Category: Rowing boat

The next BBA student launch day is on the 7th December – and you’re all invited!

Boat Building Academy student launch December 2011 invitation

Intheboatshed.net readers (and everyone else, to be honest!) are warmly invited to the Boat Building Academy’s class of March 2011 student launch at 2pm on the 7th December.

The boats include:

  • 13ft cold-moulded motor launch designed by Andrew Wolstenholme
  • 17ft clinker-built pilchard larker
  • 10ft foam-sandwich composite dinghy
  • 19ft epoxy-ply Caledonian Yawl (designed by Iain Oughtred)
  • 15ft West Greenland kayak
  • 14ft strip planked ‘Cassy’ canoe yawl (designed by George Holmes)
  • 14ft 1in strip-planked catboat
  • 14ft stitch and glue-built speedboat (designed by BBA instructor Mike Broome)
For building photos of these boats, click here.

See more photos from last year’s December launch:

1900 edition of Dixon Kemp’s classic boating manual is online

Dixon Kemp online  Dixon Kemp online

If you’re wondering what to do this weekend, the 1900 edition of Dixon Kemp’s classic A Manual of Yacht and Boat Sailing is online at the Internet Archive, and will keep a boat nut with a sense of history busy for quite a while.

As you read, it’s interesting to note how much is still true – and how many of the craft in the beautiful drawings are still inspiring boat and yacht owners, builders and designers today.

Kindly digitised by the University of Pittsburgh, it’s available in a variety of forms: there’s HTML for online browsing, PDF and Kindle for those who prefer, and, wonderfully, the Daisy audio form for those unable to see well enough to read.

My thanks to reader Paul Mullings for letting me know about this!

Two Witches on show at the National Maritime Museum Cornwall

Andy Wyke and Dorset crab and lobster boats Witch of Worbarrow and Witch of Weymouth Andy Wyke and Dorset crab and lobster boat Witch of Weymouth

Boat Collection Manager, Andy Wyke with Witch of Worbarrow (front) and Witch of Weymouth (back). Boat Collection Manager, Andy Wyke with Witch of Weymouth.

Boat builder Ian Baird’s Witch of Weymouth replica of a Dorset crab and lobster boat is now on show at the National Maritime Museum Cornwall, together with the 100-year old original on which she’s based.

Witch of Worbarrow was built in 1902, and was used for catching lobsters and crabs up to six miles out to sea in Worbarrow Bay, near Weymouth. She is believed to be the only boat of her type still surviving, but after so many years of use is now too frail to put on the water.

While as a student at the Lyme Regis-based Boat Building Academy, Ian decided to build a replica of Witch of Worbarrow and so built Witch of Weymouth. The result is a traditional clinker built boat, with larch planks laid over oak frames.

Naturally, the new Witch is now the only boat of her kind still in use.

‘It would be impossible to recreate over 100 years of modification and wear and tear that her older sister has endured,’ says museum boat collection manager Andy Wyke. ‘Ian, however, took great pains to accurately copy the lines of the old boat and the final result is a beautiful representation.’

The two Witches will be on display together NMMC until end of December 2011.