Progress

Another week, and another milestone. Timbers now steamed in over a period of days and ready for fitting out.

Can there be anything more beautiful than a clinker boat at this stage of building? Why, I ask myself, would anyone want to replicate such a boat using plywood and schmoo... OK, it's not easy but so satisfying. There are imperfections that cannot be replicated, but make such a boat truly hand made. Some of those timbers are a little more (or less) than exactly 8in apart, for example. Gosh...

I am not a machine...

Now for the Fun Bit

It is always a relief to finish the planking, enjoyable though it is, and stand back for a while before the next stage, which in this case is to face the centreboard case of the 14ft Tammie Norrie with Scots Pine before timbering out begins. The inside has had a few coats of Varnol, mixed with varnish and a drop of Cuprinol, a secret mix that I hope after a few more coats of varnish will ensure longevity and minimal maintenance.

But thinned with pure turps, it does seek out any gaps in the lands, and is thus a pretty good indication of closeness of fit.

Aside from a few characterful  knots (sealed with UCP), which are pretty much unavoidable unless you want to trash all but the clearest timber, she came out well, the pine a nice contrast to the larch timbers steaming in next week. I've gone for larch as I have never seen a break in a larch timber (rib), but plenty in oak ones.

More next week. Meanwhile it's the Royal Loch Broom Sailing Club regatta this weekend. After last week's superb skiff racing regatta, in which Ulla's ladies (women, girls... help me someone) stormed to victory, this will be a more relaxed affair, motion provided by the power of the wind, rather than the size of bicep which, in Ulla's case, collectively, circumferentially would probably encircle a large oak tree. See what I mean?

(one of) Ulla's moment(s) of triumph, captured by Chris Perkins

 Now I'm in real trouble...

Overlooked however in the adulation heaped upon our fearless four (Fiona, Kas, Bev and Sue, with John at the steering wheel) was Loki's performance against the top men's competition from Achiltibuie and Portobello.

This was A class racing against the best, and the Loch Broom Sailing Club's team took two bronze medals, pushing silver at times, while the women's 35+ team took a third, and without even breaking sweat (or whatever ladies/women/girls do. Glow, I believe?)

Two golds and three bronzes then for Ullapool's skiffs. Better and better...

All Planked Up

So wooden boat building isn't wasteful eh? I have to say that the Scots pine I bought was cut to 3/4in, not the usual 5/8in which meant thicknessing down (don't you mean thin nessing?) to 12mm, or a gnat's goolie under half an inch. So that's about a quarter of the planks lost to shavings.  Or is it a third? Never one for figures.

Note the mixed measurements: sometimes mm will do, other times feet and inches. Just depends on what' being measured. Then there's a tad, a smidgeon and a fag paper fit.

I did manage to get two strakes out of every board, by a whisker, and lots of juggling of spile board. Satisfying to make the absolute most of the Queen's Scots pine (from her estate at Balmoral, don't ya know).

The Tammie Norrie is now planked up and ready for a long, enjoyable spell of sanding and cleaning. That'll be the first job for next week. Problems? A few. The usual ones trying to get out planks while avoiding knots and the blue coloured areas of sap, which I believe are the sugars in the timber. I was told it was winter felled, but I'm not so sure now. Maybe very early spring. Maybe someone can tell me.

So, mid-August, 20 working days down the line and we have a boat shaped object which, up until now, has been good only to keep my tools in. It's one of the nice things about building a boat: you build your own toolbox as you go, which means nothing gets lost. Well it does, but you know it's in the boat somewhere.

PS The sheerline has yet to be trimmed, just in case you were wondering...

Another I did Earlier

The new heading photo shows the stage of building a boat I like perhaps the best - when all the planking is done and it's just a case of fitting the knees and other bits and pieces. All the shiny roves gleam in serried ranks, set against the gold of the larch planking, the shape defined by the steamed timbers. It's the moment when you stand back and say "Gosh/goodness/blimey (etc) did I really make that?" It's the culmination of a number of small processes, spiling, cutting planks, thicknessing, dry fitting, cutting jerrolds or gains, steaming... All of which must be done methodically and as meticulously as possible over a period of 10 days or so, before the moulds can be taken down and the timbers steamed in. It's why, despite the complexities and frustrations, I build boats in solid timber.

Too Busy to Blog

So here's one I did earlier... while "aprenticed" to the lads at Ullapool Boat Builders.

Find me an amateur boatbuilder who doesn’t aspire to stand alongside time-served professionals in a working yard; handle the big machines; turn a pile of timber into a hull; steam and rove up straight grained oak; craft gunwales, thwarts, knees and finally launch the fruit of months of intense labour (and hours of sleepless nights). In short, to live the nostalgia, the romance of wooden boats...

Whoah. Romance? Nostalgia? Slips of the keyboard. After 12 months working alongside the partners at a busy traditional yard in the North West Coast of Scotland, I have to confess that this ancient and increasingly anachronistic occupation is - as the designer and author John Leather suggested in a letter I am sure he won’t mind my quoting - a ‘fragile and unrewarding thing to do’. ‘Nostalgia’ or ‘romance’ do not appear in John’s Pocket Oxford.

Now I take his ‘fragile’ in the sense that profit margins are as slender as a Dragon’s bow and for financial rewards you would indeed be advised to look elsewhere for a career. Oscar Wilde famously said that to make money and gain status in this world simply apply yourself, study hard and become a lawyer. While most people can be a lawyer, not everyone is cut out to be a boatbuilder. A year down the line I have built two boats, and the biggest compliment paid to me (and ever likely to be paid) was ‘not bad for a journalist’.

That does not, alas, make me a boatbuilder; it takes more than the skills to shape a plank, spile accurately, cut a bevel or steam timbers to call oneself a boatbuilder. Apart from the ability to weld, sister a frame in the depths of a rotting fishing boat, cut a thread in a piece of aluminium bronze or make a set of moulds from a photocopied lines plan you need to get on with all your colleagues, avoid wastage and, above all (although time spent thinking about a problem is indeed time well spent) cultivate speed.

Alas, on the first two counts. As to the third, I must have spent four months out of 12 thinking; which is far too long. Most people with some manual dexterity can build a 15ft clinker dinghy to a reasonable standard in five months and sell it for £4,000. Taking materials into account, say £1,500, that leaves £2,500, or £500 a month. That’s £6,000 a year. Hmm. Sharing the running costs of the yard - perhaps £150 a week- and you’d be losing £1,800 a year. No, the secret is speed. Turn out a boat in five weeks and it begins to make sense. Albeit fragile sense.

I have learnt a huge amount in my time at the yard, and yet at the back of my mind lurked the knowledge that my livelihood did not depend on building boats. To be brutal: if I had been doing it for a living I’d have gone bust in the first six months. Which makes the bravery of the handful of traditional yards that still eke out a fragile living in the country all the more admirable.

Until people are once again prepared to pay honest money for an honest wooden boat, and crucially pay up on time, keeping the flame alive will depend on us amateurs. We can take the luxury of spending three days polishing rivet heads. Trying new ways to do things done for centuries one way. Above all we can afford to be romantic. For the yards it will always be a question of watching the pennies and the clock.

And yet I have a sneaking suspicion that no boatbuilder ever quite believed he was ‘just doing a job’, toiling from daybreak to sunrise in a draughty shed turning out objects of desire for rich yachtsmen. Fragile and unrewarding it may have seemed, yet the best of them must have clung to some sense that what they were doing was more important than the work of a lawyer, bringing home more in a week than they could in a month.

What about that old fellow who stopped by the yard last month, the one who built clinker lifeboats for the Queen Mary. Was it just a job? In which case, after building hundreds of boats, why had he taken such a keen interest in mine? Surely the R- and the N-words. Sadly, in a business where the difference between profit and loss can be the price of a box of roves, romance or nostalgia, however essential ingredients, are not enough.