Category: Techniques

Skol ar Mor – a new boat building school in the Loire-Atlantique

This photo shows their first student launch day of a new international boat building school at Mesquer in the Loire-Atlantique department of France – François Vivier told us last year that it was being established and that he was associated with it.

Skol ar Mor is led by a boat builder from the USA, Mike Newmeyer, and recently celebrated the opening of its premises, a restored salt warehouse.

Read all about it at François’ weblog Boats to make the sea more beautiful – the relevant posts are here and here.

By the way, the sweet little grey skiff in the photo is a Vivier design – the Charlotte skiff.

Also, see videos here, here and here.

 

What was it like to cross the Thames Estuary a hundred years ago?

The Thames Estuary was different in many ways a century ago, but the charts they had look very well made to me

In many ways, navigation was far more complicated and anxious a hundred years ago, as a nice article by Roger Gaspar in the latest issue of the online magazine East Coast Sailor shows.

There have been a lot of changes over the past century or so. We all know what a blessing electronic navigation aids have been, not least in giving us an accurate position at the push of a button. Despite the general decay and decline in almost everything in life (I am middle-aged, after all), I can’t help thinking that by taking some of the worry out of it, modern navigation has made sailing a lot more fun and less tiring than  it used to be.

Roger Gaspar’s East Coast Sailor article compares the past and present and comes up with some surprises, including beacons that seem to have been placed for training purposes rather than navigation, and the news that the Black Deep, now the main channel for big shipping, hasn’t always been in such regular use.

And despite extensive reading of the old sailing writers, I hadn’t grasped how big a change it was when the old lightships were replaced by buoys, or how much the sandbanks and channels have moved and changed.

Speaking of writers from a century or so ago, I’ve been greatly enjoying Sir Herbert Alker Tripp’s book Shoalwater and Fairway (now available from Lodestar), in which he talks about the difficulties of navigation in his time, and describes a voyage in the opposite direction to Roger Gaspar’s.

By the way, did you know that as well as being a super writer and gifted illustrator and artist, Alker Tripp also had a distinguished career as an senior police official? Quite the polymath, Tripp – it’s difficult to imagine how he found time to work on all the activities in which he excelled.

BBA students build a strip-planked version of Iain Oughtred’s Gannet sailing dinghy

Boat Building Academy students Anna Raussmüller and Richard Jolly built this 14ft 5in by 5ft 8in beam sailing dinghy based on Iain Oughtred’s Gannet design.

However, the boat is strip-planked in red cedar rather than the glued clinker that Oughtred specified. Anna made the change because she felt the strip planking looked more modern and it is supposed to be faster.

‘Yes – Skye is fast and manoeuverable,’ says Anna. ‘It was great to sail her at the launch at Lyme Regis.’

Anna called the boat Skye. ‘She is named after the Isle of Skye, an island I am very fond of, and also the home of the boat’s designer Iain Oughtred.

‘Her name is also a reminder of my time at Lyme Regis, when I would walk to the college each day always seeing a different sky.’

Anna is from Switzerland and runs a graphic design business. She has enjoyed rowing for many years, and became interested in boat building after meeting a builder of racing rowing boats based near to her rowing club.

She then restored a 50-year old wooden Stämpfli single scull racing boat– an experience she greatly enjoyed, and which prompted her to look for a boat building course.

‘The project at the BBA was great and life-enhancing. Skye now belongs to my sister and myself. We will sail her on Lake Zürich. She will attract a lot of attention. There is no other boat with a gunter rig and cream coloured sails on the lake.’

The BBA website has some photos of Skye during building.

Anna is now working for Stämpfli in Zürich – the original source of her interest in boat building.

Richard decided to have a career change after working for many years as a self employed painter and decorator. Originally from South London, Richard enjoys travel and has lived in Australia, New Zealand, travelled around India, and recently joined Anna in transporting Skye to Zurich.

He now has a job with Spirit Yachts, of Ipswich.

The photos below are of Lake Zürich and the workshop where Anna is now working.