Chris Perkins Oughtred Stickleback canoe, Storer Raid cruising dinghy and weblog

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Chris Perkin’s Stangarra, built to Iain
Oughtred’s Stickleback drawings

Chris Perkins has kindly sent me this collection of photos of his beautifully-made Stangarra canoe built to Iain Oughtred’s Stickleback plans. The quality of Chris’s boatbuilding work is widely recognised, and some readers may remember that he won the 2007 Watercraft magazine competition.

Competitive types may be secretly pleased to hear that Chris, who is one of nature’s gentlemen, has forsworn entering any further boatbuilding competitions. But some even more important news is that his Stickleback project is to feature in the next two issues of Watercraft magazine, which will be well worth looking out for on the news stands.

Chris’s message was also a reminder to me that I’ve been meaning to link to Chris’s weblog about his building projects, StrathkanChris’s Little World. The list of boats that have come out of his green shed is becoming more and more impressive. The latest project featured on his weblog is an example of Michael Storer’s solo open cruising boat, the Raid 41 – see the photo pasted below.

See the Iain Oughtred plans catalogue here.

Also, kits to build some of Oughtred’s designs are available here and in the USA from Jordan Boats.

John Welsford starts making sawdust on his Pilgrim cruising dinghy project

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John Welsford cuts out the transom for Pilgrim

It’s always useful to see how the professionals do it, so I’m pleased to link to John Welsford’s diary recording his work on this new cruising dinghy, Pilgrim.

The key points in the latest entry are testing an unknown plywood, including a routine previously unknown to me that involves burying it in mashed potato, marking out using a house-builder’s roofing square (clearly his equivalent of the dry-wall square) and a flexible batten supported by tins of food, and cutting out with an electric saw.

On the latter point, I gather he uses a veneer blade, and I must say the results are impressively free of splintering.

To read the this entry at John’s website, click here.

Longboats and life on Tristan da Cunha

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Boatbuilding on Tristan da Cunha

My researches have led me to this wonderful collection of photos of Tristan da Cunha from the 60s, 70s and 80s taken by Swedish explorer and painter Roland Svensson – I’ve been thinking about remote islands quite a bit this week following my post about South Georgia a few days ago.

Do please take a look at this collection – many show the local canvas-covered longboats being built, rowed and sailed, and, in one case, used as a home.

If you look carefully, you’ll also spot one of Sven Yrvind’s Bris boats. For more intheboatshed.net posts on Yrvind, click here.

For much more on Tristan da Cunha longboats, click here.

For more on Tristan da Cunha at the Wikipedia, click here.