Tag: Francois Vivier

Voile-aviron sailing explained by Francois Vivier


Voile-aviron sailing explained by Francois Vivier

French boating guru and gifted designer Francois Vivier explains the history and principles of voile-aviron sailing. Even if you can’t follow the French too well, it looks like the best fun! There’s an English explanation here: Francois Vivier website.

My thanks to Brian Pearson for spotting this.

March/April issue of Water Craft out soon

Water Craft March-April 2011

That’s an impressive looking lot of sail!

The March/April 2011 issue  of Water Craft will be in the newsagents from 24 February.

Inside, you’ll find:

  • Colin Buttifant’s latest Broads yacht is fast – she can hold her own with the stripped-down local racers but she’s as cosy as a country cottage down below, according to Kathy Mansfield.
  • In Pen-Hir, leading French naval architect François Vivier has created an elegantly simple cruising yacht he calls a ‘Folkboat for the Future’ – and his son’s boatyard Icari is building her in sustainable birch plywood.
  • Boatbuilding materials are rarely – if ever – cheap, so when Ian Parsons decided to build his first boat, a stitch-and-tape Stornoway 14 dayboat, in order to avoid expensive waste he bought a pre-cut kit of plywood parts.
  • When Dick Phillips took over Phil Swift’s Willow Bay Boats range, he was undecided whether to offer the popular dayboats as bare hulls for home completion. So he went to see two of Phil’s customers who had done just that..
  • Gentleman-chandler Moray MacPhail leads a fact-finding mission of East Coast luminaries to Klassieke Schepen, the Dutch traditional boat show.

This is not to forget all Water Craft’s other features, regular and irregular, and – inevitably – a reminder from the editor about the Cordless Canoe Challenge at the Beale Park Boat Show, in which contestants compete to win a bag full of brand new Makita power tools worth over £1200.

Click here to order your subscription now!

Yacht Linotte rescued from rocks by oar

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Rescue of Linotte by rowing pilot gig

This gut-wrenching but finally satisfactory set of photos records the day Francois Vivier-designed Stir Ven pocket cruiser Linotte was rescued from rocks by the rowing crew of what looks like a pilot gig.

I shouldn’t think that’s happened too many times during this century. Thank God that rowing crew happend to be in the area! Does anyone know where in France this took place please? And was the boat repairable? I hope they were insured.

My thanks go to Dale Appleton for spotting this striking series of shots.

PS – See Dale’s comment below to find a link to a Google ‘translation’ that just about explain’s what’s going on here.

PPS – See Linotte owner Fred Mouchy’s comment below to find out what happened to his yacht after her rescue.