Gavin Atkin's weblog for the sort of people who like looking inside boat sheds. It's about old boats, traditional boats, boat building, restoration, the sea and the North Kent Coast
Intheboatshed.net readers are invited to the Boat Building Academy December student launch at the harbour, Lyme Regis, at 10 am on the 9th December. Cross your fingers for good weather!
I’ll be many miles away at my desk, working, so if anyone is in a position to take some photos for this weblog, please do and I will be most grateful. I’m at gmatkin@gmail.com.
Among the boats being launched is this beauty, which recently got a feature in the Western Morning news:
The Boat Building Academy tells me that their five-day basic woodworking skills course has been so popular this year, they have decided to squeeze an extra course into their Lyme Regis workshops this summer, from the 19th to the 23rd August.
The course is suitable for beginners and sets solid foundations in tool selection, sharpening and maintenance, wood selection and preparation. Students produce a range of basic joints including dovetails and framing joints, lengthening and widening joints. The fee is £625.00.
Contact the BBA via its website.
Photos by Emma Brice and Rebecca Joseph
Boat Building Academy students Kyle Paternoster and Rob Hounslow made a traditionally-built clinker pram dinghy to plans by Iain Oughtred and sailed it for the first time on their course’s student launch day.
The 7ft 9in dinghy made to Oughtred’s Humble Bee design is planked in sweet chestnut with a Dorset-grown oak centreline and fore and aft transoms, and green oak ribs.
Her name, Rubee, is a play on words based on Kyle’s grandmother’s name, Ruby, and Humble Bee. The red sails were made by students on a weekend sail-making workshop at the academy run by Jeremy White, managing director of Elvstrom Sails.
Kyle started work as an engineer on one of the biggest yachts in the world the week after leaving the Academy – the role is based on three-month rotations, and will allow Kyle to work as a boat builder in the months he is at home, building and selling his own boats.
He’s a qualified dinghy instructor and in his spare time plans to teach members of his family to sail in Rubee.
Rob, who worked with Kyle on the build, grew up around water on his father’s fish farm on the River Kennet. Rob had done almost every job there is around a fish farm, including making jetties and bridges and working with green oak, but he wanted to master a craft and so decided to join the Academy to learn boat building.
Rob will be using his newly acquired skills at Cockwells Modern and Classic Building at Falmouth, where he will be working alongside fellow BBA graduate Jack Livesey, who graduated in June 2012.
The BBA website has a photographic diary of Rubee’s construction.