Tag: cruising

July/August Water Craft magazine preview includes free boat plans – subscribe now!

JulyAugust Water Craft cover

Water Craft’s July/August edition is a cracker

The latest issue of Water Craft sounds like a real gem – probably the best I can recall.

For the first time, editor Peter Greenfield has included free plans for a 16ft pocket gaffer from boat designer Paul Gartside. I’m intrigued!

There’s also a piece about Honnor Marine’s Devon Scaffie, the final preparation and launching of the story of a newly built gaff-rigged pocket cruiser drawn by John Leather, and Water Craft staffer Jo Moran visits the UKs sailing schools.

Beyond that… In Newport, Rhode Island, Ian Scott finds students at the International Yacht Restoration School can start their two-year course on catboats and end it on the schooner Coronet, Kathy Mansfied meets the restored Sunbeams in The Med, and in a garden in Cornwall the editor has erected moulds originally made by Connie Mense as the first step towards building Phil Bolger’s lovely 20ft Chebacco Boat. Other good things to read are a review of the latest generation of epoxies, a feature on cooking in small boats, a review of Iain Oughtred’s new book, a preview of the Thames Trad Boat Rally, a feature on Francois Vivier’s ‘Folkboat of the future’, and of course an obituary of the great North American small boat designer Phil Bolger.

See the advert in the right-hand column of this weblog to subscribe to this splendid magazine. You won’t be disappointed!

We launch our Phil Bolger Auray punt

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Our new Auray punt tender on the lake behind Jim and Eileen’s house

We finally launched our new Phil Bolger-designed Auray punt tender with the help of our good friends Jim and Eileen Van Den Bos yesterday.

Thanks Jim and Eileen, and many thanks also for the dinner!

A collaborative effort between Julie, myself and Jim, it was made to plans included in an early chapter of his book Boats With an Open Mind, published by International Marine, and bearing in mind that tenders have hard lives, it is built using 3/8in marine ply rather than 1/4in material. DIY boat builders may also be interested to know that the oars we’re using are the ones described by R D Culler and by Jim Michalak, who has published plans for them online. I can confirm that they’re quite easy to make (though you’ll want a power planer) and work every bit as well as Jim says.

Bolger based his design on the Auray punt on a description by Claude Worth in his book Yacht Cruising, which was written in the early years of the 20th century. Worth, who observed fishermen’s boats when cruising the southern coast of Brittany thought that one particular type, which he dubbed the Auray punt, would make a good tender. Awareness of the boat type redoubled in the 1990s, when Bolger wrote about the type in Boats with an Open Mind and included his design.

One reason for Bolger’s interest in this type of boat no doubt arises from the fact that it is a traditional boat that conforms closely to his well known ‘seas of peas’ analogy relating to the design of chine boats – many of Bolger’s designs including the Micro and his flat-bottomed sharpies share the shape of the Auray punt in an elongated form.

So how does this little boat perform? On flat water with one person on board, I can say it feels light and effortless to row until it reaches hull speed on its short water line. Three-up it seems to reach its design displacement, at which it rows rather more steadily but is very well behaved. Two up, it does exactly what you’d expect with a sharply rockered hull form…

I think it will make a handsome tender, particularly if I remember to put something heavy near the bows whenever there’s someone in the stern.

The only caution I would offer is that if you find a copy of the book and decided to build the boat, make a model first!

For more on the Auray punt and Worth’s description at intheboatshed.net, click here.

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Just feet from our launch site, a moorhen resolutely sits on her floating nest made from reeds

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A Paradox, up close and personal

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The Dinghy Cruising Association’s boats assembled at Beale, with
Al Law’s Paradox Little Jim in the foreground

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A highlight of the Beale Park Boat Show last year was meeting Al Law and seeing his home-built Matt Layden-designed Paradox named Little Jim close up.

Yes, this little 14-footer is the boat he sailed to the Scillies and back in company with another Paradox owner, Bill Serjeant. Some say the heavy displacement Paradox is a small sharpie, while others say it can’t be  a sharpie because it’s under 19ft. Both views are correct, of course, in the mad logic of boat nomenclature.

I say that it has an interesting n some ways it’s more like a model of a small modern ship.But whatever one calls them, they’re certainly interesting, and perhaps of particular interest to someone who has come to realise their family is unlikely to sail with them, and finds sailing a small, easily managed boat alone an agreeable alternative. See the study plans here and Al’s record of building and sailing his boat here. And if you’re wondering how a boat like this can sail, check this video and also this one of Bill’s boat Faith. Bill, I should add, had sailed his little boat right round the coast from Essex: see earlier posts.

Little Jim sailing at Beale Park

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