Tag: boat building academy

Teignmouth and Shaldon Museum opens Morgan Giles exhibition ‘Launched in Teignmouth’

Morgan-Giles exhibition at Teign and Shaldon Museum 1 Morgan-Giles exhibition at Teign and Shaldon Museum 2

A special exhibition at the Teign Heritage Centre is celebrating the people and work of the Morgan Giles shipyard from 1921 to 1968.

The exhibition will be held at the Teign Heritage Centre from Friday 8th March to Friday 5th April 10am to 4.30pm from Tuesdays to Saturdays.

On display will be some Morgan Giles plans including some from pre-1914 days, racing yachts in the ‘20s and‘30s, and luxury motor cruisers of the ‘50s and ‘60s.

Other items will be specialist craftsmen’s tools, archive photographs, models and oral histories. There will be a featured display about the Lady Cable built in 1923, and other important boats, such as the Hispania yacht built for the King of Spain.

On Saturday 23rd March at 11am there will also be a free talk about the Lady Cable from Lyn Yeoman of the Lady Cable Trust. The Lady Cable is a pleasure boat that went to Dunkirk and was apparently the last small boat to leave the beaches.

Morgan Giles were internationally famous for the elegant design of their boats and very high quality of workmanship, having employed highly skilled craftsmen, shipwrights, engineers, joiners and riggers, many of whom are remembered in Teignmouth today.

For visitor details please see the Teign Heritage website www.teignheritage.org.uk or phone 01626 777041.

I’m grateful to the Boat Building Academy folks for letting me know this was going on. Never ones to miss an opportunity (good for them) they added that BBA student Benjamin Charny is currently building a Morgan Giles-designed clinker-built dinghy – there’s a photographic record of the boat going together here.

Benjamin’s project was recently mentioned by a piece in the Western Morning News: ‘In another corner Benjamin was making a tiny rowing boat: ”It’s eight foot long and I have taken it from a West country design by Morgan Giles. He built the original in the 1930s for his kids and I got the lines from the Falmouth Maritime Museum.

”This will be the only copy around. I have loved doing it.”

Boat Building Academy students build an Iain Oughtred Humble Bee dinghy

Humble Bee clinker built dinghy photo by Emma Brice 1

 

Humble Bee clinker built dinghy photo by Emma Brice 2 Humble Bee clinker built dinghy photo by Rebecca Joseph

Photos by Emma Brice and Rebecca Joseph

Boat Building Academy students Kyle Paternoster and Rob Hounslow made a traditionally-built clinker pram dinghy to plans by Iain Oughtred and sailed it for the first time on their course’s student launch day.

The 7ft 9in dinghy made to Oughtred’s Humble Bee design is planked in sweet chestnut with a Dorset-grown oak centreline and fore and aft transoms, and green oak ribs.

Her name, Rubee, is a play on words based on Kyle’s grandmother’s name, Ruby, and Humble Bee. The red sails were made by students on a weekend sail-making workshop at the academy run by Jeremy White, managing director of Elvstrom Sails.

Kyle started work as an engineer on one of the biggest yachts in the world the week after leaving the Academy – the role is based on three-month rotations, and will allow Kyle to work as a boat builder in the months he is at home, building and selling his own boats.

He’s a qualified dinghy instructor and in his spare time plans to teach members of his family to sail in Rubee.

Rob, who worked with Kyle on the build, grew up around water on his father’s fish farm on the River Kennet. Rob had done almost every job there is around a fish farm, including making jetties and bridges and working with green oak, but he wanted to master a craft and so decided to join the Academy to learn boat building.

Rob will be using his newly acquired skills at Cockwells Modern and Classic Building at Falmouth, where he will be working alongside fellow BBA graduate Jack Livesey, who graduated in June 2012.

The BBA website has a photographic diary of Rubee’s construction.

 

Just look at this beautiful half-sized sgoth niseach built by BBA student Mairi Macleod

Mairi46

I’m blown away by Boat Building Academy student Mairi Macleod’s photo log of the building of her half-size sgoth niseach. This boat that Mairie built is 16ft 6in compared with the full-sized boats of 30ft.

Sgoth niseach means ‘Ness-type skiff’, Ness being the northernmost part of the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides where the boats were used for fishing.

The boat is to be called Runag, which is Gaelic for Little sweetheart, and was planked in Alaskan yellow cedar on oak, with the planks and ribs fastened with traditional rose head copper nails.