Ella skiff – drawings for making a model of the stitch and glue 12ft skiff

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Panels for model-making

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Ella dinghy, lines and internal arrangement

The Ella skiff has made a bit more progress this evening. I’m pleased to say that we’ve now got a pdf file of the drawings needed to make a simple model ready to be downloaded and printed out.

The boat’s become a little simpler than the initial drawing showed. There’s no forward rowing position, for example, because I couldn’t find a way of fitting it into the panels above – and I didn’t want to go beyond three and a half sheets of ply for this boat.

If you’re interested in her, all you need to do to make a model is to take a printout, stick it to a piece of cereal packet, cut out the various panels and make up the model with sticky tape. Here’s one example of how this kind of model can look; here’s a second example made by the excellent Ben Crawshaw; and here’s a third example made by Woody Jones, and complete with little wire figures made to scale.

If anyone out there makes a model of this little boat, I’d be very grateful to see them, and to be able to post them here at intheboatshed.net!

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Rowland Hilder, marine artist

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Untitled watercolour by Rowland Hilder

As someone who lives in the Low Weald of Kent, I think of Rowland Hilder as a painter of landscapes that look as if they portray the fields around our house. But I’ve recently come to realise that Hilder was also an accomplished marine artist. Click on this link to Baron Fine Art Gallery to see some more examples.

For more examples of art, photography, songs, poems and culture generally at intheboatshed.net, click here.

A giant among restorations

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Prepare to be awed! Lulworth is the largest gaff cutter afloat today, with a length of 46.30m (152ft) and a mast as high as a 17-floor apartment block. She is also widely considered to be breathtakingly beautiful – she was described by the great maritime photographer Franco Pace as ‘the last true gem’.

Perhaps she is above all else a magnificent piece of nautical history, as the sole survivor of the Big Class racing yachts from the 1920s, which included Lulworth, the Prince of Wales’ yacht Britannia, Westward, White Heather II and Shamrock.
The Big Class races were spectacular to watch: the boats had deep keels, long overhanging booms and powerful rigs. Around 45 races were organised in the regatta season from late May to early September, and the highlight came in early August when the fleet headed to the Solent for Cowes Week. Wherever they were held around the British Isles, however, Big Class events attracted huge crowds.

Seventy years after her last Big Class race, she was taken to Italy from a mud berth on the River Hamble and brought back to life during five years of restoration aimed at returning the yacht as far as possible to her original condition, based on a set of drawings dating from 1926.

For more on Lulworth and her restoration:
http://www.lulworth.nl

Large posters, framed photos and calendars of Lulworth and other classics from the early 20th century:
http://www.beken.co.uk

The painting of Lulworth battling it out with Britannia below is by marine artist Roger Davies. Roger sells prints of his splendid paintings from his site:
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/john.davies3290/index.htm