Category: Boating, boats, ships and the sea

Two more Ian Proctor plastic classics: the Wayfarer and Topper

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Ian Proctor’s legendary Wayfarer

Wayfarer

Designer Ian Proctor put it this way:

‘This is what the Wayfarer design is all about, with its robust and beamy hull, its fore-and-aft buoyancy tanks that can be used for dry stowage of cruising gear, its flat, raised, draining cockpit floor, its pivoted mast lowering in a tabernacle, its sidebenches that can be removed and swung around athwartships to provide more sleeping space on the floor as well as greater night time stowage, its sunken self-draining aft deck.

‘And when we came to think of a name for this boat I called her the Wayfarer…..a wanderer, a stroller from place to place.’

Today, the 15ft 10 in long by 6ft in beam Wayfarer is one of Proctor’s most famous designs: a boat which has successfully bridged the gap between racing and cruising dinghies. It is also very popular for teaching novice sailors, as it inspires confidence with its feeling of safety and stability. He was inspired to design the boat while working on the design of racing dinghies, and could not resist building some racing performance into the design.

Today there are many sailing clubs with substantial racing fleets of Wayfarers, and there have been some seven different versions of this classic boat, from wooden hulls through to high-tech composites, and approximately 10,000 have been built.

Perhaps the most famous Wayfarer is Frank and Margaret Dye’s much-travelled and much loved Wayfarer dinghy, Wanderer, which can be seen on the ground floor of the National Maritime Museum Cornwall.

Ian Proctor’s popular Topper

Topper

While the Wayfarer may be Proctor’s most loved design, the 11ft 1n by 3ft 11in in beam Topper is probably his Continue reading “Two more Ian Proctor plastic classics: the Wayfarer and Topper”

Ships that Saved the Empire – fourth instalment

This series provides a [ad name=”intheboatshed-post”]fascinating to the way the British in general saw the world a generation before my generation was born. It’s also of great interest, I guess, to anyone whose interest in boatbuilding stretches to shipbuilding, and the maritime context of the early 20th Century – which is after all the era in which many of the boats we admire and treasure were first built.

Ships that Saved the Empire Ships that Saved the Empire Ships that Saved the Empire

Ships that Saved the Empire Ships that Saved the Empire Ships that Saved the Empire

Ships that Saved the Empire Ships that Saved the Empire Ships that Saved the Empire

Ships that Saved the Empire Ships that Saved the Empire Ships that Saved the Empire

Ships that Saved the Empire

Follow this link for more Ships that Saved the Empire!

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Ben Crawshaw’s beach at Tarragona in winter

The Invisible Workshop’s Ben Crawshaw has been taking striking photographs of the beach outside his Tarragona apartment

You may have noticed the Blogroll to the right of this post. It’s meant to be a list of friendly weblogs and websites relevant to intheboatshed.net readers. And that’s exactly what it is – some of them are very old friends indeed (aren’t they Chris?), and I find they’re well worth a look whenever I feel I’m missing the water.

So tonight I’d like to draw attention to some particular gems on the intheboatshed.net Blogroll .

Ben Crawshaw of The Invisible Workshop has been taking a series of strikingly beautiful photos of his local beach in winter. Even in Spain, it’s now too cold to use the water with any pleasure, so he’s now walking, watching the sea, photographing it and, no doubt, dreaming about the spring.

Albert Strange Association webmaster Dick Wynne has been busy putting up news items, drawings and photos relating to their hero and his very attractive designs. And some of the news has been very good indeed – it seems Blue Jay has new owners, who have become members of the ASA.

Chris Perkin’s weblog Bumble of Loch Dubh currently has just one very interesting post describing how he built his first two clinker ply dinghies. It’s long and interesting, particularly because his next boat, an award-winning Iain Oughtred Macgregor sailing canoe has become something of a legend. (For more on the Macgregor, follow this link.)

Rowing for Pleasure is Chris Partridge’s wide-ranging weblog. Check out his illuminating posts about the boats of Venice, his trip round the backside of Portsea Island, the important place of the name Snarley(y)ow, and a rather sweet photo of the young Chris at the oars of a Thames Skiff long ago.

He says ‘I’ve been looking through family photo albums and discovered this pic of me rowing stroke on the Upper Thames in 1960 with Dad at bow. The boat was a beautiful mahogany double skiff called Snarleyow. Somehow, I can’t remember a single day when it rained.’

Funny that – I too can confirm that it never rained when my dad took us out on the Thames. Dads were much cleverer in those days and I sometimes think it’s a shame my kids have to deal with someone much more Pooterish.

And now for something completely different. George in Michigan is building one of Matt Layden’s distinctive little sharpies and tells us all about it at Building an Enigma 460. Many of home boat builders are intrigued by Matt’s simple and inexpensive solo and two-person micro sailing cruisers, and by his amazing sailing feats, and I’m no exception. There are still precious few designs for boats of this kind.