Tag: rowing

Home Built Boat Regatta Cotswold 2008 meeting report

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From the top left: John Lockwood with his new dinghy,
various canoes, and a maiden voyage for Chris Perkins’
new small canoe


I was hoping one of the Home Built Boat Regatta folks would be kind enough to send me a report of their annual Cotswold Water Park event – and Chris Perkins has kindly done so.

Here’s what he says:

‘Some 14 boats of varying sizes, shapes and propulsion braved the floods and atrocious weather to attend our annual Cotswolds Rally.

‘Although the rally site turned out to be an island of relative calm and dryness in an otherwise soggy country, tranquil it was not however – a free concert raised the roof until the wee small hours at the other end of the lake, wasn’t much fun either for us or the triathletes either who had to take to the water at 8 on Sunday morning.

‘Sunday was a dry day – so your intercession in your post announcing the meeting obviously had some effect!

‘Two maiden launches took place – an intriguing build by John Lockwood of Swindon, who launched what he called a Moby variant based on a set of Motor Boat & Yachting plans from the late 1970s. He scrounged and used Ebay to obtain his materials, so the boat turned out to be a pretty economical way of getting on the water.

‘My Iain Oughtred-designed Stickleback, Stangarra, took to the water for the first time in the capable hands of our friend Chris Partridge. All that rowing has certainly built his arm power – she flew under his ‘oarsmanship’.

‘I think the general feeling was that it was well worth risking the usual HBBR soaking for the pleasure we had playing with each others boats and general chat. As we are not organised, no planned group business was achieved or even attempted during the meet.’

Thanks Chris! It sounds very much like a classic American-style messabout, all except for the ritual of serving and eating hominy grits. And isn’t it a relief that there doesn’t seem to have been any need for a race? For more details and lots more photos, see the report at the HBBR website.

This site will be quiet for a few days now as we’re going to be busy – in the meantime, don’t forget it’s International Talk Like a Pirate Day on Friday, even if like me you never manage to keep it up beyond breakfast time.

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The Boat Building Academy builds a gig for the new Lyme Regis Gig Club

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Photos of the new pilot gig Rebel, built at the Boat Building Academy –
in the first Gail McGarva sits under the boat she project-managed.
As usual, click on the thumbnails for much larger photos

Lyme Regis’s well known Boat Building Academy agreed to build a pilot gig for the newly formed Lyme Regis Gig Club just over a year ago. It doesn’t normally undertake commercial work but this was a commission the Academy couldn’t refuse, according to principal Yvonne Green.

Former student and British Marine Federation Trainee of the Year 2005 turned instructor Gail McGarva project-managed the build and involved as many students and members of the local community as possible, including evening classes for members of the gig club to make their own oars – all of the school contributed even down to knocking in a rivet.

The students were not involved on a day to day basis as they were busy with their own boats but because the gig was in the main workshops it seems to have made a useful teaching aid, and Yvonne reports that the gig was launched on the 29th June with due ceremony. The mayor, the vicar, the town crier, students and the town all came, blessings were read, salt was strewn and the gig was rowed successfully across Lyme Regis’s sizeable bay.

‘The pilot gig measurers said it was one of the best gigs they had seen,’ she adds with pride.

Lyme Regis Gig Club named the new boat Rebel after the Duke of Monmouth, who started his 17th-century rebellion against the Crown on Monmouth beach, where the Boat Building Academy now stands.

Follow the link for more on the Boat Building Academy.

The Telegraph newspaper recently published a long feature on the Academy. I’m envious by the way – I wish people would commission me to write pieces like that!

For more intheboatshed.net posts including material about pilot gigs, click here.

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