Tag: plywood

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Kathy Mansfied meets the restored Sunbeams in The Med, and in a garden in Cornwall the editor has erected moulds originally made by Connie Mense as the first step towards building Phil Bolger’s lovely 20ft Chebacco Boat.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!

Water Craft boatbuilding comp winners 2009

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Nick Paull’s Hazy Days, winner of the ‘most professional’ category of the 2009 Water Craft boatbuilding competition. It was built to Steve Killing’s Prospector Canadian canoe. Click on the photos for much larger images

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Mike Wooldridge’s Puddle Duck, victor in the ‘home made boat most likely to encourage beginners’ category’. It was built to the Selway Fisher Drake sharpie plans

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Chris Waite’s ingenious and effective home designed rowing skiff Octavia, winner of the ‘most innovative home made boat’ section

This year’s Water Craft magazine amateur boatbuilding competition at the Beale Park Thames Boat Show was better than ever, despite the rain. Editor Pete Greenfield’s idea of opening up the competition by offering three categories of home made boats – most professional-looking, most likely to encourage beginners and most innovative – was clearly a big hit.

Hazy Days is undeniably very smart and won a tightly contested section, but I very much enjoyed seeing Puddle Duck, which chimed nicely with my view that people should be encouraged to feel that they can build small, simple and low cost boats that they can be proud of and which are effective on the water.

However, my favourite this year was Chris’s Octavia, which must count as one of the cleverest designs I’ve seen in a long time. Yes, those scraps of ply in the plastic bag are all that was left from the three sheets of plywood he used to make the boat, but that’s only the half of it – when Chris wants to transport it, the boat divides in two to fit in the back of his car, and when reassembled the undersides of the riggers include a system of pegs that neatly hold the boat together.

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A sad farewell to Philip C Bolger

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Probably Phil Bolger’s most frequently built boat, the Gloucester Light Dory is
a plywood classic that will continue to be built, re-worked and adapted for
many years to come. Writing of its popularity, he joked that it would one day
secure his entry into heaven. Photo by Susan Davis, taken from the Wikimedia

After an idyllic few days on the Norfolk Broads we’ve just returned home to the sad news that the designer Phil Bolger has ended his own life at the age of 81.

I’d like to add my tribute to the many obituaries appearing around the World Wide Web.

Phil Bolger was a man who inspired many people by alternately drawing beautiful boats, utilitarian boats, and utterly original boats that could only have come from the drawing board of someone who had a special gift for ruthlessly teasing out the logic of a design brief.

He was also a superb communicator – in his articles and books he would often excite readers about the ideas behind his designs as much as the designs themselves, and this won him many, many fans.

Bolger was often a controversial designer and frequently misunderstood by those who could not see past the boxy appearance of some of his more easily built designs. However, I think it should be clear to all that he was touched by greatness.

I never met him, but have copies of most of his many fascinating books, which I’ve read and read again many times. I’ll miss him and his writing, as will countless others, but I’m confident his influence and legacy of boat designs will live on for a very long time to come.

For more intheboatshed.net posts on Phil Bolger and his boat designs click here.

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