Good Wood at Beale Park

Conventional wisdom dictates that you should never buy and ex-demonstrator vehicle. The clutch will be shot, it will have been driven by hundreds of incompetent drivers over short distances and will be a nightmare.
But this ex-demo can only have taken up and be better than a new traditionally-built clinker boat, which can be expected to leak copiously when first put into the water. And the 13 grand price tag is very reasonable for a craftsman-built boat in perfect decorative condition, as far as I could see.
The boat is a copy of a Lakes skiff, built by Good Wood Boat Company in Cockermouth. The owner, reformed nuclear engineer Steve Beresford, was commissioned to make a copy of a hire boat owned by Keswick Launch on Derwentwater and provide proper plans so they could replace time-expired boats in their fleet as the need arose. The craftsmen who used to be able to do it by eye are long gone, it seems.
The outriggers are interesting - an unusual but attractive semi-circular shape with a pin for the traditional-style oar with a hole.
I didn't get a chance to row her, unfortunately, but one suspects that the oars are too short and the handles too far apart.
But that must be expected for a hire boat.

A Peapod at Beale

Peapods are East Coast (of the US) boats originally used by lobstermen and such. They look a bit like half a peapod, a flattish double-ended hull.
Tim Talo built Jesta, a 14ft Maine peapod from a design by Joel White when he was at the Boat Building Academy at Lyme Regis last year. It is strip planked in western red cedar, so it has none of the framing or stringers that make traditional boats a bit busy internally. There is a series of pictures of the build here.
Tim kindly let me row it round the lake a few times and it moves quickly and smoothly, in fact a lovely boat.
But...I know I am going to sound a bit monotonous about this...the oars are too short. Inboard, the handles are too far apart so your hands act independently instead of as one, and outboard the shafts are not long enough to get enough leverage in the water.
I am thinking of setting up a consultancy to advise boatbuilders on correct oar length. Fees will be modest, and payable in the universal currency of BEER.

At the Beale Park Thames Boat Show

Traditional boatbuilders were a bit thin on the ground at Beale this year, with several longstanding exhibitors missing. The recession, the cost of stands and the sad fact that few sales are made actually at the show (though the contacts may result in sales down the line) has made boatbuilders with slender budgets think twice.
But of the few that made it, a gratifyingly large proportion had rowing boats. Salter was there with their plastic skiff at a mere two grand (well, £1,995 if you want to be pedantic), and a young company called Classic Sailboats was showing the Menai 14, a lovely skiff in grp with wood trim.
Adrian Richardson took me out in her, and she showed a nice turn of speed (one of the sailors complained "Why are you going faster than us?"). She looked great, despite the fact that the varnish was not dry when she was put on the trailer (where have I heard that before?).
No price yet, and Adrian said the oars will be longer and spoonier in the production model.

Thanks to Mrs Richardson for the photo.

Wot I did on my Hols

I've been away and I had a fantastic time, thanks for asking.
First stop was the Beale Park Thames Boat Show on Saturday, where I saw the magnificent Hoi Larntan, the first St Ayles skiff in the south of England. She really is beautifully built, but the oars are, shall we say, way too short and far too heavy. This is already apparent to the builders, who are planning to make some new ones out of spruce instead of the more economical deal they started with.
They are also going to change the steering arrangement from the tiller, which prevents sharp turns to port, to more conventional yoke and lines.
I got a scratch crew of Home Built Boat Rally types out and we took her onto the Thames for a quick thrash. As with all St Ayles skiffs, she moves nicely but the rowing positions are too short for those of us of average build. The picture shows eminent boatbuilder David Bewick coxing, with some antique Thames skiffs of the Thames Traditional Boat Society in the background.

St Ayles skiffs were featured in Countryfile on the Beeb recently, including an interview with Alec Jordan and the traditional humiliation of a TV journalist who was forced to join a crew in a race and came last.
But for me the highlight was an interview with a chap who remembered the coastal rowing scene in the 1950s, when miners used to build their own boats and race them as a change from the cramped and stifling conditions in the pits.
Hi father used to own a boat, the True Vine, which one would assume would indicate a religious bent but in fact seems to have been a reference to his fondness for a jar or two. He didn't win the rowing races but did win the race to the pub afterwards, his son recalled.
The segment is about 55 minutes into the programme.

St Ayles Skiffs Everywhere

It's all go on the St Ayles Skiff front.
Tomorrow, I am going to the Beale Park Boat Show on the Thames near Pangbourne, where the southernmost skiff in Britain (so far) will be making an appearance.
Constructed over the winter by a group in Blakeney, on the Norfolk coast, the skiff is called Hoi Larntan, local dialect for a skipper or master, meaning 'high lantern' or 'high learned one'. Apparently.
I hope to get a row in her tomorrow.
The picture above shows Adrian Hodge working on a spar, wearing what looks suspiciously like a Langstone Cutters beanie presented to him when he put us all up for the Carrow Cup race last December. We hope it kept that famous Norfolk nip at bay.

The westernmost St Ayles Skiff (probably) is coming over to Scotland for the World Championships, and she is without doubt the most unusual so far constructed. In fact, she is unique among boats, being also rigged as a sort of harp.
Sephira was built by pupils of the Moravian Academy in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, under the direction of the woodwork teacher Michael Brolly. He decided the boat did not do enough for the plight of whales, so he added a series of strings that can be rubbed to produce sounds at the frequencies that whales can hear, down in the briny deeps.
"It is believed that the size of the instrument will convey to the whales the seriousness of our intent to communicate with them", Michael writes on the Musical Ark website.

Michael is bringing Sephira to Scotland under his own steam, unassisted by the school or anyone else, and he needs a lot of help with the cost. Contribute lavishly to this endeavour at his Kickstarter page, which also has a rather good video of the boat in action.

Finally, the first St Ayles Skiff in Canada has hit the water of the Bay of Quinte.
One might assume it was the northernmost St Ayles Skiff ever. After all, it's in the Land of the Frozen North, no?
No. The Bay of Quinte is 44 degrees North, and even my house in the soft south coast is 50 degrees North. Thank god for the Gulf Stream.

Rowing gadgets

Home boat builders just love rowing gadgets like the Hobie Mirage drive or the various forward-facing rowing gadgets you can get.

Unfortunately, Hobie make buying a Mirage drive without one of their effective but rather horrid rotomoulded canoes extremely difficult and expensive, though that hasn't stopped the Home Built Boat Rally's Tim O'Connor from obtaining one and fitting it in his self-designed camping canoe. 

Paul Smythson of the HBBR has even fitted one to the rudder of his Walkabout, linked by an ingenious crank mechanism to pedals in the cockpit to form a human-powered outboard.

The Frontrower from Ron Rantilla is very readily available to home builders, in contrast, and his latest newsletter shows how varied and interesting the results are.

Frontrower boats are stylish

Frontrower boats are speedy

Frontrower rowers are tough and resourceful

Merlin Revisited

A couple of years ago I visited St Denys Sailing and Rowing Club on the River Itchen in Southampton, and tried out their Victorian racing skiff Merlin, which is a thing of beauty and a symphony in varnish.
The downside, literally, was the depth the little boat was driven to by a rower clearly a lot bigger than she was designed for (as you can see, even with the stretcher at its furthest my knees are way up in the air).
Yesterday I revisited the club with the Home Built Boat Rally. It was great to catch up with them all and also to try Merlin again.
I had hoped that losing a couple of stone with my low carb diet would mean she would ride higher and prouder in the water, but as you can see the difference is minimal. <Sigh>
Removing the stretcher entirely meant I could get my legs straight, but after this picture was taken I found it was impossible to get any pressure on without it so I put it back in and had a bit of a knees-up, so to speak.