Category: wooden boat

Latest Nick Smith clinker motor launch afloat

2011 Nick Smith motor launch Bella is launched

Bella is afloat.

Intheboatshed.net followed the Nick Smith traditional clinker motor launch its building with a series of posts – For more posts at intheboatshed.net on this project, click here, here, here, here, here, and here.

This is what Nick had to say about the launch:

‘See the attached photo of Bella launch day on the 17th April, at Hayling Island.

‘All went well: she didnt make any water, floated well to her waterline, and spot on with three people on board, I will be borrowing her back from the owner for the Beale Park Boat Show at Pangbourne on the 10/11/12th June – so be there!

‘Cheers, Nick’

I certainly do plan to be at Beale.

Nick’s now open for a new commission for the coming season.

The photo on the River Yealm below shows an earlier 17ft example of his work. Lisa is now three seasons old and looking good for 2011 with smart blue antifouling, a white boot top and plenty of thick varnish.

 

2011 17ft Nick Smith motor launch Lisa

Nick comes from Devon, learned boatbuilding the traditional way and specialises in new builds in clinker and carvel for sail, motor and rowing power from 8ft to 28ft with a special emphasis on West Country style and design, and also takes on repairs and refits from 25ft to 50ft. These days he’s based in Hampshire, and can be contacted by email at nick_smith_boatbuilder@yahoo.com and by phone on 07786 693370.

Legendary work and cruising boat designer William Garden passes away

Bill Garden plank on edge cartoon

‘I love to design boats. Rather design boats than eat. Often do. So let’s get going on the perfect ship before you are so old that you have to be carried aboard.

‘I have drawers full of stock plans and a head full of boats that want to be launched.

‘Whether you want the ultimate in a motor or sailing yacht or a one cylinder clam hound, I can fix you up with a plan to suit.’

So wrote the legendary William Garden, who died last week. Born in 1918, he was a Canadian boat designer who drew boat plans for many hundreds of craft in a long career, including both yachts and workboats, and anything in between.

Many of them as attractive as you’ll find anywhere.

He also created a distinctively salty and positive style in writing about his plans and the boats that could be built from them – a style that was very much in keeping with the confident and determined young man we see in the photo on this biographical Mystic Seaport web page. He also had a puckish sense of charm and humour, which is clear from the salty little cartoons he often added to his drawings and plans – such as the one above showing a contented pipe-smoking fella getting progressively less comfortable as his plank-on-edge yacht heels further and further…

Garden must have been quite a character.

There’s a particularly nice article here, and a list of Garden designs held by the Mystic Seaport Museum here.

My thanks go to Peter Vanderwaart for alerting me to Bill Garden’s passing.

Whitstable smack Emeline repainted and looking wonderful

Faversham smack Emeline at Hollowshore bows

Faversham smack Emeline in the shed at Hollowshore stern Faversham smack Emeline in the shed at Hollowshore bilges Faversham smack Emeline in the shed at Hollowshore port bow

The Whitstable smack afloat, Emeline has just been repainted and I was lucky enough to take some photos for publication, with kind permission of the owners and the yard.

I guess two of the main points of interest here are her hard bilges, which enable her to sit up on sand and mud, unlike other smacks from further up the coast, and that wonderful finish, which is the talk of those local boaters who have seen it. Part of the secret, I gather, is using paint conditioners – but from what people tell me about how they’ve tried the same thing without success, I’d guess there’s more to know about achieving this kind of result than what kind of additives to mix with the paint.

The story of how this traditionally built wooden boat of 1904 was discovered near Malaga in 1992 and brought back to Kent for be restoration is fascinating, and can be read at the simplywhitstable.com website.