Category: Rowing boat

The July/August issue of Water Craft magazine is due out very soon!

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paul gartside, gaff rig, dayboat, roger dongray, golant yawl, golant gaffer, kathy mansfield, iain oughtred, water craft, magazine

The July/August issue of Water Craft – subscribe online now!

The July/August 2010 issue of Water Craft magazine is out from the 24th June contains the usual fine collection of articles! This time, editor Pete Greenfield says it includes the following:

Designer Paul Gartside presents full plans and offsets for a shapely 18ft (5.5m) gaff-rigged centreboard dayboat. I’d say that was unmissable…

Roger Dongray introduces his new 25’ (7.6m) Golant Yawl, which follows on from the success of his widely admired 19ft (5.9m) Golant Gaffer design. This issue includesfeatures on both.

Boatbuilder Gail McGarva completes the construction of two traditional 32ft (9.8m) Cornish pilot gigs.

Reporter and photographer Kathy Mansfield goes to the recent ‘Oughtraid’ held in Holland. Apparently it was relaxed gathering of Iain Oughtred’s elegant boat designs in the Netherlands. I hope the weather was good.

The issue also includes the next instalments of its Grand Designs series, including a lovely double-page  feature about the Light Trow, and  all the usual regular features.

For more on Iain Oughtred’s designs, click here.

For more on  Gail McGarva, click here.

Boat Building Academy projects at the Art in Action show, Oxfordshire

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art in action, oxfordshire, boat building academy, lyme

This year’s Art in Action show at Waterperry, near Wheatley in Oxfordshire, takes place from the 15th to 18th July.

If you’re in the area, it might well be worth dropping by, for this year the woodworking section of this exhibition of art and craftsmanship includes exhibits from the Boat Building Academy folks at Lyme.

I’m rather tickled by the organisers’ description of the BBA as a ‘young very hands-on academy in Dorset‘. I wonder if they’ve noticed how many more mature as well as young students find themselves at home at the Academy each year?

I’m afraid that they didn’t include any detail about the boat in the photo above – perhaps someone can fill us in please? As always, I’m at gmatkin@gmail.com.

Peter Worlock – see the comments below – knows the show well and says he cannot recommend it highly enough. Sounds good to me…

PS – I’m sorry about by long silence and the delays in posting some stories recently – we’re just coming to the end of ten days during which we’ve had a intermittent and very slow  Internet connection.

Stunning Norfolk wherry Solace and her pretty marshman’s punt

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marshman's punt

Norfolk wherry Solace and her marshman’s punt

Still on the Norfolk Broads, my grateful thanks go to Nigel Royall for taking me down the river from Hoveton to see Solace, a stunning pleasure wherry built in 1903, and which has been in use every year since that date.

The Royall’s business makes much of its income from hiring Broads motor cruisers and dinghies, but also does a fair amount of restoration and maintenance work, as well as the occasional small build – of which more later. The jewel of this side of the business is caring for Solace for the Rudd family, who have owned Solace since the 1940s and are only the third family to do so.

So we set off to Wroxham Broad in Nigel’s gun punt Shoveler, and while Nigel and his colleague Steve got to work putting up a shelter on  the bows of the boat, I took some shots of both Solace’s stunning exterior – it’s wonderful to see a grand old boat that is so clearly loved by its owners and carers over so many years – and one of the bows of the family’s Brown Boat or Broads One Design called Redshank.

I also took quite a few shots of the little 16ft marshman’s punt tied to her stern. Royall’s recently made this little boat for the Rudds, and Nigel and Steve describe this as their favourite small boat at the moment.

Moulded in GRP from a traditionally-built marshman’s punt Nigel built some years ago, they say that it’s a superb rower, and looking at it on the water I have no doubt that it is – and I also have little doubt there will be some others in the area who would be interested in having a similar little boat, perhaps to tow behind a Broads cruiser or tie to a dock in their garden. Would Royall’s be willing to make further examples of this pretty little boat to order? I think they might be persuaded…

There’s more on Norfolk wherries here and here (there’s quite a lot here so you’ll  need to scroll down and use the links to go back through previous pages), and more on Royall’s yard and Nigel’s small boat projects here.