Tag: Spain

A replica of the ocean-crossing caique, Bom Successo

When a boatbuilder goes on a trip to the Algarve – a holiday, I’m guessing – what do they do? In my experience they usually find time to look at boats in among the other stuff.

Dorset boatbuilder Ian Baird (contact him here or here) has sent these pictures of the splendid replica of the Bom Sucesso, a caique reconstructed from a drawing of 1808 of a vessel that sailed the Atlantic Ocean from Olhão to Brazil.

‘The Portuguese were rebelling against the French Garrison.

‘Some and 17 men made the voyage on this boat to deliver the news that the French had been beaten and removed from the Algarve, to the King in exile, Dom João IV. They arrived at their destination in less than three months.

‘Cheers, Ian, your correspondent in Southern Europe… ‘

A beautiful and touching short video made by friends of Ben Crawshaw

Ben launching Onawind Blue video

 

This is a lovely piece of film, but don’t let that distract you from noticing how Ben Crawshaw has the art of launching down pat – or the way he uses a topping lift to enable him to row efficiently. This fella has something to teach us.

And, as usual, he has his boat looking great, and the low sun looks even better on the sparkling water of Spain’s Mediterranean coast in January this year.

I found the Vimeo link on Ben’s website a bit difficult – if you have trouble making it work well, look out for a button that takes you to a YouTube presentation of the same snatch of film.

The horizons of Ben Crawshaw

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It’s been an entertaining and cheering couple of days here at Intheboatshed.net Towers. Following yesterday’s jolly boat-nut’s outing to Turk’s boatyard at Chatham, today brought two nice pieces of news relating to the Light Trow: first that another Light Trow is about to be built in Australia, and, second, that a TV documentary about Ben Crawshaw’s boat building and sailing adventures made by a Catalan television company is now available for all of us to see over the Internet.

Click here to go to Ben’s own weblog post about the documentary including a link to the programme itself. It’s an entertaining and nicely shot piece of work, even if like me you can make out only a few words.

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POST-SCRIPT The drawings for the full-sized Light Trow Mk2 are now close to complete. If you’re interested in building this boat email me at gmatkin@gmail.com, and I’ll send you them – but only if you promise not to share them without my permission!