Ness yole Aluna Ivy at Portsoy

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Ness Yole Aluna Ivy 1

Ness Yole Aluna Ivy 2

Ness yole Iluna Ivy

Intheboatshed.net reader John Lamb has kindly given me permission to put up these photos of the wonderful Ness yole Aluna Ivy, which appeared at the 2008 Scottish Traditional Boat Festival at Portsoy. See the programme for the festival here and take a look also at John’s excellent galleries of Scottish traditional boats.

The Scandinavian influence in Aluna Ivy is unmistakeable: notice the lack of ribbing, the high ends and the almost casual way she’s framed with partial frames here and there. She could almost be an architectural find – but she was built in 1993.

There is a Flickr photo set of one of another of these striking boats being built here.

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Alec Jordan’s beautiful model of Iain Oughtred’s new Scottish rowing skiff

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Alec Jordan’s model of Iain Oughtred’s new design, the St Ayles skiff. Note the liberal use of clothes pegs – Alec’s using pretty well the same building method he would in the real thing!

Jordan Boats proprieter Alec Jordan has built this model of Iain Oughtred’s St Ayles skiff, the boat at the heart of a project to bring competitive coastal rowing back to Scotland.

See an earlier intheboatshed.net post on the Scottish Coastal Rowing Project.

Jordan Boats is to supply cut-out ply kits for the project and like a good boatbuilder, Alec’s first step has been to make a model. Here’s what he says about it:

‘Hi Gavin

‘Attached are some pictures of the skiff model.

‘With the model having gone together successfully, I have now started on the
construction of the real thing in the past couple of days – I’m doing the donkey
work of laminating stems and frames at the moment. I will hopefully have
the moulds up on Saturday and start the planking next week.

‘The boat, I think, is absolutely sublime – I just hope that it rows as well
as it looks!

‘Best regards

‘Alec J

‘BTW, My Dad made the model of the Cutty Sark in the background, not me!’

Thanks for the pictures Alec – Iain’s design looks super and great good luck to all of you involved in this project.

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Iain Oughtred draws the boat that will bring coastal rowing races back to Scotland

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St Ayles skiff

Iain Oughtred’s initial drawings for the St Ayles skiff

The Scottish Coastal Rowing Project is a new initiative intended to encourage boat building and rowing racing in Scottish coastal communities.

Based at the Scottish Fisheries Museum in Anstruther, its plan is to re-start the intercommunity rowing competition that for many years was a strong feature of life in the coastal communities of Scotland.

Until the 1960s there was a considerable interest in boating in the mining communities in Central Fife, and a strong fisheries industry in the East Neuk, and these communities held their own regattas on a regular basis using their own local boat types.However, where these regattas have continued, they are generally run by sailing clubs using largely mass-produced GRP yachts and dinghies, with the exception of Dysart Sailing Club, where I gather a few traditional boats are still raced.

There are, we’re told, no rowing races in Fife apart from the Newburgh World Coble Boat Championship.

I guess the organisers have looked long and hard at the wonderfully successful resurgence and spread of interest in racing pilot gigs from the Scilly Islands and Cornwall – no doubt there was a danger that this kind of racing could have appeared in Scotland, but in Cornish boats!

The folks behind the SCRP have wisely commissioned Iain Oughtred to design a suitable clinker ply boat based on the lines of the Fair Isle skiff and to be called the St Ayles skiff, while kit supplier Alec Jordan of Jordan Boats is on board to supply the cut parts for the project. Iain’s beautiful initial drawing appears above.

The first boat will be made from a kit cut by Alec over the winter of 2009-10. The process will be recorded and placed on a website as a tutorial for other builders to follow, and the kits are estimated to cost about £1350, with the complete boat costing around £3000 in materials. I should add that a sailing rig is also planned.

For more, read the leaflet and prospectus. I gather the building project will be covered in Water Craft magazine.

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