Patrick Hay has written to drawn attention to a fabulous YouTube video about the history of Faversham Creek including some splendid footage of the famous sideways launch and some authentic voices. It’s a great way to spend 11 minutes, particularly if you know the area.
Category: Techniques
Two Witches on show at the National Maritime Museum Cornwall
Boat Collection Manager, Andy Wyke with Witch of Worbarrow (front) and Witch of Weymouth (back). Boat Collection Manager, Andy Wyke with Witch of Weymouth.
Boat builder Ian Baird’s Witch of Weymouth replica of a Dorset crab and lobster boat is now on show at the National Maritime Museum Cornwall, together with the 100-year old original on which she’s based.
Witch of Worbarrow was built in 1902, and was used for catching lobsters and crabs up to six miles out to sea in Worbarrow Bay, near Weymouth. She is believed to be the only boat of her type still surviving, but after so many years of use is now too frail to put on the water.
While as a student at the Lyme Regis-based Boat Building Academy, Ian decided to build a replica of Witch of Worbarrow and so built Witch of Weymouth. The result is a traditional clinker built boat, with larch planks laid over oak frames.
Naturally, the new Witch is now the only boat of her kind still in use.
‘It would be impossible to recreate over 100 years of modification and wear and tear that her older sister has endured,’ says museum boat collection manager Andy Wyke. ‘Ian, however, took great pains to accurately copy the lines of the old boat and the final result is a beautiful representation.’
The two Witches will be on display together NMMC until end of December 2011.
BBA students build 10ft traditional clinker dinghy
Wally photos by Jon Palmer and Derek Thompson
Ollie Reed built this 10ft clinker dinghy while on the Boat Building Academy’s38-week course over the past winter and spring. It’s a replica of a dinghy called Barnacle belonging to instructor Mike Broome, and is built in mahogany with oak ribs and a mahogany fit-out.
While working as a labourer building building oak barns, houses and doing house repairs, he decided to do the BBA’s eight-week woodworking skills course to learn more about this kind of work – and while doing that was so impressed with what he saw going on with the 38-week long boatbuilding course that he decided to make it his next move.
Ollie felt the long course would take his skills to a higher level and open new doors – and that the skills involved in boat-building would be transferable to all sorts of things and offer a variety of opportunities in the long term.
Tim Herman helped Ollie to build the dinghy. Tim, who comes from Brighton, was previously a tree surgeon. He also plays saxophone with his band, Los Albertos.
With the end of the course nearing, Ollie decided that boat building is the industry in which he would like to work, and is now working locally while looking for a job in a traditional boat yard. Tim is currently building timber-framed houses in the Lyme area and playing with his band.