Tag: iain oughtred

BBA students build a Iain Oughtred Guillemot

The Boat Building Academy autumn student launch marking the end of the BBA’s 38-week long course this year took place just two days after much of the south-west of England had been battered by winds and a month’s worth of rain.

But still the sun rose, the winds tempered, and the folks gathered to celebrate the students’ achievements, and to mark the Academy’s 20th boat launch. They seem to be lucky with the weather, the BBA.

The eight students came from a range of nationalities, backgrounds and ages from 18 to 60.

On each course a range of boats are built using a number of construction techniques in order to give students the biggest breadth of knowledge and hands-on experience possible.

This year, the first boat into the water was an Iain Oughtred Guillemot built by students Harry Evans, Toby Whillock and Connor Pannell with contributions from the rest of the group.

The boat, named The Last Leg  is cold moulded, with a strong and light monocoque structure.  The lightweight laminated transverse floors, which are thin and low profile, serve a double purpose as structural support and bearers for the sole boards.

Often in a traditional boat the thwart riser is one continuous longitudinal structural member that gets steamed in, but on Harry’s boat the thwarts sit on single shorter pieces of timber.

In the area of the gunwhales, the boat’s sheerstrake was vacuum bagged in place to ensure good and consistent cramping pressure on the veneer while the glue cured.

The gunwhale follows the style of traditionally built clinker built boats, but with blocks in place of the timber ends to reinforce as well as add an aesthetic appeal. This was achieved by gluing blocks to the inside of the planking at the sheerline.  The blocks hold the inwhale off of the planking adding structural strength to the gunwhale, an area of the boat which will see plenty of knocks and wear over its lifetime.

The hull was a brilliant red,  painted around the transom taking in the plank ends.  The thwarts and stern sheets are oak.  Sole-boards are Douglas fir and the mast and spars spruce.

The dinghy is same design, but very different both in construction and look to the clinker-built Guillemot student Regina Frei built during the September 2015 course.

Harry left school at 16 knowing he wanted to work with his hands but not knowing in which industry. He worked for a time for Permateek, a Poole Company specialising in synthetic boat decking and teak removal, and during this time realised he wanted to work in boat building – but his progress was stopped in its tracks by a serious motorbike accident in 2014, in which he sustained a bad leg injury.

Although he has now completed the course, he has to undergo more leg operations before he can properly start his career.

Toby is a scientist and former Chartered Engineer, with experience in the mining, steel, and offshore industries.  Toby wants to leave the laboratory behind him and head to a boatyard.  Connor, who had originally thought he would become and engineer, begins work for Spirit Yachts in February.

BBA student launch December 2015

Becky Brown at the Boat Building Academy has written with some photos and more details from the December 2015 student launch. (See Pete Bromwich’s shots published here a few days ago.) She writes:

‘We had some terrible weather this week but yesterday morning, just as the boats were being walked to the harbour, the sun broke through the clouds and the wind calmed enough for us to launch two of the four boats built by the class of March 2015.

The two boats that launched were a cold moulded, bright-finished 18ft7in Robert Steward electric motor launch, Barbara Anne, and a traditional clinker 16ft Norwegian faering built from plans by Iain Oughtred.

‘The two larger boats built by the class are a 22ft7in Iain Oughtred Kotik with a two-berth cabin, and a replica of a Herreshoff 12 1/2. However, these could not be launched – due to some awful luck several members of the class had to take time out of the course – one student was hospitalised after a car crash, another had to spend time in Austria after his father had a serious accident, and two others had to spend weeks away due to illness.

‘As a result the two boats weren’t quite ready and, with the bad weather, it was decided that they should not be launched. They were big projects and visitors invited to an open workshop after the launch could see at close quarters the beauty of the enormous amount of work put into them.

‘When the two unlaunched boats are finally put in the water in Australia and Austria, their respective homes, students Andreas and Steven have promised to send video.

‘It was a great day nevertheless, and thank you to everyone who made the day such a splendid celebration.’

For more photos of the boats completed and in build, click here.

BBA student launch December 2015

My old pal Pete Bromwich nipped along to the Boat Building Academy student launch this week and took this small avalanche of shots…

I’ll be posting again shortly with some more sent by the BBA folks, but since Pete got in first, I thought I’d publish them in order – so thanks Pete!

Here’s what he had to say:

‘It was a lovely bright morning in Lyme Regis for the launch of the students of March 2015 boats in the harbour. The boats are:

Helga is a 16’ Iain Oughtred Elfyn built by Neil Hammond and Ross Wheeler-Clayton and the class of 2015.

She is a double-ended traditional clinker Norwegian faering, with copper fastened larch planking, steamed oak timbers and laminated oak stems and a solid oak keel.

The 21ft7in Iain Oughtred Kotik was made by Andreas Sulzer and the class of March 2015. She is a gaff-rigged double-ender, and has laminated mahogany stems, iroko keel and deadwood and lead ballast keel. Her hull is constructed used the glued clinker method.

The replica of a Herreshoff 12½ was made by Steven Adler and the class of March 2015. She is strip planked in western red cedar and sheathed inside and out with two layers of biaxial glass cloth and epoxy resin.

She has a sapele stem hog, keel and deadwood and a lead ballast keel, and is gaff rigged.

Barbara Anne is a 18ft7in Robert Steward launch. Mark Turner and the class of March 2015 built this cold-moulded electric motor launch. She has a laminated mahogany stem and sapele backbone structure.

Her hull was constructed using three layers of marine plywood and one outer layer of mahogany veneer, which was be laid fore and aft to simulate carvel planking.