Category: Working boats

Two new friends

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Aboriginal whaling craft used in North-Western America

I’d like to quickly point to site put up by two friends I’ve never met. The first is Bob Holtzman’s weblog Indigenous Boats, which focuses on boats outside the Western tradition, a subject that interests many boating enthusiasts. Bob has been a great pal – he’s the man who first asked me to write Ultrasimple Boatbuilding and then guided its progress through to publication. I’m not sure that every author of such a complicated book ends up feeling friendly towards his editor, but we never had a serious disagreement and I’m glad to say that some of the most important ideas behind the book came from him.

East Coast Pilot

The second link goes to Dick Holness’ site East Coast Pilot, which centres around the book East Coast Pilot – Lowestoft to Ramsgate, of which he’s co-author with Garth Cooper and Colin Jarman. The big news at the moment is that the second edition is out now in time for the 2008 sailing season – but in this transition period make sure you order the new edition rather than the old one. The link I’ve given above is the right one, but Amazon still appears to have some stocks of the 2005 edition.

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Subscribe to comments – intheboatshed.net is now a little more social

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We’d love to have more comments and discussion here at intheboatshed.net – social networking is now such a big part of many people’s daily life, that we think regular intheboatshedders should also have better ways of communicating with each other.

A small step in that direction today is a gizmo that allows readers to subscribe to comments – when you make a comment now, you will be able to subscribe to particular comment streams, so that you know when comments are added to a post of particular interest. I’d guess this will be useful to anyone interested in knowing about responses to a comment they’ve made.

Another innovation that many will find easy to follow is the Recent comments box in the left-hand column. So get commenting, and come back to see what the others are saying!

And still another is the introduction of Gravatars – little 80 by 80 pixel images that you can use to represent yourself when you comment. It could be a photo or drawing of yourself, or your boat, or whatever – but please play nicely children! Go to http://gravatar.com to set yours up.

Why not tell us what you think of all this using the comments link below? Is it a step in the right direction – or is it pants?

Gavin

Fabulous shipwreck photos

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Abandoned tugs at the Staten Island ship graveyard

Abandoned tugs at the Staten Island ship graveyard. Click on the photo to go to the source

A few days ago David Nabors put up a post linking to a gallery of riveting photos of the Staten Island ship graveyard. Follow the link from his Neversealand weblog.

Looking at this striking collection, I was reminded of the wreck of the SS Montgomery near the mouth of our Medway Estuary. This is where we sail, and naturally, the thought that 1400 tons of high explosive could conceivably fire off and flatten the surrounding docks, towns and villages lends a certain edge to the atmosphere of the place.

For the official story on the Montgomery, click here. They say that after all this time, we should be pretty safe, and I hope they’re right. There’s a nice piece on it at the BBC Essex website, and some photos near the bottom of this page.

If you’re looking for fantasy and entertainment, this page has some scraps of rumour about why it was never made properly safe, and even a writer’s film script synopsis.

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