Launched at Last

Today, a day of calm after the previous weeks' gales, was tailor made for the launching of the Tammie Norrie. Pleased? Well, mostly. I have yet to add a  rubbing strip to the bottom edge of the sheer strake which will accentuate its natural sweep. And there's a plank somewhere up front that could have been wider by half an inch or so and a couple of other details.

The rig needs tweaking up quite a bit, as the tack is a few inches too low and the luff could do with more tension.

But all in all, I'm pretty pleased. Handles nicely, goes upwind with the board down well; bit slow in stays, without way on. And has a safe, solid feel about her, without being in any way lumpen (a nice word). 

And no one around to watch, except for Rona, Bran and Mattis, who is joining me for a few weeks to help with the new project. No onlookers to scratch their chins and mutter (or take unflattering photos of her skipper...!)

An Arctic Tern has Alighted

We can eat! The Oughtred-designed Arctic Tern that has been flitting about for a few weeks, has alighted on the roof of Viking Boats International's (Ullapool) shed and will be under construction just as soon as I can clear it of the other projects, notably the Tammie Norrie (finished but awaiting delivery) and the Guillemot, back in for some pre season fettling. There is also a Flying Fifteen and a small grp motor boat cluttering up the place.

Iain has redesigned the boat at 17ft and she will be built traditionally, in larch with Shetland-style framing, not steamed timbers, perhaps the first of his Arctic Terns to be built properly (cue angry cries from epoxy/plywood fans).

She'll be heavier, but will need less ballast than a plywood version. The buoyancy will not be built in, but in the form of bags under thwarts, the boat being essentially open. Iain has drawn her for eight strakes, rather than the original six, but I reckon we could go down to a more traditional seven a side.

After ten years on my own I am being joined by one Mattis Voss, a shipwright from Ireland who spent a couple of years at Skeppsholmens Folkhogskola in Stockholm, during which he built a 21ft haddock boat. He clearly knows a thing or two about Scandinavian types, and is also an aeronautical engineer, speaks five languages and has a CV that quite frankly puts mine to shame. The general idea is that I will simply pull up an armchair in front of the wood burner, light a fat cigar and from time to time say encouraging things as he builds the boat, while I deal with the admin and marketing (and count the cash).

It won't of course be like that. First off, we'll have to see if we get on; and furthermore, if he can stand the cold inside the shed for longer than a few hours, and the leaking roof and the choice of radio station. For this is boat building in the raw, as practised centuries ago in these parts, and the way I would like it to stay, for all its discomforts.

Mattis expects to learn a great deal from me, although I suspect it will be the other way around. Anyway, it seems the Arctic Tern arrived at the right time.

More next week...

2012

First of all, welcome and happy New Year to my 37 (loyal but deluded) "followers", which makes me sound like the leader of some sort of sect, albeit one with fewer sectarians than Heinz once had varieties. Thank you for your support and if I had one wish for this blog in 2012, it is for more of you to post comments under the posts. There's no censorship involved and criticism is welcomed as much as applause.

Second (or is that secondly?) a gratuitous photo of girls opening a boat show, an event aimed at attracting hordes of Visa-card wielding males to ExCel in Docklands to buy more plastic boats (of which more later...)

Meanwhile, the Woodfish faering seems to have stalled after an email from the chap suggested that a problem with buying a house in France might delay things. That came as a bit of a relief, as another project seems to have cropped up in the meantime, and I can look forward to the faering, possibly, later in the year, which suits me fine. More time to find top quality larch for the wide strakes.

The weather, also, is horrible and although I have built boats through many horrible winters in the past, this one is just too horrible at the moment for words (although horrid is a good one to describe the remorseless wind and rain we have been getting for the past three months).

I had thought of escaping the gloom for the lights of London's boat show, until I remembered how horrid that was too, the last time I went. And this year sounds little better, albeit smaller. But it will still be wall-to-wall clothing stands offering bargains on garish oilskins; a hall totally devoted to Sunseeker (about whom I will not have a bad word spoken as my godson crafts the Jacuzzi surrounds for the Super Predator ExTreme Ultima) and the Guinness bar. The only bright spot in all this glitzy gloom is the Classic Boat stand, where Dan Houston and his team dispense common wooden sense, while youngsters brave life and limb to climb HMS Victory's mast.

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I have it on good authority that the 'Elf and Safety people were insisting on parachutes, life harnesses and full metal jackets at one stage before allowing the little dears to go aloft. But our Dan (whose daredevil young sons embody the spirit of dering-do so lacking in today's iPod youth) managed to stamp on that, and the insistence that those responsible adults ushering the youth of today upwards would need to produce full disclosure of the kind designed to deter perverts and criminals.

So I decided to stay at home and ponder what 2012 might bring, eat the rest of the mince pies, read the pile of books left over from 2011, notably an excellent one by Adam Nicholson on Trafalgar, and meditate basically on life in general and boats in particular.

There's talk too of this being the last London show at ExCel. From its debut, when over 200,000 came, numbers have plummeted to around half, which does not surprise me a bit. Expensive to attend, and enter, halls stuffed with pile em high sell em cheap stalls, much of which is cheaper on the internet, a dearth of wooden boats - in fact boats with any appeal at all - and all in a hall that looks like a Zeppelin hangar from the outside and a Turkish bazaar inside.

So, maybe next year when I may have a better reason to go, if I can persuade Classic Boat to host a stand full of readers' home-built boats, many of which will have sprung from the board of Iain Oughtred, no doubt. It will have to be a mix of plywood and traditional, and one idea that came to mind would be to sit side by side an example each of one of Iain's boats, in timber and plywood and finally thrash out the advantages and disadvantages of both. It would be a project very close to my heart as, over the past year or so, I have softened somewhat my views on plywood. Somewhat...