clinker – Page 24 – intheboatshed.net

Marcus Lewis restores a Troy, and plans to make clinker dinghy drawings available

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Troy class yacht Ruby restoration

Taking the lines from a 1947 9ft dinghy

Down in Fowey in Cornwall, boatbuilder Marcus Lewis has been as busy as a bee, and a few days ago wrote to tell us what he’s been doing, and about some of his plans. Here’s what he has to say:

‘I have been busy building another Fowey River class dinghy, which is due for launching in a couple of weeks and I’m also part way through a serious restoration of Ruby, a Troy class yacht built in 1930. She has needed 75 per cent of her planking replaced; lots of new parts including new horn timber, transom, transom knee, stem and stem knee, and gunwales, steamed oak timbers and keelbolts; and new ply deck. Hopefully they will be enough to see her through the next 80 years!

‘I have attached some photos of a 1947 9ft rowing dinghy that is past repair. I am taking the lines off her in order to make some moulds and to make up plans that I intend to make available.

‘Also, have cleared out the internal bits of the Percy Mitchell-built tosher and will also be taking lines off her in the near future. If there are a couple of interested people who wanted to spend the weekend helping to take off the lines, and then have a copy themselves, I would be glad of the help – and it would galvanise me into getting it done!

‘Marcus’

Thanks Marcus. That dinghy is a nice shape – I will be delighted to help you promote the plans when you have them ready. I’d have thought there would be someone out there to help you take those lines, not least because it would be an opportunity to practice something we normally only read about in books.

If you’d like to help Marcus take the lines from the tosher in his yard, contact him at Fowey, Cornwall on tel 07973 420568, email marcus@fowey9.freeserve.co.uk . His website is at www.woodenboatbuilder.co.uk.

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Is it a Humber yawl? A Thames canoe yawl? Restoration begins with detective work

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The mystery canoe yawl. Does anyone have any clues as to what this
particular boat would have looked like when launched? And what’s the
meaning of the enamel plate showing a paddle?

One of the interesting items that turned up at the Turk’s Boatyard sale wasn’t actually in the on-line auction – an old canoe yawl spotted by our good friend Steve Taylor.

The Turk’s yard folks quickly accepted his offer, and so last week he trailered the old boat home to begin the first stage of any restoration: trying to work out what the boat must have been like before age and botched modifications and repairs brought it to its current condition. This boat has certainly had it’s share of odd, badly executed changes, though the original workmanship seems to be quite fine and the materials certainly seem to have been expensive.

The boat’s 18ft in length, and came with some stories attached to it. These had it that the boat was originally made by Turk’s, that it was made for William Baden Powell, that it was depicted in Dixon Kemp and that it had been brought to the yard many years ago by a pair of elderly ladies who intended that it should be restored by the yard, though the project never went ahead.

Having looked at my copy of the book, I don’t think we’re convinced by the Dixon Kemp link, but I suppose she could have been built by Turk’s to a set of plans that might have been associated with the Humber. Does anyone have any information that would help Steve towards working out the details of his restoration please? If you do, please email me at gmatkin@gmail.com and I’ll pass it on.

More photos of the traditional wooden clinker-built fleet of fishing boats at Hastings

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As promised, some more photos from the working beach at Hastings (see my earlier set of photos). I haven’t much to say about them, except that I’m awestruck that these old wooden boats are still working in such numbers – at one time I would have said they were reducing in numbers so quickly they I thought they wouldn’t last more than a few seasons. But a few seasons later, here they are still…

These boats have hardly changed since the days of sail, and notice that there are plastic beach boats built along the old fashioned lines. Whether sailing or motoring, it seems there’s still nothing better for fishing off this coast.

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