Category: Boating, boats, ships and the sea

14ft flattie skiff Sunny – new free boat plans from Gavin Atkin in the making

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Sunny skiff – as usual, click on the thumbnail for a
larger and more useful image

We’ve worked hard this weekend, what with the shopping, the boat maintenance and the gardening. But in response to one or two requests, I did manage to find a few hours to start work drawing up a little 14ft skiff for those who find the Julie skiff too large and the 12ft Ella skiff too small.

Julie is my wife and Ella is my daughter, so this one’s named after my dear mother, Sunny – she was almost always known by this name, though the name on her birth certificate was the much more exotic Sunya.

Anyway, if you’re interested in a quick and simple stitch and glue flattie skiff in the style of the Ella and the Julie but at 14ft, keep your eyes on intheboatshed.net!

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A Mouseboat in a bottle

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Julie and I were very pleased and moved this week to receive a genuinely unique gift – this beautifully made Mouseboat in a bottle made and presented by Mouseboat builder and regular Mouseboat Yahoogroup contributor Les Brown.

He’s certainly made the smallest and cutest Mouseboat I’ve seen, and in the best traditions of these things, I’m utterly baffled about how he got the thing inside the bottle.

Many thanks Les – you can be sure we’ll treasure it!

Mouseboats are a series of small and simple homemade boats constructed to free plans available from the Mouseboat Yahoogroup. More than 200 of the boats have been built and registered.

The astonishing Portuguese muleta

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The astonishing Portuguese muleta fishing boat
– download a larger image here

Rooting around in my pile of old books, I found this illustration, which reminded me of a model of the muleta I saw as a boy in the London Science Museum, which has a fantastic collection of models of craft from around the world.

Here’s the blurb from the book in which I found the illustration, The Story of Sail by GS Laird Clowes and Cecil Trew. It’s well worth reading, for as well as being an interesting historical survival it seems the boat evolved for a kind of drift netting, and that the rig is a highly adjustable means of adjusting both the rate of drift and the boat’s balance before the wind as it slides gently to leeward.

It also suggests that anyone who once seens one of these boats is unlikely to ever forget the sight, and it seems to be true – even when the sighting concerned is only of a model.

Here’s a photo of the Science Museum’s model.

See illustrations of muletas and similar boats here and here.  There’s an excellent description and a small photo in a newsletter published by European Maritime Heritage. I haven’t been aware of this group up to now, but its website says it is a non-governmental organisation for private owners of traditional ships, as well as for maritime museums and other interested bodies.

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