Tag: restoration

Ex Royal Lymington motor launch Mary gets her new timbers

 

Ex Royal Lymington motor launch Mary gets her new timbers. Click on the photos for bigger images

Ben Wales got in touch last week to report that he and his pals had fitted the last timber into Mary, the ex Royal Lymington Yacht Club motor launch he’s been restoring for a little while now.

See earliers posts here, here and here for more on this project. Progress may have been slowed by the dreadful weather we’ve had this summer, but Mary’s looking a lot better than she did in the first photos Ben sent.

Here’s what he says:

‘We started this back in April, but with the appalling weather [Ben’s working out of doors] and available time we have taken longer than expected to complete this.

‘We had to remove all the old timber ribs. The new timbers are home grown oak from the New Forest, and we cut on site into 10 to 12ft lengths, soaked them in water for a week and then steamed them ready for bending.

‘Out of the 29 timbers we fitted only two snapped on us.

‘The next phase in the restoration is to fit a new gunwales, and then new engine beds and bilge keels.’

Well done and thanks Ben – I hope the weather treats you more kindly for the rest of the summer!

You’d better know their nicknames or you’ll never find ’em…

Bennett Middleton talks in this great little Rescue Wooden Boats video about nicknames in the fishing community along the coast of East Anglia.

Having grown up in a small community, I have no difficulty recognising the need for nicknames – and I have no doubt about how they arise. Usually, all it needs is for someone to say or do something a little daft or unusual just once, and the name will stick for life. If something can be found that you don’t want to hear over an over again, that will be your name…

And that’s still what happens around the yard where we keep our little boat.

I must say, the Rescue Wooden Boats folks are going great guns in conserving aspects of the local maritime heritage. Latest items of news are:

  • they’re setting up a visitor centre for people viewing restoration work in the boatyard at Stiffkey
  • they’ve been given the lovely Sheringham-built whelker Harvester to care. She will be on the water soon and will be going about promoting Rescue Wooden Boats (by the way, since we were talking about nicknames, I should mention her first owner was a man called Sid ‘Custard’ Cooper)
  • they have also acquired Bessie, another of the area’s few remaining whelkers She was built in 1934 and was involved with the Dunkirk rescue. Volunteers have scraped and painted her to stabilise her and she is now back on a mooring awaiting refurbishment
  • plans have been made to take the lifeboat and Dunkirk veteran Lucy Lavers back to Dunkirk by sea for the 75th anniversary of the evacuation of troops in 2015. From that year also, the listed historic ship will be taking the public on trips afloat from Wells-next-the-Sea in the summers. Rescue Wooden Boats is applying for a Heritage Lottery grant to enable this to happen

 

Victorian racing cutter Leila receives a vicar’s blessing and the local community enjoys a party

  

The local vicar blest the splendid Victorian gentleman’s racing cutter Leila this past weekend, and hard-working Leila Sailing Trust crew responsible for restoring her showed visitors round the boat in Southwold Harbour this weekend.

I should say that the work has been carried out by Trust volunteers and local yard Harbour Marine Services, with funding support from the National Lottery.

Naturally, they also had a bit of a party at Southwold Sailing Club, not to mention a session in the old Harbour Inn. All in all it was a great outing, as you will have guessed, and it was great to run into Leila Sailing Trust stalward Rob Bull once again, as well as some local music pals.

I’ll put up some more photos of Southwold and roundabout shortly.

For more posts about Leila, click here.

 

Reprobate pirates celebrating at Southwold Sailing Club