Tag: boat kit

Heritage Coast Sailing and Rowing start building their first lapstrake Mackinaw boat

Michigan-based Heritage Coast Sailing and Rowing members are constructing a 23ft lapstrake-built Mackinaw boat, with the aim of encouraging sailing and rowing on Lake Huron using the regional boat type.

The project weblog is here.

The Heritage Coast Sailing and Rowing project draws inspiration from the success of Scottish Coastal Rowing, and plans to organise similar rowing and social events. However, the new organisation has chosen the local Mackinaw boat type designed by Richard Pierce instead of the Iain Oughtred-designed St Ayles skiff favoured by the Scots.

Said to represent a merger of Native American canoe building and European carpentry, Mackinaw boats, were developed in the upper Great Lakes for fishing boats and carrying passengers and general freight.

Construction began in East Tawas on Lake Huron on the 16th April using a kit of cut-out planking and framing materials supplied by Alec Jordan’s Jordan Boats, which also supplies kits for the St Ayles skiffs.

Bert van Baar’s Hanze Yawl rowing and sailing boat – some computer modelling images

Bert van Baar Hanze Yawl

Bert van Baar Hanze Yawl Bert van Baar Hanze Yawl

Bert van Baar tells me that the prototype of his Hanze Yawl design drew a lot of praise at the Beale Park  Boat Show. The images above were produced using the Rhino modelling software.

Plans for the ply and epoxy boat are for sale for €199, and I gather a plan is being hatched to a kit to build the boat available by the end of the year.

Another piece of news is that in February 2012 Bert plans to run another boat building course in which the project will be to build another Hanze Yawl – he’s offering a discount of 10 per cent off the €825 cost to any British student.

See an earlier post on this boat including photos of the prototype Hanze Yawl here.

Contact Bert via the De Bootbouwschool website.

Scottish Coastal Rowing Project grows to 19 St Ayles skiff boatbuilding projects

st ayles, skiff, iain oughtred, rowing, scottish coastal rowing, alec jordan, jordan boats, plywood boats, boat kit

Rowers trying out the original St Ayles skiff at Eyemouth last weekend

Alec Jordan of the Scottish Coastal Rowing Project tells me that he received the 19th order for a St Ayles skiff kit this week.

Nineteen St Ayles skiff building projects in less than a year reflects a fantastic explosion of interest in the SCRP project since it began. See my post about legendary small boat designer Iain Oughtred drawing the plans for the St Ayles skiff for the Scottish Coastal Rowers here: Iain Oughtred draws the boat that will bring coastal rowing races back to Scotland. It appeared only in July last year!

Alec, whose business Jordan Boats makes up the kits, says that planning is well underway for the first regatta at Anstruther on 29 May, and that seven or eight completed boats are expected to be ready and on the water for the event.

He’s careful to observe that some of the teams won’t have had much time to practise rowing by that time and  however, and suggests the standard of the rowing should be a little bit higher by the time of the Portsoy Festival four weeks later, when there may be even more of the new boats competing.

Other news this week is that the first official women’s crew from Anstruther will have had its first practice.

A particularly striking development is that I gather there have even been expressions of interest in the SCRP from south of the border with England…

st ayles, skiff, iain oughtred, rowing, scottish coastal rowing, alec jordan, jordan boats, plywood boats, boat kit st ayles, skiff, iain oughtred, rowing, scottish coastal rowing, alec jordan, jordan boats, plywood boats, boat kit

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