New Day, New Photo

This is one of my favourite boats, and the smallest I have built to date. Built on spec, she's now owned by the young lead guitarist of one of the world's best-known singer's backing band. I have it on good authority that he's often to be seen out in the bay, on his own, presumably as far from the mad world of gigs and tours and venues and screaming fans as it is possible to be.

The design is by Karsten Ausland, in effect a small version of his Jan sjekte, of which I have built two 18ft versions and a couple of 16-footers, tweaked as to midship section but essentially as they came off his drawing board in the 1930s.

But it's this little son of sjekte that I like most. She's a bit unstable on her own, alighting on the water like thistledown, and stiffens up beautifully with a little body weight. Just like a fast rowing boat show be. And she just flies along. I can't think of a nicer little rowing boat. After all, what do you want? A boat that's stable and sluggish or light and fast? And she' a delight in a seaway, riding the waves like a bird.

Wish I hadn't sold her sometimes as she's the kind of boat that one day I will build for myself. Why would you want anything else and, just so as you don't think I haven't forgotten my old prejudices, why on earth would you want something made of plywood, when you can have the real thing? There, just so you don't think I've gone soft on the awful stuff.

Lapstrake (but not as we know it)

I suppose it has some similarities to building clinker boats, yet Oh how I wish it were that easy. Some people think the planks on a boat are simply that: planks, parallel sided, and all you do is slap them around a set of formers. Now, we all know this will not a boat make; more like a box, which is what I've been up to these last few days, namely a log cabin.

Have to say that all those straight lines did not come naturally, or the need for absolute squareness. Not that boats are not meticulously trued at every stage, or you'd get one side rising faster than the other. It's just the absence of curves that made me glad I was not engaged in the business of house building rather than boat building. It becomes kind of monotonous after a while laying down identical lengths of spruce, notching them into each other and banging them with a mallet.

But it's done now and the result is pretty good; a place to sit and admire the view. What's more it's light, whereas croft houses up here tend to be dark, with small windows dating from a time when the view was the least of your concerns. It was more a case of coming in from the fields, wolfing your porridge in front of a meagre peat fire and scuttling up to bed with  Morag holding a guttering candle. Must have been a miserable experience as these little cottages are hardly the best insulated, and certainly not in those days with earth floors and only thick walls to keep out the cold, rather than good old Kingspan thermal insulation.

I was told that a few inches of modern insulation is equivalent to a few feet of stone wall. Our log cabin has 130mm thick walls, a sandwich of spruce and insulation which means it's like one of those cooking boxes filled with straw in which you put your caserole in the morning and it's done to perfection by supper time.

Back to boat building next week with the added bonus that the third instalment is now safely in my bank account. Nothing like dosh to inspire you. And once again, an owner who is a joy to deal with. I'll work out how many boats and owners I have worked for in the last ten years one of these days but what I can say is that none of them baulked at paying; there has never been a formal contract with any of them and, with one exception, they all seem to have been happy with what I built for them. At least no one has come back to me with anything more than the usual wooden boat problems such as what varnish to use; and why is one side of my boat six inches higher than the other, to which I reply "natural movement of the timber. Quite normal."

Only joking...

Plus ca change...

Back from Brittany (balmy breezes, bright sun, baguettes, crepes, galettes, wine, flowers) to wall to wall gales, driving rain and Tesco's best. Why can't they bake French bread in Britain, or at least in Ullapool? Why is their cheese so bland? And their tomatoes tasteless, and, and...

We have a great local baker (struggling no doubt against the odds) but there's nothing like the taste of a baguette bought in the early morning from a boulanger, carried home on the handlebars of an old bicycle and eaten with unsalted butter and French jam. We live like peasants up here. Well, I wish we did. French peasants eat far better than us, with the exception of the sea food available here, most of which is shipped off to France and Spain. (And personally I hate crabs... indeed most things that crawl about under water).

 Sometimes it's hard to understand why we choose to live up here. Visitors go "ooh, what a lovely view... and we saw a deer too" and trip around the hills marvelling at the wild beauty. Those of us who live here see a landscape blighted by sheep grazing and denuded of trees by those same overpopulated deer, tolerated simply because shooting brings in money for the estate owners and adds to their value (and to hell with the damage to the countryside, let alone vehicles that habitually meet with them on dark nights).

No, for all the wild beauty of the Highlands there are some serious imbalances up here. Don't get me started as I would then have to enumerate all the blessings we enjoy: viz no cars, clean air, fresh water from those same hills (albeit tainted a wee bit at times by sheep and deer poo) good company, honest friends, great sailing (sometimes) etc, etc.

Anyway, enough of the post-Brittany blues. There's a dinghy awaiting a mast, and a lot besides so it's back to the grindstone and the charms of a draughty milking parlour and rain splattered iron roof. Once the radio's on and the coffee brewing it won't be too bad. It's just getting back into it after ten days that's the problem.