That Shetland Boat again...

Well, here she is, sans oars and floorboards. What can I say?

Tom's Rules of Thumb

Tom Whitfield has been my long distance mentor ever since I began building and writing about building boats. He lives as far away as possible, but served his apprenticeship in an old Devon yard, long since gone, a victim of changing ways and the advent of glassfibre. But he forged a new life in Australia, building and designing boats, including some of the country's best loved Tall Ships.

He sends me critiques of my boats, which are always to the point: he spares me nothing. Whereas most people (bless them) go "ooh, aah, how lovely" he'll point out a slight discrepancy in the third land down, near the bow, or a flaw in the timber which he reckons might lead to a problem down the line.

I'll post more of his wisdom as the months go by, but here's his Rules of Thumb for wooden boat building to be getting on with.

RULES OF THUMB.

There are a number of guides to building a boat I have used over the years.

Clinker planking for a 12ft dinghy about 3/8in thick lap is 3/4in. 2 to 1

Plank width no more than 5in plus the 3/4in lap narrower is better.

Nail spacing to be six times the plank thickness. 6 to 1

Scarphs to be six times the plank thickness. 6 to 1

Outer end of scarph to have a butt about 1/16in on 3/8in planking. 6 to 1

Ribs to be at every second or third nail spacing.

Plank joints at least three plank or three frame spaces apart.

Ply scarphs to be slash cut and glued. 8 to 1

Mast or spar scarfs to be about 10 to 1 or better still 12 to 1

Rowing seat height no less than 10in above the floor.

Seat riser 7in down from sheer + 1in for the thwart.

Rowlock to be centered 12 ½in aft of the back edge of the thwart.

Oars need to be 1 ½ or 2 times the beam of the boat.

Working oars - the blade is about 1/3 the oars length.

Racing oars - the blade is about ¼ to 1/6 the oars length.

Beam/length about 3 to one or 4 to 1 is normal.

I have built good boats with a 2 to 1 ratio.

Some dinghy designs are as wide as 1 to 1 [eg 6ft long x 6ft wide. Anything is possible.]

Cornish gigs are about 5 1/3 to 1.

Racing eights are 12 to 1.

Designer Pete Culler's stems in light craft were 2 times the plank thickness plus the fastening [¼in] plus 1/8in.

Rivets to have a rove 1¼ the head size of the nail. Allow a bit less than the square of the nail projecting through the rove to allow riveting. 

Tom Whitfield.

Where did the Heliflex Go?

Dedicated followers of this blog, all 13 (bless you) may wonder why an earlier post or two about a recaltricant V-Tronix VHF aerial has been removed. Well, it's a long story, involving a fierce email exchange with the makers, from whom I am awaiting a definitive reply as to why an aerial consisting of a spring, base plate, bracket, rubber grommet and two set screws should cost £51, rather than £5.10 (a healthy margin, I would have thought).

The importers  were quick to explain the fundamentals of electronic marketing (margins, cost of materials, packaging etc) but I was still not convinced. In short they offered me a free aerial to shut me up (which I have reluctantly declined) preferring to see if my soldering technique and heat shrinking ability will prolong its life. After all, we are told to recycle if possible.

So, pending a definitive reply as to why this collection of simple bits and pieces warrants half a hundred quid, I will say no more. If any reader with knowledge of FarEast manufacture (this thing is assembled in Korea) can put a price on it, please let me know.

Small Reach Regatta

These delightful pictures just came through from my good friend Turner, who resides in Bradenton beside the Manatee River in Florida.

Two trips there and the West Coast really got under my skin. OK, it's flat, and a bit hot, and there's alligators (or rather 'gators) and raccoons (that'll be coons by the way) and the inhabitants can't understand a word I say (let alone my attempt at jokes) but their hearts are in the right place, couldn't be more friendly and a week in their company banishes all the old world cynicism that curses us this side of the pond.

Delightful boats too, as these photos show, although this was in Maine for last year's Small Reach Regatta. That's Turner, at the tiller of his Penobscot 17, designed by Arch Davis (www.archdavisdesigns.com).

Forget Drascombes: I reckon this little cat ketch lug-rigged beauty is the perfect day sailer, and overnighter. In fact, if I were asked to build a boat in epoxy/plywood, this would come pretty near the top of my list. And great colour scheme too.

That's Turner at the tiller, below, concentrating hard, trying to beat that other sonofab*** up front. Nothing if not competitive these Americans. God help the North if the South ever decide to open round two of what they call The War of Northern Agression. Reckon they'd win this time round.

Oh, and just look at that lot (above) cooling their heels somewhere on the St John's River. I tell you, we don't have a clue about how to enjoy ourselves over here. Well maybe we do, but in a different (often chillier) ways. The Solent Raid looks fun, and there's the Classic Malts Cruise, and Toberonochy...

There's more of the same from The Great Gulf Coast Small Craft Festival and the Cedar Key Small Boat Meet, and many more. Bring a little sunshine into your life by going to http://ftp.ij.net/wctss/wctss/gallery.htm

More Than a Sum of the Parts... and Infinitely Repairable

Finally got round to taking a photo of the Shetland boat I have been restoring. She was built by Ian Best on Fair Isle and has survived on an exposed beach for some years, before coming to me for refreshment. And I just cannot get enough of her shape. A good, honestly built working boat with no frills or fancies. Fit for purpose, form and function in harmony...

I expected a number of planks would need replacing after such a long time in the open, but the damage was limited to just a few sections which were popped out and replaced. I cannot over emphasise the ease with which a traditional clinker boat can be repaired. It is their unique selling point, and like the new axe (just two new shafts and two new heads) will survive indefinitely (albeit with next to nothing original).

It's just that all the components are held together with a view to replacement, should they get damaged (which was often the case in hard-driven fishing boats, like these Shetland types.) You needed to be able to pop out a plank, and scarph in a new section when the occasion arose. Which meant no glue (even if they had something up to the job in those days). Just a case of grinding off the heads of the nails, popping the roves off, removing the damaged plank (use it as a template to make a new one), bevel the edge, cut the scarph, a smear of mastic  (or twist of cotton as in the case of this boat) rivet up and it's back in the water in a matter of hours, given the kind of simple skills once found in the fishing harbours around our coasts.

Which is one of the problems I have with plywood epoxy/clinker. OK, it can be repaired, and seamlessly too. But what a palaver. In the time it takes to repair a clinker plywood boat, a traditionally planked boat with the same damage would have been back in the water long since. And there's a flexibility in those old Shetland types which is quite delightful. Don't confuse movement with weakness. Pretty light too, if the Shetland boat in my shed is anything to go by. The photos above were take in the Faroes, where the boats are similar but subtly dfferent. Thet don't sail much there, due to the currents and weather. Note the boulders to stop her blowing away, it's a fearsomely breezy spot (or maybe it's an anchor?!)

I expect the Shetland boat will leak a bit at first, but that shouldn't last long. Sail trials in March. Can't wait...

Woodseal RIP

And so farewell Hempel's Woodseal, gone the way of the late lamented International UCP (which was not a patch on it, and came in ridiculously small tins to boot). You have served me well over the years, laying down an impervious clear coat over which I have laid everything from varnish to topcoat. 

It always did, however, smell rather dodgy, but like any glue-sniffing addict, I got quite fond of it. The decision to drop it has probably added a few months to my lifespan. One more for the 'elf and safety boys... Not a bad thing, perhaps, and it was shockingly expensive too...

PS I have it from Hempel's excellent Norman Curtis that Episeal, two-pack clear epoxy, will achieve much the same result.

Spot the Difference

Beauty is in the eye... Having said that, who could find anything nice to say about this boat? But then, who knows. Maybe she's home for a young family, evicted from their house, or an elderly seafarer, home from the sea? Perhaps, soon after this photo was taken, her owner set sail for the South Seas in search of  love and adventure. Who cares whether she's good looking, in other words. She's someone's pride and joy.

And so are these, owned by a good friend of mine in Florida. What's the difference then?

One I did Earlier

Nothing changes. At this time of year a middle-aged man's thoughts turn to... Well, read on. Written some years ago, but it's a propos of the mood I am in at the moment, notwithstanding the dark days are getting longer (so they say).

“Call me Morgan.” OK, OK, it has not the ring of “Call me Ishmael”, the opening line spoken by Herman Melville’s hero in Moby Dick but, at this time of the year when the days are short, the old urge to make some long sea passage, to clean the soul and refresh spirits dulled by long months spent ashore, is certainly common to us both. And to most of us who have a romantic notion of the seafaring life.

Melville’s Ishmael ships aboard a whaler, the Pequod under captain Ahab to seek the white whale - hardly a romantic notion. A year at sea to purge the senses of landlocked ennui, and a hard year, with no certainty of return. Being of somewhat weaker mettle I’d settle for a three week passage to Antigua. No shorter, for it is only after a week or more at sea that one begins to feel its rhythm. Until then the habits and preoccupations of land intrude. Trivial things annoy. Not that trivial things don’t annoy at sea, but they are different ones. Who the hell cares if your shirt’s not ironed? A shipmate whistling “A life on the ocean wave” all day long, now that’s another matter.

On a long passage priorities change. We revert to a more primitive state. Not to say barbarous. It’s a perfect example of the so-called pyramid of human comfort, the apex of which is life itself, breathing. Further down we find then water, food, warmth and sleep until, near the base of the pyramid - now grown bloated with spurious luxury - we might find (depending on one’s proclivities) such essentials as not missing the latest episode of Friends. A hot bath comes much further up the pyramid, though not, I confess, for me.

Whereas, on a boat, and I mean the smaller, probably wooden, ancient sort most of us go in for, the pyramid’s base is small. The apex will be identical, but the base might simply comprise of a good book (with all the pages), a pair of dry socks and not being called by the watch for a sail change at midnight. It is an altogether simpler life in which the first priority is the boat. After all, breathing and sleeping will be shortlived  if you neglect to stem that leak.

And it is surely this reduction to basics that so appeals to us. On a short passage we are never far from shoreside luxuries. The longer we are at sea the more absurd these become, though we may dream of a hot bath and a bottle of Bollinger while someone rubs our back. That’s part of the enjoyment; the dreaming. And we all dream of different things. Ironically, on land, I dream of being at sea.

Clearly, on that glorious morning as we approached the island of Barbados Neil, our shipmate on that long ago transatlantic passage, has been dreaming of a close shave and a clean body. No one noticed he’d disappeared below. When he reappeared in the cockpit the sight of his freshly scrubbed, wind-reddened face caused great amusement. Then, when he stood on the counter and we caught the first whiff of cologne, brought down on the trade wind breeze our amusement turned to disgust. To this day I cannot recall anything worse than the smell of that aftershave. After three weeks at sea it was enough to send the three of us retching over the side. Just goes to show that in the pyramid of necessity one man’s luxury is another’s total anathema.

Before and After

I cannot quite believe it myself, but the evidence is there, in the photos. It's a strange thing that when you build or restore a boat you think you'll remember every minute, every inch of planking scraped bare of old varnish, every rove tapped up, every problem solved. And then, a year or so later, you cannot imagine having done all that work. And that is how I felt when I looked up the before and after pictures of the Salter's rowing skiff (actually a double sculling half-rigged gig, to be precise) I restored awhile back.

Found in a sawmill, reverting to sawdust, covered in chicken poo, broken, it was only a remark from my friend Gordon that made me accept the commission. It was restore or burn, and the decision rested on a knife edge, or rather Gordon's confident "Go on, you can do it."

So we had here brought over from Aberdeen to Leckmelm where the long process began. And what a reward: under half a century of grot, despite the split planks and decayed ribs (80 per cent of which had to be replicated), there was a 100+ year-old rowing boat waiting to come alive. Splits repaired, new planks scarphed in (Honduras mahogany to match the original) and after a liberal soaking in Varnol, the depth and colour of the planking was extraordinary.

She's destined for a museum on the estate, but we did launch her just the once. With a set of oars made by Jeremy Freeland, complete with family crests on the blades, she slipped along as she once did on the Thames at Oxford all those years ago, powered by an undergraduate with an ancient title. To date, it is the most satisfying restoration I have undertaken.

Sharpies and ChrisCrafts

Never come across them until I spent a wonderful ten days a few years ago in Florida. Not the ghastly east coast, but the Gulf Coast, where life is lead at a much slower pace amid swampy, manatee-infested creeks. Well, not quite. But there's an old world feel about this neck of the new world where they still call the Civil War the War of Northern Agression, and vow one day to secede.

That time I travelled up country to Cedar Quay, and into Georgia to meet the late, undoubtedly great, boat builder, naturalist and author Robb White (of whom more at some point) and on a second visit we motored lazily up the St John's River, visiting old Civil War sites, eating aligator burgers (not) and hanging out in waterside bars. The Mount Dora Antique Boat Festival was a highlight.

The festival is all about Gar Woods and ChrisCrafts, polished to perfection. But whilst there I met a fellow called Walt, who sailed alone in a sharpie he built, spending nights anchored in the shallows or creeks of the low-lying coast. He's sold it now, but he seemed to epitomise a uniquely American spirit of independence. And in contrast to the shiny sleek motor boats owned by the rich, the very rich. So, for a contrast in Americana, here are some photos.

That's a commuter boat. Nice thing to have if you live on Long Island Sound and worked in the City.

That's my favourite: very rare, very valuable, so much so that the owner wouldn't take it on the water for fear of damage. Pity. You should have seen the engine...

Apart from the sharpie, and Walt standing on the stern, who can identify the other boats? Some have clues in the photo. On a dreich, that's miserable, day in the Highlands, it does the soul good to see warm waters, blue skies and nice boats.

Wykeham Tip

Here's one I did earlier, but I reckon it should be more widely promulgated. Those of you who have Wykeham Martin furlers, read on. Those who don't won't have a clue what all the fuss is about...

The Wykeham Martin furling gear is a classic of marine engineering, as good today as it was when it was first invented. It has its idiosyncracies, naturally, one of which is to twist up your halyard above the top swivel, without unfurling the entire sail. This habit of sticking then unravelling at breakneck speed is due to the simple, and not entirely fricton-free top bearing, which is under some fierce luff tension. This tendency to twist up at the top does little for halyard longevity or sail shape. 

My solution was to fit a stainless snaphook, Wichard make the best, through the eye of the top swivel’s bronze shackle pin, and mouse it up good and strong (I added some rubber self amalgamating tape). The Wichard hook clips on and runs up the forestay (see picture) locking the top part of the swivel, allowing the bottom half to turn freely, and unfurl the sail without sticking. The snaphook also has the advantage of keeping the ‘sausage’of the furled sail nicely under control when it’s hoisted aloft.

Something about Sally

Sally II was launched in April 1937, at a time when good timber and shipwrights were both plentiful. Her hull is of long-leaf pitchpine from Pensecola, scarcely obtainable today, her keel of English elm and her grown frames of English oak, interspersed by steamed timbers in the pre-war fashion. Her ballast keel is a lump of lead weighing around two tons, held on with a dozen 1in diameter bronze bolts, and the straps deep in her bilge that keep her hull from drifting apart are forged from a type of bronze developed for the hydraulic pipes of Wellington bombers, Tungum alloy.

She was built in four months over the winter of 1936/37 by three men and a boy, employed by Messrs Elkins of Christchurch, Dorset, and her lines were drawn by of one of the most talented designers of the pre-war years; a Cambridge graduate who spent the early years of his career in the drawing office of aircraft manufacturer and later, bolstered by a family legacy from the Fry’s chocolate empire, set up as a naval architect in a little bow-fronted Georgian house in Lymington. Slight, bespectacled, chain-smoking Jack Laurent Giles made his name, ironically, not from the radical, race-winning yachts of the pre- and post-war years but from a handful of modest cruising boats, based on the lines of French fishing boats and pilot cutters, among them a 25ft sloop called Andrillot, the forerunner of the Vertue class.


Sally is the second of the class, although the name was only applied much later. In 1937, when Philip Sharp, a Poole lawyer, commissioned her she was just a standard 5-tonner in the days when even standard boats were custom-built.

Those who know their sheerlines will have no trouble guessing her provenance. For the curve at her bow is extravagant to say the least, sweeping up from aft like the ski-jump on the bows of aircraft carriers to let loose Harrier jets. That alone is not enough to place her; for that you have also to take into account the little upward ‘kick’ in the sheerline aft, and the elegant transom, full and buoyant, with the tucked in sides delightfully known as tumblehome. Sally II is indubitably, undoubtedly, undeniably a Laurent Giles.

The Best

The Shetland boat I am restoring is a constant source of delight. Built by Iain Best (a man I admire but have never spoken to, let alone met) it is a thing of simple, honesty. The shape is gorgeous (I think she'd be called a Whilly Boat but I am no expert) and the planking fair and true. The garboards angle up at about 45 degrees which gives the keel extra bite in the absence of a centreboard, and which requires some clever bottom bevelling on the next plank up amidships, and top bevelling on the garboard fore and aft, all executed by Mr Best effortlessly, as befits one who I read spent time in Scandinavia learning from the experts.

But it is the sheer honesty of the boat that impresses me most. Nothing fancy, all done to a high but not obsessive standard, all joints close fitting, all the important details right. All in all, a joy to work on and bring back to close to where she was when launched, perhaps 20 years ago. As good, or nearly, as new with a couple of rotten sections of planking replaced, chips, dings and blemishes smoothed away, new thwarts and the distinctive canted rangs remade and refitted.

The pleasure restoring her was akin to that of building the Woodfish faering you see in the photo that heads this blog. Three planks and a few brilliant frames, developed over centuries, fashioned from natural crooks, loose fitting thwarts and there you have it: to my mind the quintessentially perfect clinker boat, perfected by the Vikings and never likely to be bettered for its elegant simplicity.

Photos of the Whilly Boat will follow at some stage, when the first of the undercoats is on and she emerges into the daylight after many years on the beach (literally). My hat off to you, Mr Best...

Working with Your Hands Good (says the BBC)

Just read an intriguing article on the BBC website about the sense of true achievement that can only come from working with your hands, as against cobbling up advertising slogans, shuffling papers or watching a computer screen for eight hours a day in a London office.

Here's the opening paragraph, the rest is well worth reading.

If the new year and inevitable return to work leaves you yearning for change, is working with your hands the answer?

The time for reflection is nigh - a new year, a new you. But is that workstation you've slotted back into looking depressingly familiar? 

As millions of workers drag themselves back into the office to contemplate another 12 months of drudgery, many will be wondering if they are in the right job. 

Writer and mechanic Matthew Crawford thinks a lot of us would be better off trading in our mouse for a screwdriver. His recent book, The Case for Working With Your Hands, has been a huge hit in his native United States, praised by critics and politicians alike. 

Mr Crawford, who used to run a Washington think tank but now mends motorbikes, says it is no wonder people are miserable at work. Jobs have become so specialised and process driven that it is hard to see what difference you are making. And in those rare cases where one's impact is obvious, the result may seem pointless.

Blast for the Future

Not sure how to break it to all those who value my ethical stance on plywood vs sustainable timber, and lovers of wildfowl, but I have been asked (nothing confirmed yet) to build a gun punt, possibly in plywood.

You will know that a gun punt (sneak box in the USA) is basically a low-slung heavy canoe, designed to be paddled unobtrusively towards unsuspecting ducks, at which point the lanyard is pulled on an enormous cannon mounted on the bow.

It's an ancient sport and tightly regulated. It also requires great skill, patience and fortitude, crouched in a punt in the dark hours before dawn with only a thermos and a cheese sandwich to stave off the bitter cold of an East Anglian winter morning.

Just can'tsee how I can get the bottom out of larch, so Bruynzeel it will have to be, and probably the better for it, but I fully intend to plank the sides in larch, fastened with bronze screws or maybe riveted.

More on this anon, but the problem at the moment is finding plans for such a craft. My prospective client has plans for an 18ft version, which could be scaled up to the required 23ft, but having googled for hours, and digested much useful information, anything first hand would be welcome.