Two festivals: the Beale Park Thames Boat Show and Scottish Traditional Boat Festival

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Scenes from previous Beale Park Thames Boat Shows

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Scenes from the Scottish Traditional Boat Festival at Portsoy (last two supplied by the organisers, but I think taken for them by Kathy Mansfield)

Two of the most important boat shows featuring wooden boats are coming up – but for some reason this year I don’t seem to be hearing much about them from anyone.

The shows in question are the Beale Park Thames Boat Show from the 4th to 6th June  near Pangbourne on the River Thames (click here for information), and the Scottish Traditional Boat Festival on the 26th-27th June at Portsoy (click here for more information).

You exhibitors out there, why don’t you get in touch and tell me what you’re going to be showing and why you’re so proud of them, and why people should go along and see your stuff – and throw in a couple of photos while you’re at it? There’s still time, it’s very easy, I can be reached at gmatkin@gmail.com, and this site gets 800+ interested visitors a day. It should be a no-brainer…

Nov-Dec Water Craft magazine preview

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Water Craft Nov-Dec 2009 320

Water Craft’s latest issue marks the beginning of the boatbuilding season, which editor Pete Greenfield says begins when the sailing season ends.

It has pretty well ended here in the temperate zone of the Northern Hemisphere, but I’m not so sure that the boat building starts quite yet. But I do think November and the run up to Christmas is a time when many of us get into some serious boat-dreaming and boat noodling – my name for the delicious process of thinking through what kind of boat we want, what we’re capable of building and what would use it for?

As usual, the latest Water Craft is full of interesting crumbs to feed our obsession.

Designer Paul Gartside presents the first of a series of complete plans, including offsets, for boats you can build; this time it’s a shapely double-ended 12ft  rowing boat for traditional carvel (or clinker) construction.

Fancy strip planking? Read how Nick Paull built the Canadian canoe that won him Water Craft’s special prize for the most professional-loooking home-built boat at the Beale Park Thames Boat Show.

More, Patrick Curry explains how he made hollow wooden spars for his traditional Dutch yacht, Bob Lloyd shows how to make a razee.

Pete  is still working on his Phil Bolger-designed Chebacco boat in the outdoors (brrr! – rather him than me!) and Dick Phillips has been sailing a Chebacco built by Connie Mense that many of us saw on show at Beale. (For an intheboatshed.net post on this boat click here.)

Jo Moran has been sailing another boat we saw at Beale, the electric day-sailer Cirrus and Kathy Mansfield has been to Portsoy’s Traditional Boat Festival.

Subscribe to Water Craft now – the drawings for that Gartside pulling  boat alone will make your investment worthwhile!

Peterborough canoe launched at the Boat Building Academy

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A's canoe after the launch

A in progress A workshop 3 Canadien Canoe

Detail A Threipland 4

Strip built Peterborough canoe built by Alexander Threipland and Russell Gale at the Boatbuilding Academy, Lyme

Boat Building Academy students Alexander Threipland and Russell Gale built this strip built 16ft Peterborough canoe, and launched it along with their fellow students’ projects back in June.

Alexander and Russell built their canoe in glass-sheathed western red cedar, with wicker seats, a cherry thwart and fore and aft decks with ebony detail. Since leaving the course Alexander has started a business, Wilton Woodworks, with Will Reed, a former student and instructor whose boat was first launched at the Beale Park Thames Boat Show this year. Hopefully we’ll hear more from them in the near future.

My thanks once again to Academy principal Yvonne Green for the photos.

For more on student launches at the Boat Building Academy, click here.

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