Tag: galway hooker

Dixon Kemp’s Galway hooker

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Galway cutter from Dixon Kemp. Click on the thumbnail for a larger image

Intheboatshed readers interested in the video of Galway hookers I posted the other day will be interested in this lines drawing of a 35ft hooker taken from Dixon Kemp’s legendary Manual of Yacht and Boat Sailing.

I can confirm that it’s similar in many ways to the Boston ‘Irish Cutter’ of similar size shown in Howard I Chappelle’s book American Small Sailing Boats, but that boat has slacker bilges and slightly less displacement. It’s also interesting to compare this drawing with the Paull shrimper noted by George Holmes.

It’s difficult to get these lovely old survivals of old boat types out of one’s head, but as if to make it even harder, Daniel Newton wrote a few days ago to share some photos of a sailing model of the Boston boat that he made to sail with his kids.

Dan Newton’s model. He says it wasn’t really made for display purposes, but with those curves, I’d say it had every chance of working well as a sailing model.

Gorgeous film of Galway hookers racing

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My long-standing sailing and Internet friend Peter Vanderwaart today tipped me off about this Youtube clip of a collection of Galway hookers, and cheered me up no end.

I gather it was made for a television series featuring the boats broadcast on TG4, but I haven’t been able to work out how to see the programmes via the station’s website. But aren’t these heavy, shapely wooden boats just the bee’s knees?

There’s an enthusiastic few paragraphs about the hookers at the Sailing Anarchy post for today, which seems a nice if slightly surprising thought when you consider the modern, high-tech kind of boating that site usually features. It’s not somewhere I link to very often.

Thanks Peter!