Tag: boatbuilders

Cooking the traditional way aboard the Light Trow Onawind Blue

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Cooking on board Ben Crawshaw’s Onawind Blue

I don’t know about you, but I find just looking at this photo of Ben’s dinner cooking on board his Light Trow named Onawind Blue sets my senses off. I’m sure I can smell this dish as it cooks.

To quote Ben:

‘According to the great Catalan writer Josep Pla (1897-1981) fish stew as cooked and eaten by fishermen is the most ancient of Mediterranean dishes. Regardless of the religion, the rulers or the nationality of the neighbouring shores fish stew has been a constant.

‘A simple dish with a long history that, marrying fish, onion, garlic, tomato and potato in the pot, produces sustaining, sumptuous yet delicate fare. From this fundamental marriage the Provencal bouillabaisse was born and also the less elaborate suquet of Catalonia, a dish that has attained an almost legendary status (at least on its home shores) and one that usually carries a price tag to match.’

Find out how to cook it – the recipe is simple and you’ll find it at Ben’s excellent weblog The Invisible Workshop.

For more on trows in general and the Light Trow in particular, including boatbuilding plans etc, click here.

A Selway Fisher Northumbrian coble launched at the Boat Building Academy

This time they show Neil Bailey’s boat built to the Selway Fisher Northumbrian coble plans.

‘Neil, a Royal Marine for 22 years before coming on the course, wanted to find a new career working creatively with wood. With his main partner on the build, journalist Mike Lowson, he built the the boat with a solid mahogany sheer strake and fitted the boat out in sapele.

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Neil Bailey on launch day – and doesn’t it look like a real celebration!

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As promised, Boat Building Academy principal Yvonne Green has sent us some more photos from the big student launch day at Lyme in December.

This time they show Neil Bailey’s boat built to the Selway Fisher Northumbrian coble plans.

‘Neil, a Royal Marine for 22 years before coming on the course, wanted to find a new career working creatively with wood.  With his main partner on the build, journalist Mike Lowson, he built the the boat with a solid mahogany sheer strake and fitted the boat out in sapele.

‘In the entire 38 weeks of the course we didn’t see Neil look half as happy as when he opened the champagne and took to the water for the first time.’

Yvonne addss that the Academy has been busy recently with a wooden boat restoration course that included staff from some of the leading museums. Apparently,  the eight on the course were keen to come back and suggested the folks at Lyme should think of running more courses on restoration. The hot news right now is that intermediate and advanced wooden boat restoration courses are being planned, probably next year.

The ‘coble’ itself seems a very attractive and useful boat, but I’m not sure how much it resembles a traditional cobles: click here for a post about cobles at intheboatshed.net. For more intheboatshed.net posts mentioning cobles, click here.


How a reader helped to create the best intheboatshed.net post of 2008

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Stromness from the pass – the point where Shackleton, Crean
and Worsley first saw safety. Click on the thumbnail above
for a larger photo

I’d like to enter The grim grandeur of South Georgia for The Tillerman’s competition Simply The Best, which seeks to celebrate the vibrant diversity of boating weblogs.

This post is simply the best because it connects us to the past, draws attention to important but little-known boat-related information, was the development of a series and showed intheboatshed.net readers contributing from across the world.

This combination of history, relevance to the present day and reader engagement is what makes intheboatshed.net worth the time and effort I put into it. In particular, the contributions of people such as Jeff Cole and a host of boatbuilders and boating enthusiasts make intheboatshed.net what it is – believe me, I don’t do it for the Google Adsense income!