Sean Hartman’s lashed skin on frame canoe

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Sean Hartman’s skin on frame canoe

Sean Hartman found plans for a skin on frame canoe (SOF canoe) taken from an old book some time ago.

He writes: ‘I found these plans while researching your Cinderella canoe. They seem to have been taken from an old book entitled Canoes, Dinghies, and Punts: How to build a canvas canoe by E T Littlewood. One of the photos attached shows the transom hitch lashings I used for the ribbands and later the gunwales.’

Sean has reminded me that he obtained the drawings he used to build this boat from intheboatshed.net – see them at http://intheboatshed.net/2007/02/10/build-a-canvas-canoe/

This seems like a good opportunity to mention that the scans from Practical Boat Building for Amateurs by as written by D Neison and updated by Dixon Kemp I put up some time ago include another set of drawings and instructions for making a canvas canoe.

Julie skiff sailing version

Look out for the sailing version of the Julie skiff. Click on the image for more

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Thames Traditional Boat Rally in photos

TTBR

I won’t be able to make the Thames Traditional Boat Rally this weekend but I’d like to make it one day – and no doubt Julie would love what looks like a rather genteel event.

In the meantime, I’ve been enjoying this fabulous gallery of photos. I recommend you just hit the ‘play’ button at the top right of the page and watch the boats go by for a few minutes.

A traditional Hebridean lugger built by Harris boatbuilder John Macaulay

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One of the treats of the Beale Park Thames Boat Show was seeing one of John Macaulay’s traditional Hebridean skiffs full of old-fashioned boatbuilding features.

Note the short floors and ribs, for example – they’re very much what one sees in a Viking ship or Viking canoe. What’s more, the oarlocks and oars obviously belong to a time before the fashion for adopting rowing racing practice brought in round oars in round oarlocks capable of being rotated.

For an earlier post on Macaulay, click here.

This interesting article sheds light on the man himself: John Mcaulay Boatbuilder. Of the virtues of wooden boats he says: ‘There is only one boat worth having and that is a wooden boat. They are unique; one off and beautiful. How anyone with any sensitivity could choose a plastic hull over a wooden one made by hand, I will never know.’

Here’s another newspaper piece in the Stornaway Gazette describing the restoration of a Western Isles boat.

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