Charlie Hussey builds a modified peapod

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Seapod the peapod, built by Charlie Hussey

Here’s more news from Yvonne Green, principal of the Boat Building Academy at Lyme Regis – the third in a series about boats built by students while at the Academy.

Charlie Hussey built Seapod, a modified North American peapod originally based on a couple of existing peapod designs.

‘Frankly, at the beginning we tried to put him off the build,’ says Yvonne. ‘He had spent twenty five years in the IT industry, the last fifteen as founding director of a software services company. It was all a long way from working with wood and the build was not an easy one, a 15ft carvel double-ended sailing boat.

‘But we hadn’t reckoned on Charlie’s intelligence, tenacity and sheer hard work. We’re glad we were wrong. Seapod is a beautiful little boat. Charlie also found time, while on the course, to write a detailed weblog of the work he did. It’s at http://boatbuilding.wordpress.com He’s now back in Scotland, looking for a restoration job, and has started a new website and weblog, http://marinecarpentry.com‘

Thanks for the tipoff, Yvonne. I think it will be well worth following, and naturally I’ve added it to the intheboatshed.net blogroll, which appears to the right of this post.

Seapod was one of the best things I saw at the Beale Park Thames Boat Show this year and looking back at my files I took quite a few photos of her. As usual, click on the thumbnails below for bigger and better images. Well done Charlie!

Seapod pictured at the Beale Park Thames Boat Show

For more posts relating to the Boat Building Academy and its students, click here.

There’s a nice discussion of the peapod type in John Gardner’s book Building Classic Small Craft, which may well be available via ABE Books.

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A hellish monster from the deep

The poulpe colossal – don’t try catching this one!

I’ve been very entertained this week by this illustration from a book called Strange Sea Mysteries, published in 1926 and written by a chap called Elliott O’Donnell.

The preface is good too, and just the thing to read to children on a dark winter night:

‘In compiling this volume of unpleasant happenings connected with the sea great care has been taken to select those only that are authentic.’  July 1, 1926

The chapters include ‘The massacre on board the E A Johnson‘, ‘The Ship of Strange Smells’, ‘The Ramsgate Mystery’ and ‘The Great’The Corpse Box of Hell Gate’. Oooo-errr! I can’t find any copies at ABE Books but I’d guess that one is likely to turn up some day – and if you do it might make a good book to read out loud when afloat late one night…

These tales may be entertaining at this distance in time, but I wonder how many of these stories were real tragedies in someone’s life? Does anyone know?

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John Harris builds a Tammie Norrie

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John Harris with his Tammie Norrie, built while attending the
Boat Building Academy at Lyme Regis

Yvonne Green, principal of the Boat Building Academy at Lyme Regis has kindly sent us some photos and details of boatbuilding projects by recent students – and here’s the second in the series.

While still working in his career as a consulting engineering geologist John Harris made a kit boat with oars and spars, and attended a basic clinker boat building and repair short course at the Academy. When he retired, however, he fulfilled a life-long ambition and, as he puts it, came to the Academy to learn how to build boats properly.

While on the course he built a glued-clinker Tammie Norrie yawl with a balanced lug foresail designed by Iain Oughtred. The plans are available from Classic Marine.

See an earlier post about Ian Thomson’s Nestaway dinghy.

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