Category: Techniques

The Waveneys of the Norfolk Broads

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Waveney One-Designs in action

Waveney One-Designs in action. Photo from Alan Davies
of the Museum of the Broads

Alan Davies of the Museum of the Broads has kindly agreed to allow us to republish a short article telling the story of the Waveney boats that he wrote for the museum’s newsletter. Many thanks Alan!

Waveney One Designs

Length 20ft, beam 6ft 2in, draft 2ft 11in, sail area 290sqft, gunter rig

Designer W S Parker

The Waveneys were designed in the early 1920s by William Parker of Oulton Broad, after the Waveney Sailing Club proposed to have a one-design boat. The first four or so boats were built along similar lines and developed into a consistent set of drawn plans in 1928.

The first seven were built before World War II and, instead of sail numbers, had the letters A-H in alphabetical order of build. This was later changed to numbers with a ‘W’, both in red. They are all named after wild marsh flowers.

The first six were built by the Evans Yard at Kirkley. Horace Jenner built Number 7 and Number 8 was built at Richards’s Shipyard. The rest were built by Tim Flower and his sons in a boat shed in their Lowestoft garden with exception of Number 24, which was built by Selwyn Watson.

WODs are occasionally mistaken for the more numerous Yare & Bure One Designs, but an easy way to tell them apart is the red sail numbers of the WODs and the fact they have two shrouds on each side as opposed to the Y&BODs’ single shroud. Another difference, only seen when the boat is out of the water, is that the keel is a ballasted metal plate rather than a ballasted wooden one.

By the early 1990s many of the 26 boats had already had to undergo major restoration and it was felt that as with the Y&BOD and the Broads One-Design the cost of building and maintaining new wooden boats would be too expensive. so local boat builder Jimmy Toplis decided to take a mould of his WOD, Penny Royal. By September 1994 the first GRP Waveney, Celandine (Number 27) was launched.

The new boat had to be assessed to make sure its performance was similar to the wooden boats, and once the weight was corrected the new boat’s performance was on a par with the older boats.

To date five more GRP boats have been built, taking the numbers to 32, with orders for two more. One of them has gone to Lake Windermere, and interest has been expressed in developing the hull as a small two-berth Broads cruiser, as has happened with the Thurne Class, which is based on the Y&BOD’s hull.

The Beale Park Thames Boat Show is this weekend – so try not to miss it!

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Beale Park Thames Boat Show

Photo courtesy of the Beale Park Thames Boat Show organisers

Motor cruiser and Wharram catamaran at the Beale Park Thames Boat Show

Contrasting boats on the water at the Beale Park Thames Boat
Show – an elderly motor cruiser and a Wharram catamaran.
Thanks to boatbuilder Fabian Bush for the photo

Falmouth quay punt drawn by Percy Dalton

A newly discovered Percy Dalton drawing of a Falmouth quay punt
found by the folks at boating booksellers Dalton Young

Earlier today I found myself reflecting that quite a few of the people who contribute to intheboatshed.net are likely to be at the Beale Park Thames Boat Show this weekend. Naturally we’re planning to be there on Saturday and looking forward to meeting as many of them as possible.

I’d encourage any reader who can get there to make the trip as well. For boat building and boat restoration enthusiasts, part of the success of Beale Park is that it’s a show that works on many levels.

Those who admire exquisite craftsmanship will find it, while those who need to be encouraged to build their first simple plywood boat will find that as well.

There are also stalls selling recycled bits of boats and old books, cut-price chandlery, smart bronze bits and pieces, top-quality hardwoods and plywood, sophisticated glues and resins. And then there are the sociable membership organisations. The Eventide Owners, the Dinghy Cruising Association and the rest, are all there to talk with show visitors, and they’re easily interesting enough to make for an interesting conversation.

But on second thoughts perhaps I won’t be able to stand and talk for too long – after all, I’ll be making sure my camera is full of photographs to keep this weblog going through the winter months!

Gunning punts in Norfolk and Essex

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Gunning punt at the Museum of the Broads, Stalham

Gunning punt at the Museum of the Broads, Stalham Gunning punts at the Museum of the Broads, Stalham Gunning punt at the Museum of the Broads, Stalham

Gunning punts at the Museum of the Broads. The smaller boat is styled after
a gun punt but is too small for the purpose.

Intending to pick up on another recent theme from Chris Partridge’s Rowing for Pleasure weblog, I took some photos of gunning punts at another of my favourite small boating museums, the splendid Museum of the Broads at Stalham.

So imagine my surprise when I found he has only today put up a series of photos virtually identical to mine. Ah well… Great minds and all that. I trust he won’t be offended if I put mine up also.

The folklorist, antiquarian and scholar Reverend Sabine Baring-Gould lived at Mersea in Essex for ten years, and Hervey Benham quotes Baring-Gould describing the business of gunning like this:

‘At a former period wild-fowl shooting was largely practised by the [Mersea] islanders, who had their punts painted grey… In these shallow boats they lay for many hours at night and contracted both ague and rheumatism. My impression was that generations afflicted with these complaints acquired in the marshes had lowered the physique and mental development of the islanders. When the east wind blew the wild ducks and geese came in flocks near the coast where they were surrounded and shot.’

Call me a pessimist, but I can’t help thinking this tactic of surrounding and shooting the birds must have led to some nasty incidents in which some of the boatmen must also have been injured.

In a way, gunning punts are still used in Norfolk on a regular basis – for they were adopted for racing and developed into the scary Norfolk Punt, a high-powered sailing racing machine still sailed regularly on Barton Broad. But that’s another story that I’d like to tell one day.

PS There’s an interesting postscript to Chris’s Rowing for Pleasure post on gunning here.