Gavin Atkin's weblog for the sort of people who like looking inside boat sheds. It's about old boats, traditional boats, boat building, restoration, the sea and the North Kent Coast
Howard Chappelle’s classic study of the sharpie, The Migrations of an American Boat Type, is available from the Gutenberg Project among many other wonderful things.
It comes complete with the drawings and photos that have fascinated so many boat dreamers over the years – including myself.
My thanks to Paul Mullings for spotting this one!
Sharpies have rather gone out of fashion since they were the talk of the boating forums a decade ago, but I still think it’s worth reminding ourselves about these strikingly elegant North American craft.
This drawing of a typical New Haven sharpie comes from a Project Gutenberg eBook of Howard Chappelle’s classic study of the sharpie, The Migrations of an American Boat Type, which I first read on paper long ago.
I vividly remember the excited anticipation of waiting for it to arrive in an exotic foreign – but thanks to the Gutenberg Project folks you, dear reader, can obtain access to this stuff in a moment, and completely free of charge.
PS – I picked this up through reading the excellent US website Duckworksmagazine.com.
[ad name=”intheboatshed-post”]
It may not look like much at the moment, but this is the very beginning of a new project for Tiernan Roe. Tiernan is a South-West Ireland-based boatbuilder who has recently received a huge amount of positive coverage for a beautiful John Atkin-designed Ninigret 22 he built for a client.
The acclaim has come from quite a variety of sources, including the hard to please Wooden Boat magazine.
Here’s what Tiernan has to say:
‘Just thought you might like to know what I’m up to at the moment. I’ve started building a Karl Stambaugh-designed Catbird 16 cruising sharpie for a client to use on Galway Bay.
It’s to be a ‘sailaway’, as they say – so the client will be doing the rigging and painting. Oh joy!
I’ve attached a few photos of setting up the frames, and I’m hoping to do a bit of a stop motion video when I’m finished and when I get the time.
I hope all is well with you. As always I’m enjoying intheboatshed – only last night reading I was reading about canoe yawls in WP Stephens’ book, and now all I have to do is find a client who wants one.
Anyway if you have any queries etc. don’t hesitate to contact me.
Regards,
Teirnan’
Click here for Tiernan’s weblog. For information about Karl Stambaugh’s Catbird 16, click here.