Gosh, it's been a While...

... a month or so since I wrote anything; a month in which family took precedence over everything. Now that things are a little more settled it's time to take stock.

The Shetland boat was finally delivered to Northern Ireland where I met the owner, Bill Baxter, for the first time. Strange to put a face to a voice and delighted to discover he was just as pleasant in the flesh as he had been all along during the building. A real gentleman. To trust us to build a boat, well Mattis to be honest, sight unseen was touching.

After the hand over we all went out to dinner at the Royal Ulster Yacht Club, which is a treat in itself, the stairs and upper rooms packed with Thomas Lipton memorabilia from his unsuccessful five attempts to win the America's Cup. Now this, for all of us who are used to scruffy sailing clubs, is a proper club with history and all that, and a dining room with pictures of famous yachts.

And then, rather than turning left to head back to Ullapool, I headed south to my old homeland: The Purbecks, which were bathed in soft light, balmy winds blew sweetly etc, etc (which made a change from the bloody awful weather we often get up here and which, as I write, is heading our way this evening).

While in Swanage I looked up a boatbuilder by the name of Pete Sedgewick. That's him beside a superb Herreshoff sloop that has been in the building for a good few months and for which he is looking to find a buyer.

Now this is top quality stuff and as far from my boat building as is possible to go. Whereas this is gleaming carvel, under multiple coats of enamel and varnish, mine are sturdy (I hope) clinker work boats with a semi yacht-like finish that can be refurbished at the stroke of a brush full of linseed oil and Stockholm tar. We got on fine.

Back home now there is a shed to build and work to be done on the house, so the lack of boats to build could not have occurred at a better time.

In the shed, however, is a Shetland boat to re-rig and outside a Goat Island Skiff both of which are work in progress, so the wolf although howling in the distance is not yet slavering at the door....

As I was Saying...

...before the Summer intervened, it's been a quiet year for new boats but interesting one for new projects.Whereas the wherewithal to commission a new boat seems to have taken a dive, seems like a lot of folk are upgrading, or tweaking. There is, for example, that Mik Storer-designed Goat Island Skiff in the workshop (or rather outside it) at the moment, into which I have grafted a new mizzen step while moving the main mast step forward to balance. The owner wants more speed, (and I told him) more complexity. But, hey-ho, what's a boat for except to tweak.

I had never come across a GIS before, and at first glance was a little sniffy. Plywood, naturally, flat of bottom and slab of sides, and yet the more I looked, the more I began to see the elegance in her design. That chine, which looks so abrupt, turns into a V when the boat heels, and like all skiffs, adds to tracking ability.

This one was exceptionally built, if rather pernickety. The builder clearly loved making little gadgets out of aluminium, including a clever (and to my mind unnecessary) remote bailer control. A nice bit of engineering though, and an example of a number of little touches in a really well built boat.

One thing I was asked to do was make the tiller folding, and this was my solution. The owner also wanted a forward rowing thwart and I am making him some new oars with Gaco plastic spoon blades to a really clever design that takes a length of 2 x 4, parallelograms it, and then rips it from top edge to bottom to make two perfectly matched trapezoid looms.

More projects to come. Meanwhile here is how to make a pair of really nice oars...

More from Sail Caledonia

A shot from Chris Smith of Sail Caledonia, showing Jan's Class 2 winner Mallard, a modified Iain Oughtred-designed Arctic Tern, built by myself and partner Mattis Voss last year. Another of Chris's above.

Caledonia Raid: STOP PRESS

Just had this from Jan Sijpestein, fresh from winning his class at the Caledonia Raid, in which he entered an Arctic Tern we built last year.

Dear Adrian

Arctic Tern came up trumps - brilliant performance, much admired.

Kathy Mansfield took lots of pictures which should be on her website before long. I will
send a few a later.

We did the Lochness Challenge in 12 ½ hrs - tacked all the way in light winds. Roughly 60
km of sailing.

We won our class (2)!

Regards

Jan

Forty-five Hours Later...

Lobie II's mast had a final sanding this morning prior to the start of an intensive period of sealing and varnishing, which I will leave to the owners.

The top 10ft of the mast was scarphed and glued a few days ago, followed by a long day of shaping and fairing first with an electric planer (I warmed to it, after having been so rude once) and a variety of planes, both block, No 5, Jack and Jointers.  And finally the miraculous Veritas block plane, given to me by my American friends Turner and Nancy Matthews. Like holding a Bentley in your hand (or more to the point the wheel of a Lotus Elise).

Then came a spate of electric sanding, a great deal opf squinting and constant checking the taper with a straight edge. The old and new are now as seamlessly bonded and blended together as I can make them. Once varnished to within an inch of its life, it should stand for a good few years.

Thanks are due to Jeremy Freeland at Collars for providing a flawless and extraordinarily close-grained 20ft x 7.5in x 4in lump of Douglas Fir, which was so close to the original spruce as to be almost identical. The dimensions, by pure chance, were almost to the millimetre the same as those of the old section. Maybe Moody's made the mast to match a standard piece of timber. Whatever, the wastage was minimal.

A New Topmast

When Lobie II, a Laurent Giles 43, lost the top of her mast off Lowestoft, most skippers would have decided to abort the circumnavigation of Britain. Not Neil and Maddy Scobie. Rigging a jury, they continued by France and Ireland, arriving back in Ullapool with the jagged stump and a cut-down sail plan. Intrepid stuff.

This is what I wrote at the time:

Copyright Charlotte Watters

John Ridgway – a near neighbour to us, as it happens – may have been the first to row the Atlantic, and Sir Ranulph Fiennes is about to trek to the pole in winter, but no-one to my knowledge has until now sailed around the British Isles with a broken mast, surely an achievement that ranks with the best of them, and more laudable for the fact that it went largely unrecorded, save for a brief note in the (Royal) Loch Broom blog**

This is the stuff of legend; the kind of stiff upper lip in the face of adversity we associate with our great country. What made an empire and won the war. Many a yachtsman with full and detailed preparation has circumnavigated our shores, some of them in astonishing times, others in a variety of craft both suitable and frankly ludicrous. There has probably been a fellow who did it in a bath tub, or  in a Citroen 2cv fitted with sails. Neil and Maddy Scobie with little on no preparation, save a trip to Costcutters for provisions, did it in a classic 43ft yacht designed by the Jack Giles called Lobie II. And for much of the voyage they were lacking a vital part of her, namely the top 10ft of her mast.

It was off Lowestoft that it all came crashing (literally) to the deck. One minute hard on the wind in a lumpy sea; the next a sharp report, more like the cracking of splintered spruce, and a chunk of it landed at Maddy’s feet, narrowly missing her head.

That was when the phone call came. “Hi, it’s Maddy. We’ve broken our mast,” rose a disembodied voice out of the North Sea. “What do you suggest?”

Well, I thought quickly, best get into a safe haven as fast as you can, call the local boatyard, have the rig pulled and Lobie transported home on a trailer. With barely a quarter of the round trip completed there was not much of a case to be made for continuing.

And that is where I left them: joggling about in the North Sea with the top of their mast on deck, no doubt swathed in a welter of sailcoth and stainless steel rigging.

A few days later their daughter called. “How they getting on? Have they pulled the mast yet? How are they planning to get her back home?” The answer was surprising, but typical of the spirit of adventure you would expect from a couple steeped in the old ways of doing things. Typical of a man who wears shorts in mid-winter and once worked with Ridgway. To borrow Henry Paget, 1^st Marquess of Anglesey’s remark to Wellington at Waterloo when a shot took off his leg: “We seem to have lost our mast,” says Neil.

“My goodness,” says Maddy. “So we have...” And soldier (sailor) on.

It was fully in keeping with  Blondie Hasler’s view, who famously suggested that those who sailed alone and got into trouble should be prepared to drown like gentlemen. In this case drowning was not a serious prospect; more like a huge repair bill and a low-loader up the M1.

“Oh they never mentioned the mast,” says the daughter.  “They’ve have found a tree surgeon.They’re in France now up some river having a great time. Apparently I’m to send out a smaller jib. And some Oxford marmalade.”

Next thing, Lobie was back on her mooring with the jagged stump above her top spreaders an unlikely perch for a herring gull. Maddy and Neil were rowing ashore. They had enjoyed a storming sail up the Irish Sea, too fast to stop, they said. And the mast? They had kept the pieces and reckoned it could all be glued back again.

Of course the mast would need pulling, but they would do that alongside the pier and Neil would strap it to an old Massey Ferguson, with no brakes, tax or insurance, and drag it 10 miles up the glen to their lodge in the hills. After all, if you’ve just sailed round Britain without an important section of what drives you then getting the rest of it, all 60ft mind you, up a potholed, single track, unmade road in the Highlands is really no big deal.

**www.lochbroomsailingclub.blogspot.com, for those curious to read the full story.

And here is what's been going on in a barn, 10 miles up the glen over the last few days:

Two lumps of flawless Douglas Fir, 10ft x 6in x 7.5in and a hell of a lot of planing later and the new topmast is ready to be epoxied to the stump.

Ain't She a Beauty?

As a showcase for Mattis Voss's talents, look no further than the Shetland boat he built (with a little help from me) at Viking Boats in Ullapool, and which is due out of the yard at the end of the month.

She overwintered under a white, canvas, breathable cover - the only kind that should be used on a clinker boat. And emerged unscathed from rain, snow and wind.

This is no more than an excuse for showing some photos of Sula in the sun. And the designer? Iain Oughtred, who should be encouraged, after half a lifetime espousing plywood and epoxy, to draw more traditionally-built boats like Sula and the Woodfish faering, of which I have built two.

Many of Iain's details were changed, the line of the planking, framing and thwart positions for example, but that's the beauty of building traditionally, and we added a daggerboard rather than a pivoting centreboard. The rig is balanced lug.

By the way, can anyone see a single knot in any of the planks?

Ferry Repair

'Tis the season for repairs, as owners realise their boats are in no fit state to go in the water, and time is slipping away.

This is a nice example of a Scottish-built former ferry, retired into private hands no doubt due to issues with maintenance or safety. She had every kind of mastic in the lands to keep out the water, when what she needed was more water between the lands to make them swell and keep her watertight. Clinker is the only boat building method that requires a boat to be leaky in order to float.

That's the theory, and a bit simplistic as a tight clinker boat will not leak and never will, especially those with a thin bead of something brown and rubbery between the lands.

This boat may well need some time to take up. We will see, but after 28 hours of scraping out every inch of her, including the accumulations of paint between timbers and planks, and doubling the worst splits, she bloody well better not leak too much to begin with...

Two Go South

The second of the restored estate boats goes home today. The first, a Frank Knights-built mahogany on oak 16-footer, which needed a complete strip, retimbering and plank repair; the second, an elm-planked 10-footer that had been badly converted from a sailing boat and coated in B&Q shed paint. This, ironically, had probably preserved her until it was time for another strip down and retimbering.

Both are ready to go back in the water and, as a bonus, the owner is arriving today with a few choice cuts of pork from his own pigs. Fair exchange, I would say for all that scraping.

Meanwhile there's another old clinker boat waiting to go in the shed for a pre-season sprucing up.

Maybe it's the time of year, but there have been a number of approaches recently for the restoration of old clinker boats, some feasible, some not. I insist on a few photos beforehand and they can be very revealing, and save the expense of a wasted visit. For example, what would you do with a boat like this?

Or this?

Both owners suggested that it might not be impossible to bring them back to life. To which I replied, honestly that "anything is possible, if you are prepared to pay for it". But better by far to take off the lines and build afresh. I fear it is unlikely to happen.

Maybe there are boats worth restoring and others that should be allowed to revert gently to nature, as we all will one day.

Anyone for Sjektes?

Anyone in the market for an 18ft open boat, based on a Norwegian sjekte design called Jan from the 1930s, either with a gunter or bermudan rig, is spoiled for choice. Both Felicity John and Florence Oliver, the boats I built a few years back are on the market for around £4,500 and £6,500 respectively.

I know this as a potential client, with whom I had been discussing a cabin version, decided to see Felicity John for himself, and after I contacted the owner to arrange a meeting, found her for sale. That could be a bit of a bummer for me, as I suggested in my last post, as it may scupper the chance of building a nice new, purpose-built boat. Hy ho.

While popping a lid on Karsten Ausland's Jan does look quite attractive, modifying Felicity John could be fraught with "issues" of strength and space. It could be done though, at the risk of making a dog's breakfast of a beautifully, pure open boat, as both I and my client are well aware.

The cost of modification might be a few thousand quid on top of the purchase price; the cost of a new boat perhaps a third more, so I will just keep my fingers crossed with the look of a man who has "done the right thing". Whatever happens, the important thing is that the right boat gets into the hands of the right owner.

Which made me think: maybe I should become a boat broker and give up the business of building them. Are there not quite enough boats to go round already? Do we need any more boats, especially of the sort that sit in garages and slipways year in, year out without so much as a sniff of water?

Why not call a moratorium on new boats until all the ones we have are in good hands and being used. Just a thought, albeit not the kind of idea likely to appeal to boat builders.

Boat Builder's Dilemma: Florence Oliver For Sale

Florence Oliver, the 18ft sjekte I built some years back, is for sale. She is a favourite of mine, and I vividly remember how she came about.

It was during the Caledonian Raid and I had entered Felicity John, the first sjekte I built after leaving Ullapool Boat Builders. I was pretty knackered as she was my first commission on going alone, and the prospect of building another one so soon seemed a little daunting, so I did my best to dissuade Ted.

These days I would have bitten his leg off, but maybe my reluctance helped fuel his enthusiasm. Anyway, he proved more persuasive than my efforts at evasion and I eventually agreed to build what was to become Florence Oliver.

And very proud I was of her too. With spars by Collars, sails from Steve Hall at North Sea Sails, and nicely finished by Ted, no mean craftsman himself, she made her debut at Beale Park in 2007.

Recently I was asked to quote for a similar sized boat, but with a simple cabin, and although modifying FO would have been nigh impossible, I felt duty bound to mention that she was for sale. I confess, however, that I hesitated before handing on the news. What if my putative client fell in love with her, and my commission evaporated? And yet I owed it to Ted to try and find a buyer for his boat. Matching owner to boat is, after all, what it's all about.

Ted, on his part, bless him, was equally concerned that I might be losing work by putting him in touch. Keen as he was to find a buyer for her, he would feel awkward if her sale meant my losing the chance to build another boat. What should I have done?

Fortunately (or unfortunately) Florence Oliver is probably not going to be suitable and at least my new client, if that turns out to be the case, will get a chance to talk to Ted about my skills or otherwise. It may mean Ted has to wait to sell his boat, and it may not lead to a new commission for me, but my conscience will be clear, and that is worth more than any boat's worth.

Meanwhile, anyone looking for a clinker-built 18-footer, one careful owner...? 

It's Amazing What You Find...

...underneath a thick layer of red fence paint. At least it helped preserve a little dinghy that was on her last legs, and destined as a flowerbed, if the present owner hadn't spotted her on eBay.

Before...

I have to say that she is the prettiest little dinghy I have seen for a long time, and most exquisitely put together, although the thwart knees do look a little heavier than strictly necessary.

One of the intriguing things about her was that she was orginally a sailing dinghy. You can see where I have glued in an oak filler in the slot. The trouble was that, in stripping out the centreboard case a lot of the keel's strength went with it, such that there was a horrible hump in the centre. This disappeared with a bit of gentle persuasion over a weekend, and with the slot well and truly filled, the keel is as straight as a die again. And the new timbers could then be taken over the keel to help add stiffness.

... and after.

The wood used is elm, and flawless, with no splits after what must be 30 or more years. She must have been well looked after in her youth, as the lands are not worn or scuffed, and the rubbing strip is intact. But all the steamed timbers were cracked, and had to be replaced with slightly heftier ones. Which is probably when her owner decided to put her on the market. A common thing now that the ordinary skills of retimbering a clinker dinghy reside in the hands of a handful of traditional boat builders, where once it was a routine job for an owner to steam in a new timber every so often.

So, after a great deal of scraping of red paint, and sanding and varnishing, she's ready for another 30 years. And just look at how the thwarts came up. Again, under the red Cuprinol lay some lovely Honduras mahogany to set off the elm and oak nicely.

I just wish I knew what she was. Anyone out there with a class or type? Length around 11ft, with a rig originally and centreboard. No idea what rig, but probably a little lugsail. And the builder? Almost too good to be professionally built, if you know what I mean. Just such a sweet boat. I almost wish she were mine...

PS I left the rubbing strakes in red fence paint as a reminder, and I think they look fine against the planking.

Finished... but Where's the Proof?

Well the Frank Knight-built dinghy went down to Struy the other day and, as always, I packed a camera to capture the moment of hand over. And then forgot to take any photos.

Ah well. All I can say is that she looked pretty good with mahogany thwarts back and varnished, as was the foredeck. Those of you who (loyally) tune into this blog will be bitterly disappointed of course. But be patient: I will get some shots by hook or crook before too long.

Those of you who also take that excellent publication Classic Boat can read a little about it in the next issue.

Meanwhile I have begun work on the next one: an elm-planked 10ft dinghy that was originally fitted with a centreboard. I only discovered this today when I hacked off the crude blanking piece over the slot. If anything this little gem is even nicer than her bigger sister. I fully intend to take off the lines. Unfortunately, again, I forgot to take my camera to the workshop today. Believe me, she's a little beauty with fabulous mahogany thwarts, Honduras no doubt and unobtainable now. Bent timbers were shot though and all will be replaced.

I have a feeling she was amateur built in the days when amateurs built clinker boats, as the quality is superb, but somehow not professional. In that I mean better. It has taken more time. More care has been expended and that is so often the way. So-called professionally-built boats have a put-together-by-time-served craftsmen-to-a-timescale-and-standard quality about them, whereas amateur-built boats - that is those built by super talented amateurs who may well be brain surgeons, nuclear scientists, climate change researchers or former British Rail managers - can be exquisite. Maybe it's the quota of dedication (I was going to say love) put into them, and the (unpaid) hours.

And if you want to know how to build a clinker dinghy, then you can do worse than subscribe to the thinking man's nautical magazine, The Marine Quarterly. You will not regret it. This quarter's issue, aside from the clinker treatise in 2000 words, includes pieces on scurvy, Brixham trawlers and Thames eels.

www.marinequarterly.com

You know you should...

Progress

The last of the new timbers were steamed in on Friday, and the last of the nails riveted up this morning. The shell now has the strength it lacked when it came into the shed a few weeks ago, plank splits are healed and the next stage it to flip her over to start varnishing the bottom, after some more remedial work on damaged lands and various divots.

Of the timbers, only three split before they could be bent to the planking, which was an excellent ratio. Nothing more annoying than having timber after timber split on withdrawal from the steam box. Well, maybe split planks in a new build at the hood end fastenings just when you've riveted the entire length.

After work on the bottom it'll be time to flip back over and finish the interior with another coat of bilge paint, varnish and the final fitting of the thwarts and floorboards. Then back where she belongs: in the water as good, almost, as new. And certainly stronger now with the slighty beefier timbers.

A'steaming We Will Go

Half the new timbers are now steamed in and riveted up, and the rest will be by Monday. I have increased the scantlings slightly to 15mm x 25mm as the old ones proved too weak, long term.

I am surprised at that in a boat of such quality. It always seems to be the oak timbers that crack first, followed by the planks in way of the cracks and from then on it's a downward spiral. But then as this one has lasted fine for 50 years or so, who am I to query the builder's methods.

The new timbers do look a little, shall we say, agricultural, but then I don't want someone in 20 years' time wish they'd been stronger.

One thing I could not do was to steam them in gunwale to gunwale as it would have meant removing the gunwales, so they meet at the keel centreline. This will mean building  in some of the lost strength, possibly by a series a short timbers across the centreline and riveted to one or two lands either side.

It's wonderful though to see the strength coming back into the floppy shell as the timbers go in. Restoring a boat like this is indeed like renewing a life and - not to get too romantic - you do feel as if this is a living, albeit sick, creature that is being nursed back into health after a period of sickness and neglect.

More Tales from the Milking Parlour...

Splits mended, planks scraped it will soon be time to steam in the new oak timbers. Rather than try and find mahogany to match the original I went for the epoxy and mahogany dust option, in effect reconstituting the timber using a modern mix. The alternative might have been replacing the damaged sections in larch, then staining to try and match the mahogany.

This way the original material is retained and the repair will be both strong and almost invisible. The splits were in the usual places, where the bilge runners had broken and at the turn of the bilge, where most of the steamed timbers had also broken.

The bilges are now white which will make them easier to clean.

I also restored the floorboards, which can be a pain in the neck. Just when you reckon you've finished the boat, here come the damn floorboards, and as they are the first thing you see, they can't be an afterthought.

More next week when the steaming starts. First, on Monday, it'll be time to machine the oak. Where did it come from? About 200 yards from the cow shed where I am working.

Timber miles? About two. That's the way it should be, if at all possible. Besides it's nice to think that a little bit of Leckmelm Estate has been incorporated into a boat built in Ipswich and restored up here.

In another 40 years, who knows, someone might be taking the timbers out again and replacing them. With what? Pre-formed oak-style carbon laminate, perhaps. Roll on. Make life a lot easier...

Nice One Mr Knights

It was only after getting the boat into the shed that I spotted the little oval nameplate on the transom. Frank Knights Boat Builders Ipswich. Frank died in 2008 aged 91, but he is at my shoulder as I work on the boat he built all those years ago. And it's pretty daunting to know that I am breathing life back into a boat that has lasted so long, and built so effortlessly well.

The planking is mahogany, the good stuff, with a few almost unnoticeable scarphs in otherwise full-length planking. It's all copper riveted, with rose head nails at the hood ends. When  I broke out the steamed timbers I was impressed to find, where needed, perfect little teak wedges so they lay on the planks fair. So many other touches spoke of a boat built by a master, from the closeness of the seams to the beading along the thwarts and gunwales.
How did a boat like this get up here? Who knows, but she certainly had little use and the varnish was all original, which made the task of stripping it off all the easier. Unfortunately at some point someone had ladled a stickier, tinted coating on top which could not be burnt, but had to b scraped off. I wish people would think before they did that. Somewhere down the line someone is going to have to scrape it all off.

When Frank retired, he closed the business citing, as one of the reasons, the difficulty of getting people to spend the money needed to keep old (clinker) boats up to scratch. And I fully sympathise.

Owners seem to be losing the knowledge of what it takes to maintain a clinker boat, preferring to bodge and make-do until it's too late. Whereas a little bit of TLC every year is the answer.

Back to work

Time for an update, now there's no excuse (Christmas; New Year) to keep away from the workshop. What you would see if you ventured north beyond the safety of Inverness and up over the Dirrie Mhor to Ullapool would be a shed full of boats: a mahogany dinghy; my With runabout, and a classic motor bike: 1991 Honda VFR750F, plus bit of Sula, the Shetland boat: rudder, mast etc.

The exquisite Frank Knights-built mahogany dinghy came my way recently for restoration. It was going to simply be a question of re-timbering and back in the water, but it was clear this was a cut above the rest, so I set about stripping the hull down to bare wood again.

Thing is, once you start there is no going back. And there's no easy way, is there? John suggested caustic soda and washing up liquid. Is that wise? I'll keep using a scraper and hot air gun as it helps to dry the planking while you scrape. Forget Nitromors. Stupidly expensive and almost totally useless.

Instead of replacing the two sections of split planking with hard to find mahogany (or larch, which would stand out), I will employ a technique learnt from Dick Johnson, boat builder and formerly editor of Yachting World. The splits must be bone dry. Epoxy and mahogany dust mixed produce a mahogany-like material that when varnished is almost impossible to tell apart from the mahogany itself, and will be every bit as strong too. It's a technique I used on the Thames skiff with great success.

Also in hand will soon be the replacing of the top section of Lobie II's mast, which plummeted deckwards during last summer's circumnavigation (of the UK). That'll be tricky. The mast came out alongside the pier yesterday, and was strapped to a makeshift trailer for the journey up the glen.

The mast, of spruce, built by Moody's on the Hamble is a work of art, glued, I fear, with Aerolite or similar. A scarph had given way, I suspect under compression from the shrouds which may have been overtightened. The trick will be to build back the strength.