The Marine Quarterly summer 2012

The summer issue of novelist Sam Llewellyn’s charming, informative and plain entertaining The Marine Quarterly is due out any day.

It think it’s well worth a sub. We greatly enjoyed the last two issues and excitement is rising at the prospect of a new one.

If you haven’t seen it, you should know that it’s a 112-page compendium of what Sam calls ‘intelligent sea reading’ in a pocket sized format, printed on hefty, creamy paper and illustrated with charts, woodcuts and line drawings.

Here’s a sample paragraph snatched from the last issue and written by a chap called Ernest Gann, who was at the time in the throes of realising his dream of owning and sailing a square rigger. I like the colour in the writing, but its candour is even better:

‘To gain experience in a square rig of any size you must either be a foreign cadet, or serve in the US Coast Guard’s Eagle. So I had to depend heavily on Holcomb, who caressed his dolphin-striker jaw and allowed as how there were enough menaces to navigation in the Bay without turning me loose in a rig which at least looked complicated. To serve as crew I had assembled a heterogeneous group of people who believed that as I had managed to captain the Albatross all the way from Rotterdam without calamity, certainly an afternoon in the Bay should be a lark. I did not bother telling them how little I knew during a sort of rehearsal just before leaving the dock. It was easier demonstrating what I did know. I lectured slowly and with many repetitions, since I was aware that as soon as my supply of book learning was exhausted we would be obliged to sail.’

 

March/April issue of Water Craft out soon

Water Craft March-April 2011

That’s an impressive looking lot of sail!

The March/April 2011 issue  of Water Craft will be in the newsagents from 24 February.

Inside, you’ll find:

  • Colin Buttifant’s latest Broads yacht is fast – she can hold her own with the stripped-down local racers but she’s as cosy as a country cottage down below, according to Kathy Mansfield.
  • In Pen-Hir, leading French naval architect François Vivier has created an elegantly simple cruising yacht he calls a ‘Folkboat for the Future’ – and his son’s boatyard Icari is building her in sustainable birch plywood.
  • Boatbuilding materials are rarely – if ever – cheap, so when Ian Parsons decided to build his first boat, a stitch-and-tape Stornoway 14 dayboat, in order to avoid expensive waste he bought a pre-cut kit of plywood parts.
  • When Dick Phillips took over Phil Swift’s Willow Bay Boats range, he was undecided whether to offer the popular dayboats as bare hulls for home completion. So he went to see two of Phil’s customers who had done just that..
  • Gentleman-chandler Moray MacPhail leads a fact-finding mission of East Coast luminaries to Klassieke Schepen, the Dutch traditional boat show.

This is not to forget all Water Craft’s other features, regular and irregular, and – inevitably – a reminder from the editor about the Cordless Canoe Challenge at the Beale Park Boat Show, in which contestants compete to win a bag full of brand new Makita power tools worth over £1200.

Click here to order your subscription now!

The September/October issue of Water Craft magazine will be out soon

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Water Craft magazine September October

Editor Pete Greenfield has sent us his preview of the September/October issue of Water Craft magazine.

Click here to subscribe to this excellent publication!

Here’s what he says about the next issue:

‘In our September/October 2010 issue – in good newsagents from 26 August – you’ll find….

•Some 16 years designer Nigel Irens launched his radical 30ft (9m) lugger named Roxane. Now Dick Phillips has built a not-so-conventional gaff-sloop version in wood and Peter Goad has sailed her….
•Did you see the BJ17 at the Beale Park Boat Show? Bart Jan Batts asked Nigel to redesign his 3-masted 17’ (2.2m) King Alfred School Expedition Boat– with a Roxane-style lug rig. Kathy Mansfield sailed her.
•And talking of 17-footers, Alice Driscoll says the new water-ballasted BayRaider 17 from Swallow Boats is two boats in one.
•Designer Paul Gartside presents home builders with full plans and offsets for an easy-to-build 9ft (2.74m) tender.
•It’s less than a year since Alec Jordan launched his first kit-built 22ft (6.7m) St Ayles skiff for the Scottish Coastal Rowing Project. Now as many as 22 are in build, and six community groups have completed – and raced – their own boats.
•And, talking of Scotland, did you know that when Robin Hood wasn’t up there riding through the glen, he was surfboating in Wales? We didn’t either. And when Ridley Scott’s new film Robin Hood needed a fleet of mediaeval surfboats, Mark Edwards’ Bridge Boathouses had to make them without chopping down Sherwood.

Plus the best of the Beale Park Boat Show, Water Craft’s own Amateur Boatbuilding Awards and all our regular features.’

Once again, Water Craft offers excellent value – the tender plans alone will be worth ten times the cover price. Get your subscription now!