Category: Small boats

Speaking of sweet little cruising yachts, take a long look at the Dallimore sloop Roach

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Speaking of sweet little cruising yachts… Take a long look at the Dallimore sloop Roach

Speaking of sweet little cruising yachts… Take a long look at the Dallimore sloop Roach Speaking of sweet little cruising yachts… Take a long look at the Dallimore sloop Roach
Roach dried out for some work; dressed all over with flags; and her roomy interior
Today, I’d like to draw your attention to the weblog Roach’s Adventures, which is listed in the blogroll in the right-hand column of intheboatshed.net. Roach is a delightful little boat and her owner’s weblog is an entertaining personal collection of photos, anecdotes, information about the boat and, in recent weeks, early sailing adventures following the main part of her recent refit.

As always with this things, I can’t help being impressed by her owner’s willingness to take on a project that’s inevitably going to be difficult, expensive and time consuming, but I have no difficulty in understanding the satisfaction he must feel.

Weblogs can sometimes be a little difficult to navigate around so here are some entries that might interest many intheboatshed readers. The key to finding your way around this one, by the way, seems to be to click on items listed in monthly archive of entries in the right-hand column.

This archive entry includes a review of the Burnham sloop design:

http://roach1948.blogspot.com/2006_09_01_archive.html

This entry looks at the design again:

http://roach1948.blogspot.com/2007_01_01_archive.html

Work on her timbers, and some material about Roach’s sisters:

http://roach1948.blogspot.com/2007_04_01_archive.html

The launch!

http://roach1948.blogspot.com/2007_06_01_archive.html

Shakedown trip:

http://roach1948.blogspot.com/2007_07_01_archive.html

Unending woodwork:

http://roach1948.blogspot.com/2007_08_01_archive.html

First real trip:

http://roach1948.blogspot.com/2007_09_01_archive.html

A sweet 15ft clinker canoe for sale in Sussex

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I don’t intend to plug our new Find a boating bargain on Ebay page every evening, but I keep finding things that intrigue me, and which I want to point out.

Tonight, it’s this: Sweet 15ft clinker-built canoe for sale at Lewes, Sussex. Who was the boatbuilder? What plans were used? Who was it for? And where was it used?

Some more photos of the Light Trow Onawind Blue, built by Ben Crawshaw

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Some more photos of the home-built Light Trow Onawind Blue, built by Ben Crawshaw

Some more photos of the home-built Light Trow Onawind Blue, built by Ben Crawshaw Some more photos of the home-built Light Trow Onawind Blue, built by Ben Crawshaw

Ben Crawshaw’s photos continue to make me very proud, and I’m delighted to know that he is so happy with the 14ft Light Trow rowing and sailing boat he built from my design.

The only problem I have is that with each post from him I find the urge to build one myself becomes stronger. I keep having to ask whether I really need eight boats (I think it would make eight – I try not to think about it), but at some point the answer will surely come back that I do, if it looks and performs as well as Onawind Blue.

Ben sails off a beach outside his family’s apartment in Tarragona, and his latest posts at his weblog The Invisible Workshop include a discussion (with videos) of his efforts to learn to handle his boat in surf, and a photoshoot. As he says, the long and lean boat copes pretty well even though the plans I made up included a warning that the boat is really meant for sheltered conditions.

I think it’s forgivable for a designer to be a little conservative in these matters, for I’d be mortified if anyone was injured or worse in a boat I designed. But on the other side of the argument, I always knew that part of the secret of this boat would be its fairly narrow form and in particular its narrow flat bottom – what it trades away is maximum carrying capacity, but what it gains is good handling under oars and in moderate waves, and of course an elegant, slippery hull. I think many of us would like a boat that fitted that description…

For the free plans and for more on the Light Trow:

http://intheboatshed.net/?s=trow