet back after a trying 51 days without a telephone service.
PS – The mediaeval wall paintings showing a sailing ship and a mermaid complete with a mirror and St Christoper walking through water are in the parish church at the nearby village of Breage. It’s well worth a look if you’re passing by.
I’m sure I recognise some of those folks eating oysters at the end…
My thanks to Chris Brady for finding and pointing out this one.
By the way, I must apologise once again for being a little slow on this website at the moment. We lost our phone and internet service on the 20th July and are still waiting for it to be reinstated.
Reader Philip Risacher sent me these photos of a great 1/10th scale model he made of my Ella skiff design – and I am of course completely charmed. Here’s what he says:
‘I started the model about four years ago, but it lay as a brown cardboard model until a few weeks ago when reading through Ben Crawshaw’s blog got me back in the mood to build myself a boat. Of course the “everything needed to build a full size boat” is not yet within reach, but luckily my eyes fell on my little Cheerios box skiff and my brain said “oohh, that could be quite beautiful.”
‘So I started back at it, first gluing on some mahogany gunwales, then sealing the whole thing with shellac, painting, thole pins, Samson post, and the hand made oars complete with Turk’s head knots and eyes to scare the sea monsters away.
‘Just this weekend I brought her out on the lake to take some pictures, you’d think she were big enough to sit in, but alas it is only an illusion. I hope some day to make a boat I can sit in. Thank you for the great design(s), so kindly shared with us out here in dream land.’
Here’s the giveaway:
See more shots here.
Ella skiff plans are here.