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
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I hope someone is in a position to rescue this pretty little boat! They’ll need to move quickly…
•1955, 25ft clinker-built cruising yacht built by Harry Feltham for sale on Ebay
TOO LATE – she sold to the man in the white suit for £102. I hope he’s kind…
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Paintings and sketches from the pages of Michael Frith’s book Yacht
Yacht is a hand-bound limited-edition book of prints of well known classic yachts painted by the renowned watercolourist Michael Frith, and inspired by the America’s Cup Jubilee event at Cowes in July 2001.
A sailor since childhood, Frith attended the event as crew on the last wooden Nicholson yacht, Quiver V (1969), which gave him the opportunity to view many of the 150 yachts present in close-up action. The sight moved him to begin recording the boats in paintings, a project that has since taken him to the Mediterranean and the Carribbean.
As readers will see, his vividly coloured paintings and sketches capture the characters of the boats, and very often something of the thrill of sailing them.
The book includes a foreword by Harry Spencer of Spencer Rigging and an essay by Dan Houston, editor of Classic Boat, and includes a pictorial index of the names and specifications of the yachts that appear in the paintings. It runs to 160 A3 landscape pages, and each of the 1000 copies is signed and numbered by the artist.
About the artist: Michael Frith has worked for many national newspapers including Newsweek, TIME, The Times and The Sunday Times. He has held 25 solo exhibitions, and his paintings form part of many private and public collections, including the National Portrait Gallery and the Bank of England.
The book is priced at £400.00 plus postage and packing, and orders can be placed through the publisher’s website http://www.spotred.co.uk.
Have you any artworks you would like to share with intheboatshed.net readers? Email us now at gmatkin@gmail.com.
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Venus, a well-travelled Thames-style skiff spotted in Australia by Jeff Cole
Lest we get too doomy, and serious I’ve decided to post this photo of an 1880s single-scull Thames-style skiff hanging in a country nursery at Victoria, Australia. Jeff Cole, who spotted and photographed Venus for us, says the story is that she was imported from Scotland, and was built by the nursery owner’s great-grandfather.
It’s clearly very well-travelled for a small river boat. I wonder what the rest of the story may be – did a River Thames boatbuilder move to Scotland? Did a Scot learn boatbuilding on the banks of the Thames? Or was great-grandfather an amateur who worked from a book? Or were skiffs of this kind far more widespread in the last 19th century than we tend to think?
Whatever the answer, the boat in the photo looks very much like the one shown in this earlier intheboatshed.net post.
Once again, my thanks go to Jeff Cole. To see some earlier material he has sent us, including some mouthwatering shots of early 20th century racing yachts, click here.
For some photos of later skiffs with rather more sheer at Ruswarp on the River Esk in Yorkshire, click here.
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