Category: Small boats

The horizons of Ben Crawshaw

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It’s been an entertaining and cheering couple of days here at Intheboatshed.net Towers. Following yesterday’s jolly boat-nut’s outing to Turk’s boatyard at Chatham, today brought two nice pieces of news relating to the Light Trow: first that another Light Trow is about to be built in Australia, and, second, that a TV documentary about Ben Crawshaw’s boat building and sailing adventures made by a Catalan television company is now available for all of us to see over the Internet.

Click here to go to Ben’s own weblog post about the documentary including a link to the programme itself. It’s an entertaining and nicely shot piece of work, even if like me you can make out only a few words.

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POST-SCRIPT The drawings for the full-sized Light Trow Mk2 are now close to complete. If you’re interested in building this boat email me at gmatkin@gmail.com, and I’ll send you them – but only if you promise not to share them without my permission!

Photos of the traditional wooden clinker-built fleet of fishing boats at Hastings

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Quite a few of the traditional wooden clinker built boats survive among the beach-based fishing fleet at Hastings

These photos are part of a collection of shots I took of the beach boat fishing fleet at Hastings in the Easter Bank Holiday sunshine earlier this week. I’ll put up some more in the coming days.

Looking back, this is the first time I’ve photographed the boats in just over three years and I’m impressed that there seem to be almost as many of the traditional wooden clinker built beach boats as there were on my last visit. It’s particulary pleasing to see how many of the smaller boats are now being cared for and used by the local sea angling society, which seems to include some seriously hard working enthusiasts. Long may they prosper!

For more intheboatshed.net posts relating to Hastings and its fishing fleet, click here. I think you’ll find some interesting material.

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Scottish Coastal Rowing Project grows to 19 St Ayles skiff boatbuilding projects

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Rowers trying out the original St Ayles skiff at Eyemouth last weekend

Alec Jordan of the Scottish Coastal Rowing Project tells me that he received the 19th order for a St Ayles skiff kit this week.

Nineteen St Ayles skiff building projects in less than a year reflects a fantastic explosion of interest in the SCRP project since it began. See my post about legendary small boat designer Iain Oughtred drawing the plans for the St Ayles skiff for the Scottish Coastal Rowers here: Iain Oughtred draws the boat that will bring coastal rowing races back to Scotland. It appeared only in July last year!

Alec, whose business Jordan Boats makes up the kits, says that planning is well underway for the first regatta at Anstruther on 29 May, and that seven or eight completed boats are expected to be ready and on the water for the event.

He’s careful to observe that some of the teams won’t have had much time to practise rowing by that time and  however, and suggests the standard of the rowing should be a little bit higher by the time of the Portsoy Festival four weeks later, when there may be even more of the new boats competing.

Other news this week is that the first official women’s crew from Anstruther will have had its first practice.

A particularly striking development is that I gather there have even been expressions of interest in the SCRP from south of the border with England…

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