San Francisco artist Lawrence LaBianca uses the Light Trow in his work

Loomings, featuring a quotation from Melville's Moby Dick

Lawrence LaBianca art work installation Lawrence LaBianca steel boat sculpture

California artist Lawrence LaBianca has been using the hull of my Light Trow design in his artwork, we were delighted to learn this morning.

Lawrence got in touch this morning to tell us that he’s been working with boat forms and a variety of themes, including Melville’s masterpiece Moby Dick , that among others he has used the hull of the Light Trow in some of them. Click on the big image and you should be able to read a quotation from the first chapter of Melville’s novel on the bottom of my little boat.

I really like that idea!

More recently he has been working on creating works that record environmental phenomenas such as wind, water – see an example here – and is  now in the process of making several buoys, which he intends to deploy in the waters around the San Francisco Bay. He also says he’s thinking of building a full-sized Light Trow to use in placing the buoys, and for rowing and sailing on the bay.

Naturally we’re curious about the buoys – and delighted to hear that there are plans afoot to build another Light Trow. Great good luck Lawrence, and thanks for your news and photos.

PS – Regular readers may be trying to remember when Ben Crawshaw’s Light Trow appeared in artist’s work – in fact, it appeared in an illustration by Spanish artist Elena Val for a child’s book: click here to see the post.

Jordan Boats supplies Iain Oughtred boatbuilding kits to the USA

Iain Oughtred’s Arctic Tern

Cut-out ply component parts and MDF frames and full-sized patterns for Iain Oughtred’s legendary catalogue of boat plans are now available in the USA from Jordan Boats.

Alec Jordan of Jordan Boats based in Fife, Scotland rang this week to say that the kits are being supplied in the USA by a company in Maine. Apparently, the same outfit also supplies for Woodenboat magazine.

The boat components are made from Bruynzeel and Shelmarine BS1088 marine plywood, which are not Lloyds Type Approved, but have an excellent reputation – Lloyds Type Approved ply kits are also available at an added cost of about 30 per cent.

Jordan Boats’ bank will not yet allow payment in US Dollars through its website, so the only way to order is by getting in touch through Jordan’s contact page and asking for a confirmed kit and shipping quotation. For shipping please remember to include your Zip Code, so please remember to include this together with your phone number and Skype name, if you have one.

Alec says it will take a day or two for his contractors to obtain the shipping quote, but when he has it he will will email it to you together with payment details.

Typical kit prices at the time of writing are: Ness Yawl, $2,208; Fulmar, $3,029; Feather Pram, $744; Badger, $1,254; Auk, $1,076; Acorn, $1,076; 13ft 6in Tammie Norrie, $1,346.

Kits are also available for Acorn 12, Acorn 15, Elf, Granny Pram, Guillemot, Humble Bee, Mole, Puffin, Skerrieskiff 15, 15ft Tammie Norrie, Tirrik, Wee Rob and Wee Seal. At the time of writing, Alec was working on adding the Shearwater and had plans to offer the Caledonia Yawl.

New designs can be added to order.

Jordan Boats

For more on Iain Oughtred’s boat designs, including photos of Chris Perkins’ award winning Macgregor canoe and his new Stickleback canoe, click here.

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intheboatshed.net finds one of its photos used elsewhere

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Morning at Beale Park, with one of Adrian Morgan’s
pretty skiffs in the foreground

I try to give credit where it’s due and a link wherever possible, so I was mildly disappointed by Ready, Aim, Inspire’s use of one of my photos without either a credit or a link. But there’s a saving grace: it’s accompanied by a great quotation from one of my favourite writers, essayist and author of Three Men in a Boat (to say nothing of the dog), Jerome K Jerome:

‘Let your boat of life be light, packed with only what you need – a homely home and simple pleasures, one or two friends, worth the name, someone to love and someone to love you, a cat, a dog, and a pipe or two, enough to eat and enough to wear, and a little more than enough to drink; for thirst is a dangerous thing.’

If you’re out there and listening, Mr or Mrs Ready, Aim, Inspire, we’d like a credit in return for our photo please! All those not equipped with a killer JKJ quote will be asked to pay, of course…