Category: wooden boat

The Dinghy Cruising Association at the Beale Park Thames Boat Show

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The Dinghy Cruising Association at last year’s Beale Park Thames Boat Show

Dinghy Cruising Association member Nick Watt has written to say that his organisation will be at the Beale Park Thames Boat Show.

The DCA is usually in residence at the show, and generally provides a lot of the on-water activity in a range of small craft.

This year, says Nick, the DCA folks will have a stand ashore on which it’s hoping to present member Dave Jennings’ nearly completed Roamer – this is a specialist dinghy cruising design designed by a DCA member, the plans for which are available from the association. To find out more about the Roamer, click here and here. There will also be a pontoon providing moorings for DCA members’ boats.

A key aim of the DCA’s presence at the show is to demonstrate that there are more ways of having fun on the water in small boats than necessarily racing around the marks (hoorah to that, I say), and that a wide variety of small craft (including, hopefully, Alistair Law’s Paradox) can be used for cruising in coastal waters.

Whatever, those who drop in can be sure of a welcome.

Alfred Corry, Southwold’s fabulous old lifeboat

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One of Southwold’s best attractions for boat enthusiasts is the Alfred Corry Museum, a small museum by the harbour where the main attraction is the lifeboat named Alfred Corry itself.

The Alfred Corry came into use in 1893 and continued in service until it was withdrawn in 1918. Provided by the Lifeboat Institution, it was built at a time when it was customary to discuss the boat’s size, type and sail plan with local lifeboatmen. The result of their deliberations was that the boat should be and improved 44ft by 13ft Norfolk and Suffolk type, non-self-righting, and capable of being both rowed and sailed. It was to have five tons of water ballast (the boat itself weighed 8.3 tons), and 14 oars – though the finished boat actually had 16.

Not surprisingly, perhaps, the lifeboatmen had their new craft rigged like one of the local beach yawls and fishing punts, with a dipping lug on the foremast and a standing lug on the mizzen.

Over the two and a half decades following her launch, the Alfred Corry was launched 41 times on service, and saved 47 lives.

On retirement she had a long life as a yacht until she was abandoned on the Blackwater, from where she was rescued by John Craigie, great grandson of her original coxswain, also known as John Craigie. The Craigies began the process of repairing the boat (see a clip of her sailing as a yacht here); she has since been restored in her original lifeboat form under the auspices of a charitable trust.

The museum building itself has a story worth telling. Built in 1922 it previously stood on Cromer pier, where it was the home of that town’s lifeboat. It is said to have seen over 1000 lives saved and was of course associated with legendary and highly decorated lifeboatman coxswain Henry George Blogg.

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Marcus Lewis restores a Troy, and plans to make clinker dinghy drawings available

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Troy class yacht Ruby restoration

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Taking the lines from a 1947 9ft dinghy

Down in Fowey in Cornwall, boatbuilder Marcus Lewis has been as busy as a bee, and a few days ago wrote to tell us what he’s been doing, and about some of his plans. Here’s what he has to say:

‘I have been busy building another Fowey River class dinghy, which is due for launching in a couple of weeks and I’m also part way through a serious restoration of Ruby, a  Troy class yacht built in 1930. She has needed 75 per cent of her planking replaced; lots of new parts including new horn timber, transom, transom knee, stem and stem knee, and gunwales, steamed oak timbers and keelbolts; and new  ply deck. Hopefully they will be enough to see her through the next 80 years!

‘I have attached some photos of a 1947 9ft rowing dinghy that is past repair. I am taking the lines off her in order to make some moulds and to make up plans that I intend to make available.

‘Also, have cleared out the internal bits of the Percy Mitchell-built tosher and will also be taking lines off her in the near future. If there are a couple of interested people who wanted to spend the weekend helping to take off the lines, and then have a copy themselves, I would be glad of the help – and it would galvanise me into getting it done!

‘Marcus’

Thanks Marcus. That dinghy is a nice shape – I will be delighted to help you promote the plans when you have them ready. I’d have thought there would be someone out there to help you take those lines, not least because it would be an opportunity to practice something we normally only read about in books.

If you’d like to help Marcus take the lines from the tosher in his yard, contact him at Fowey, Cornwall on tel 07973 420568, email marcus@fowey9.freeserve.co.uk . His website is at www.woodenboatbuilder.co.uk.

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