Category: Techniques

Yachting archive to preserve sailing’s heritage launched by Clare Francis

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bnya_logo

Growing concern about loss of historically significant information has prompted the formation of a new charity, the British National Yachting Archive.

If you can remember web addresses, it’s at: http://www.bnya.org.uk.

The launch itself took place at the London Boat Show yesterday evening and was announced officially by Association of Yachting Historians president, novelist and sailor Clare Francis.

The new organisation says it hopes to:

• Promote the preservation of sailing’s heritage
• Establish a knowledge base of yachting heritage and provide public access
• Facilitate the presentation and display of yachting heritage at appropriate museums and other organisations
• Provide grants, bursaries and scholarships for those who would advance knowledge and understanding of yachting heritage

It also hopes to find homes for private collections, many of which have no future once their owner passes on and are frequently lost.

‘It also hopes to find homes for private collections,
many of which have no future once their owner
passes on and are frequently lost.’

The Archive will represent a broad definition of sailing including dinghy sailing and motor boating, as well as all the support industries. It will be a a virtual archive with web-based resources that identify and link to information wherever it resides, including clubs, classes, museums, businesses and the media.

As much of material is not stored or catalogued to archival standards, help and advice will be provided where necessary, and in the longer term, the BNYA hopes to digitise large amounts of material to facilitate easy access.

The BNYA is a membership-based charity, with membership fees used to further the work of the Archive and jointly fund grant-aided projects – chairman David Elliott says that there is a great deal of catching up to do, so membership needs to build quickly.

Some of the first research projects will be to collect oral histories, and the BNYA has a growing list of people it feels should be interviewed as soon as possible. That makes a lot of sense to me, as it seems clear that too many people have passed on without having their memories recorded.

Download a pdf explaining the BNYA’s background here.

Building a birch bark canoe

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birch-bark-canoe

Traditionally-built 26ft North American birch bark canoe

I was very struck by this super post over at Duckworks explaining how Adam Wicks-Arshack became apprenticed to a birch bark canoe  builder. He learned his skills building this impressive 26-footer.

What John Welsford does with mashed potato

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pilgrim2

The transom for John Welsford’s new cruising dinghy design, Pilgrim. Read
about this interesting small boat at his Pilgrim Diaries

Well known New Zealand boat designer, builder and cruiser John Welsford has written tell us about a technique he has developed for testing the rot-resisting properties of unknown timber and plywood:

‘Hi Gav,

‘I thought that you might like to put my comment about mashed spuds in connection with rot testing.

‘Just to stir things up a bit you understand!

‘Rot is due to fungus and needs food, moisture and oxygen in order to grow and spread. Cut off one or more of those and you don’t get rot.

‘Also, rot, like most fungi, spreads far more rapidly in warm conditions.

‘My test method involves placing the sample on a dish in the warmth of the kitchen, and covering it with mashed potato. Potatoes are almost all starch, a form of sugar, and mashing it up with milk brings even more sugars. Mashed potatoes also hold moisture and, being light and fluffy (if made properly) they admit oxygen. So a layer of mashed ‘taties accelerates the rate at which rot takes hold and multiply and is a workable if unusual method of testing wood for susceptibilty for fungal decay. You should see what I do with raspberry jam!

‘Yours, John’

Many thanks John. I might try it some time, though I’d be a bit concerned about this as a practical test. Done properly, it would demand not just well made mash, but would also require brewing up quite a number of different samples. It’s a very interesting idea, but could also be a recipe for trouble in the kitchen that could test more than a piece of wood!

I wonder whether it would work if conducted where no-one goes, round the back of the shed in the summer, and under a plastic sheet?

For more intheboatshed.net posts relating to John Welsford’s boat plans, click here.

For more on John’s plans, see his website; also, there’s a nice new weblog about building a small cruising yacht to his Fafnir plans here.