New Boats at the HBBR Thames Raid (2)

 You can instantly recognise boats created by some designers, and one of those is Chris Waite. He had two new designs being paddled down the Thames with the HBBR, remarkably, both sporting the curvy single chine shape and rounded bow that have become his trademark.

Pictured above waiting for the lock gates to open is Chris in Polly Wee, a boat designed to fit in his garage and pass between a pair of bollards in the road that leads to the slipway on the River Arun. She is intended to be sailed but also rowed (another reason for the thin hull). Water ballast will be fitted so a decent spread of canvas can be flown. He explains the design process in some detail at the HBBR forum.

Chris also designed Graham Neil's latest sailing canoe, Katie Beardie. KB was first launched at the Tewkesbury meet last year, but has now been fitted with decks and a sailing rig. She now looks absolutely gorgeous, a tribute to Graham's boatbuilding skills. You can read the whole story at his blog, Port-na-Storm.

Venetians on the Thames

After the Royal Row Barge Gloriana, which effortlessly dominated the river with her gilt-carven-bulkitude, the most impressive sight at the Diamond Jubilee Pageant was the pair of huge gondolas manned by Venetians, with accompanying sandolos brought by City Barge in Oxford, a club devoted to the less common forms of rowing.

We came up with them again on Wednesday in Abingdon lock - they were also going to participate in the Beale Park Thames Boat Show. The big gondolas were not there, unfortunately, but it was still a pretty sight to see four sandolos and a gondola in such a quintessential English scene. Several of the Italians were with the party.
The big sandolo (below) was built in Stratford-upon-Avon fairly recently, but the gondola was made in Venice in 1904 for an exhibition in London. Afterwards, she was bought by the romantic novelist Marie Corelli, who lived in Stratford. The sight of her and her companion being rowed on the Avon by her tame gondolier was a notable tourist attraction for years. Corelli (born Mary Mackay) was without doubt one of the worst novelists in history, right down there with Jeffrey Archer, with whom she shares many stylistic traits. Try Thelma - I defy you to get to Chapter Two.

A new Linnet at the HBBR

New on the water at the HBBR meet on the Severn was Puddleduck, a superbly-finished rowing/sailing skiff by Ken and Sonja Norman.
The design is the Woods Linnet skiff, intended mainly for rowing but also with a small rig and daggerboard for broad reaches and downwind sailing.
Sonja confessed when they were launching that she was a little apprehensive about the sail on such a narrow boat, and she prefered to row anyway. When they returned, she had a big smile on her face (pictured) and said that sailing had been unscary and in fact fun.
This is great news. As readers with long memories may recall, I have a kit for a Woods Bee awaiting construction, and I had slight concerns about her sailability. I think my fears may be unfounded.
Chris Adeney rowed his Linnet down to Tewkesbury from his home near Upton on Severn on Saturday, and back again next day. So clearly it rows like a train also.

Aero's maiden voyage under oars

Jeremy Harris's remarkable non-wooden skiff Aero went out under oars for the first time on Sunday, on the River Hamble. Also present were Chris Waite with his remarkable all-wood skiff Octavia and myself, with my remarkable Chippendale Sprite Snarleyow, which is mainly wood but a with bits of SS here and there.

Aero proved to be a bit tippy but with reassuring amounts of secondary buoyancy, and incredibly light. So much so that Jeremy complained that when he hit patches of algae (it's that time of year) the boat would come to a dead halt instantly. This is partly due to the sharp angle of the bow which digs in to the water like an axe.
The outriggers are made of carbon fibre on a foam mould originally intended for a leaf spring in an aircraft undercarriage (Jeremy's other obsession is planes). A pair of John Murray's GA swivels are slid into sockets in the ends. The outriggers seemed very stiff.
The oars are aluminium tubes with carbon fibre blades, not a very happy arrangement but necesary to win the bet to create a boat with no wood at all. Jeremy had weighted the handles to help with the balance but this meant the blades overall were quite heavy compared with my traditional Macons. They were also far too short (also, possibly, the outriggers 'wings' were not long enough).
The short blades meant that Jeremy struggled to push the boat along at the speed she is clearly capable of, but with a few tweeks to the rig, she will fly.
The next step is to install a front-facing rowing device.
Jeremy has built a high-tech version of the cranked oars that used to be used in duck punts, which looks like rowing as designed by rocket scientists. The cranks have a 20 per cent leverage and folding the handles out brings the blades in for convenient stowage. It will be very interesting to see how the design pans out.

Cordless Power

The Amateur Yacht Research Association joined the Home Built Boat Rally at Barton Broad last weekend and far be it from me to imply they are a bunch of raging eccentrics. Jolly nice, though.

One of them has added electric power to his catamaran for the upcoming Water Craft magazine Cordless Canoe Challenge at the Beale Park Boat Show on the Thames next weekend. The challenge is to get round a dogleg course powered only by old cordless power tools (you can just see a couple of cordless screwdriver/drills in the picture). I thought of entering with a single-sheet canoe, but my cordless drill is so shot I wouldn't stand a chance.

Water Craft's website has details of the next issue, incidentally, and it includes plans for a new design of coastal rowing boat from Paul Gartside. Can't wait for my copy to drop through the door.....

HBBR meets at Dell Quay

A small, exclusive sub-section of the Home Built Boat Rally gathered at Dell Quay today. It would have been less exclusive, but a range of conditions from man-flu to broken car springs prevented a large number of members (3) from getting to Chichester Harbour.
It was a great day. The weather was crisp with blue skies and a moderate breeze. First on the water was George Isted with his beautifully made Pup (the Practical Boat Owner design).
Then Chris Waite, boat innovator supreme, took his auto-yuloh out, mounted on the transom of his tender Wishes Were.
There are many forward-facing rowing systems out there, but most are either too complex or not very effective or both. Chris's system relies, as most of his inventions do, on string, but it shows huge promise judging by the speed he was  making against wind and tide in a short, fat boat. I particularly like the yuloh itself, laminated from contrasting woods.
The pedals pull the yuloh from side to side, automatically adjusting the blade to the correct pitch. Steering is done by pedalling more vigorously on the outside foot, but Chris is working on a design that would mount the yuloh on a rudder. The rudder would give instant control to the rower, and its motion would counteract the tendency of the oar to fishtail.
The next step is to install the auto yuloh on Octavia, Chris's skiff. Being longer, higher speeds should be attainable.
So the mechanism was removed from Wishes Were, which was promptly sold to Sarah for paddling round Chichester Harbour in the conventional facing-the-wrong-way manner.
To get a better idea of how well the auto-yuloh works, here is a short video:

More from the Home Built Boat Rally

So I was casually carrying Simbo to the beach when someone said: "Are you entering the Biggest Bloke in the Smallest Boat contest?"
Yes.

(Picture by who else but Chris Perkins)

A Home Built Boat with Mirage drive

The Home Built Boat Rally rallied to the Cotswold Water Park over the weekend and brought the sun out. It rained on Saturday morning before I got there and was turning a bit nasty on Sunday afternoon when I left. Just how I like it.
The star exhibit was Tim O'Connor's Wotnext, a Walt Simmons canoe which he has fitted with a Hobie Mirage drive.
The Mirage drive has a pair of pedals driving flippers under the boat, flapping round like demented turtles. It is an incredibly elegant mechanism, just a couple of chains/cables transferring the power from the pedals to the flappers. And it drives the boat along lickertispit, as the video shows. Apologies for the camera shake, but he was at the other side of the lake and it's a long zoom.
I had a go myself later, and after just a little practice you develop a nice easy action that could keep you going forever. Tim has also designed and built a stylish seat based on the shape of seats on recumbent bikes, which is amazingly comfortable.
It is great to be able to keep on going while you take photographs, wave to boats you are overtaking or lift a nice glass of something to your lips. Tim seemed to be very keen on the idea of making sandwiches on the move, but that may just be the diet talking.
The big drawback to the Mirage drive is that you have to order it specially from the US and you won't get change from £500. As Tim points out, nobody who is into home built boats is going to buy a rotomoulded Hobie so they wouldn't cannabalise their kayak market by making the drives available to buy more easily and cheaply.

HBBR in the Broads

The most perilous part of small boating isn't facing mountainous seas or screaming tornadoes, it's getting in and out of the boat. In the Broads, where all the staithes are designed for cabin cruisers and are about a mile high, it is particularly difficult for small boats. How kayakers do it at all I cannot imagine.
Tim O'Connor found this to his cost when he tried to leap athletically off the bow of his Acorn skiff Ardilla at Neatishead Staithe on Sunday. The staithe was rather high and the deck is rather small, and he ended up between boats.
Did we drop everything and go to the assistance of a distressed mariner and friend? You must be joking - those of us who weren't doubled over laughing reached for our cameras:

Which is why the next bit is a deadly secret. Don't tell this to anybody, least of all a member of the HBBR and especially not Tim.
On the Monday I rowed down the River Ant to How Hill, where there is a great nature reserve and a small preserved marshman's cottage. Here, the staithe is like the great north face of the Eiger. Getting out was no problem, but getting in....oh dear. I did the classic clinging to bank thing as the boat headed for midstream. Golly it was cold.
Luckily for me, the boats either side consisted of the Broads yacht Hiawatha and a family on a cruiser who proved to be most of the crew of the Tynemouth lifeboat.
They hauled me onto Hiawatha's elegant counter stern where I oozed horribly, then took me to the cruiser where they gave me a cup of coffee, a shower and the opportunity to squeeze my clothes out. They even microwaved my socks. They were wonderfully hospitable and my sincere thanks go to them.
I rowed back briskly to avoid freezing up, and even got a bit of a sweat on.
So hooray for Tynemouth RNLI, and if you would like to make a generous contribution to their sterling work even when off duty and on their hols, click here. After all, if you make a habit of stepping into and out of small boats, you never know when you might need them.

Looking forward to Summer

This wonderfully nostalgic picture dating from the 1960s is of Beccles on the Norfolk Broads from the lovely Broadlands Memories website. The colour palette is redolent of railway posters, Janet and John books and childhood happiness.
The Home Built Boat Rally is plotting a return visit in June and I can't wait.

Up the Hamble again

Up the Hamble again today, with Home Built Boat Rally friends Chris Waite, Paul Hadley and Phil Oxborrow with dog Gem. Here is Paul at the oars of Octavia while Chris sits regally behind, directing.

Old Gaffer and blog reader Bernie turned up at the Swanwick hard to take a look at our boats, as he has bought the plans for a Selway Fisher 12ft Thames Skiff and needed to decide whether to make the beam 3ft 3in or to go for the 3ft 9in option. He has gone for 3ft 3in, wisely I think.

It was nice to meet you, Bernie, and I look forward to you joining us on future expeditions in your Thames Skiff!

Went to the Horse and Jockey at Curbridge and, joy, they were open, welcoming, and serving a brilliant breakfast consisting of a real proper sausage and lots of other stuff including bubble'n'squeak. And they had a new (to me, anyway) real ale from Gales called Seafarer, which is light, refreshing, suitbable for lunchtime quaffing when one has to drive home, and £3 a barrel goes to the maritime charity.
So my curse on the H&J is hereby rescinded, repealed, revoked and rethingied.
Talking of charities, I passed the YMCA training centre and was pleased to note:
a) someone has a sense of humour;
b) they still remember the unassuming local man who went round the world without hype, hoopla or commercial sponsorship.

Up the Hamble with the HBBR

It's so wonderful to get another sunsoaked Saturday in a generally rainy week. A squadron of the Home Built Boat Rabble (as Chris Waite unkindly called us) set out from Swanwick hard midmorning and headed up the Hamble.
To the left is Chris Adeney in his Woods-designed Linnet skiff Pelly, the sister of the Bee that I have under construction (well, I have the plywood stacked up in the shed). Following on are Dr Waite in Octavia, Max Taylor in Gato Negro and Tim O'Connor in his Chesapeake kayak Wot Four.

Tim and Chris A exchange banter passing under the A27 bridge.
I put on a bit of pressure after the bridge and to my alarm the port side rigger broke away from the gunwale. A wing nut holding it to the hull had worked off on the road, leaving one arm of the rigger virtually waving in the wind. I had to ease off to avoid the whole thing coming apart.

We arrived a bit early at the creek up to the Horse and Jockey in Curbridge, so we floated gently up on the tide until the mud was covered (note traditional British car tyre).
Then we hung around outside the pub door, which remained sternly closed despite being past noon on a sunny Saturday. Eventually a bloke came round to announce that due to blah blah they would not be opening until one, and that due to blah blah blah the kitchen would not be open until the evening.
That was inexcusable. They knew we were coming, and while we were waiting several people arrived and left again. Is the landlord just lazy or was the entire staff crippled by hangovers? Avoid the Horse and Jockey, Curbridge, Hampshire, is my advice. I won't be going back.

We re-embarked and paddled off to Botley, where there is a lovely green at the old quay. Up to Victorian times this was a bustling port but now it is a quiet backwater and a lovely place for a picnic. Expeditions to the town secured supplies of sandwiches, beer, wine and double chocolate cookies (thanks, Chris A!).
I even managed to get a wing nut and washers to keep the rigger in one piece.

On the way down I paused to watch Hampshire firefighters practicing shallow-water rescue drill, for rivers and floods. They were using this interesting little inflatable, fitted with a skirt behind so rescuees can be hauled aboard easily and without causing more injuries.

Back down, the tide was still standing due to the famous Southampton double high tide. We got back at 4 and the light was going fast. Here are Graham Neil packing up his kayak Polythene Pam, with Snarleyow, Octavia and Steve and Marg Brown's nice little Petite Brise Penny.
Also present were Phil Oxborrow and Gem with their Prospector canoe Tonawanda and Al Law in his 8ft pram Newt.

Tailpiece: Comments were made on the Hamble's general muddiness. They weren't wrong.

More on this event on Max Taylor's Burseldon Blog.

HBBR Cotswold Water Park (Tailpiece)

My Chippendale Sprite Snarleyow only made it to Cotswold Water Park by the skin of her varnish. The strip of softwood in the middle of the gunwale had rotted at the ends, so I replaced it and took the opportunity of planing the ends down at bow and stern to make a rather elegant tapered effect. Now I have to put the extra coats of varnish on.

I have never seen a boat carried on an open-top car before. Chris Adeney brought his Selway Fisher Waterman canoe on top of his vintage Morgan. It was a pity he did not bring his Linnet rowing boat as well, as it is towed behind and the whole rig must look very impressive. The boats are even painted the same colour as the car. "That way, you only need one can of paint," Chris says.

HBBR at Cotswold Water Park

Steve and Marg Brown launched their new dinghy at the HBBR meet, a Selway Fisher Petite Brise design called Penny. Despite not being a boat person, Marg did a lot of the finishing and painting, which I think is noble. Here is Steve holding the bow while Tim O'Connor takes the tiller and Graham Neil hops about on the beach.

Also making a first appearence at the event was Peter Nobes's new canoe, a Christine design also by Selway Fisher.

Rowing at HBBR

The Home Built Boat Rally at Cotswold Water Park over the weekend was brilliant - lots of sun on the Saturday and a nice breeze on Sunday for the sailors. The Saturday night barby featured enough meat for the entire Royal Marines (and band).
The O'Connors took their Oughtred Acorn skiff Ardilla out with Tony Waller at stroke, getting a very decent speed up.

And I finally got to row Chris Waite's Octavia, the award-winning two part skiff held together with string. It is lovely, very fast and stable, but she does not keep a straight line very well. Chris says this unexpected trait was responsible for his leading the pack down the river at the HBBR Thames rally earlier this year. He explains that he found it impossible to keep a straight line except under power, so he could never rest on his oars. He is going to install a skeg which should keep her in line in the future.
Here is Octavia artistically arranged on the beach with HBBR sails in the background and Molly Dog in the bow of Iona, keeping watch.

Thames Boathouses

The Thames is lined with boathouses ranging from small sheds perched on the bank to palaces capable of holding a small navy and accommodating the crew above. This is one of the latter, and I remember it vividly from my childhood.
We were rowing from Wallingford up to Benson when we were caught in a sudden and violent thunderstorm. My parents noticed the boathouse doors were open and we sheltered inside. Their relief at being safe from the lightning was palpable, but us kids just revelled in the sensation of being afloat in the indoor gloom, lit only by the occasional flashbang.
It was great to see the boathouse in such great condition when we passed by last week, as was another favourite, a Stockbrokers' Tudor boathouse in Oxford (right).
Many, however, have been sadly neglected. Look at the state of this boathouse near Northmoor (below). It is falling into the river but a massive new non-boathouse is being built behind at huge expense. Someone has their priorities dead wrong here.

More on oars

One of my favourite boats on the great HBBR row down the Thames was Tony Waller's Isabella III, built to Joel White's Shearwater design. The picture shows him easing through Radcot Bridge heading for the pub.
Later, Tony was pushing against a lock wall with his oar and it slipped into a crack, breaking off the end.
Continuing to row, he expected to feel the boat tipping over due to the imbalanced thrust of the oars, but interestingly the break made very little difference. He lashed up a new end to the blade with duct tape (what would we do without it?), not to restore performance but to protect the ends so the bits could be epoxied back in place when he got home. Here he is by Wallingford Bridge with the ghastly evidence.Just goes to show that the length and size of oar does not really matter, within limits. What really makes the difference is a comfortable rowing position and the right gearing (except when racing, of course, when milliseconds can make the difference between glory and goathood).

Built for comfort, not speed

The two hardest working rowers in the HBBR fleet from Lechlade to Beale Park were probably me and Wayne Oliver in our flat-bottomed boats. Wayne was also burdened with a pair of short oars and the fact that he had left the rudder at home, so his boat Ever Hopeful would spin round on its axis rather than go forward.
Wayne's problems were lessened by the addition of the rudder, brought to him at Radcot Bridge on Monday. With the tiller lashed to the centre position, the boat went in a straight line quite nicely. And borrowing Chris Waite's long oars gave him a bit more heft, as shown above in Chris Perkins' picture. But he still had to labour heroically to complete the course.
The fundamental problem for both of us was the combination of a flat bottom and a wide transom that digs into the water, sucking the boat back. As you can see from this picture, Nessy leaves a carpet of turbulence in her wake.
This is the price we paid for the ease of construction, stability and capacious flat space for sleeping in that the designer, Conrad Natzio, built into both boats, the Sandpiper and Oystercatcher.
Richard Rooth's Inwe, in contrast, is a slippy double ender from Iain Oughtred (his Elf) and seems to be a joy to row with Richard's long, slender sea oars (pic by Chris Perkins).

Launch of Octavia

Well, we did it. We rowed over 60 miles from Lechlade, close to the source of the River Thames, to the Beale Park Thames Boat Show near Pangbourne.
The sun struck me pink, every muscle in my body aches, my hands are covered in calluses and my bum has a boil the size of Berkshire. It was GREAT.
For those of you not familiar with the Home Built Boat Rally (HBBR), this internet-based disorganisation (no forms, no subs, no rules) has an abysmal weather record, with almost every event so far consisting largely of people huddling on the foreshore in the driving rain wondering when the pubs are going to open. But last week the weather god gave us sunshine from Sunday to Thursday, and even allowed us to get into Beale Park on Friday under grey skies before the rain set in.
Sunday was devoted to setting up at the famous Trout Inn at Lechlade, which we soon discovered is famous for its high prices and basic facilities. I haven't seen a jakes like it anywhere else in England since the 1980s. My dear, the smell.
But let's move on. The surroundings were lovely and countrified, just as yer fancy paints, and we set to on the main event for Sunday, the launch of Chris Waite's new skiff Octavia.
Octavia uses four sheets of ply, with a few slivers left over. She is built in two halves, so she can fit in the back of Chris's SUV, the attachment being made by slotting the halves together with a dovetail. The dovetail is stopped from unhitching by slotting in the outriggers, which hold themselves in with a wedge system and bits of string - low tech but KISS (look it up).
Even off the water, Octavia is innovative - the halves of the hull fit together to form a shelter, a tarp keeping rain out of the gap.
Chris poured a generous libation of Glenfiddich over her bows on the slipway and rowed off with aplomb. She was clearly fast, a first impression borne out over the next few days when Chris would look up over his breakfast of mixed egg, sausage and beans, see everyone was leaving and follow hot-foot, or is that hot-oar? He would inevitably overtake everyone within a few miles.
Finally, at the Beale Park show, Octavia was awarded Watercraft's prize for the most innovative design, and richly deserved. Congratulations, Chris.
(Thanks to Chris Perkins for several of the pics. The others were taken by me)

Sculling the Scullmatix way

The HBBR at Barton Broad was a brilliant opportunity to give the new Scullmatix a proper workout in calm, non-tidal waters (thanks to Ian Rushton for the picture). This time, Nessy was also fitted with a crutch on the transom to grip the shaft of the oar properly, unlike the sculling notch which allowed the oar to pop out far too readily in my first experiment.
The Scullmatix was fixed to a long oar I happen to have around, plus a bit of round fence post from our local garden centre.
It balances quite nicely on the crutch, with the handle close to my hand when standing in the middle of the boat. I suspect this may hold the oar at too shallow an angle to the water for greatest efficiency but I will play around with this in the next few weeks.
One thing that is abundantly clear is that Nessy is too short and light for sculling to be really effective. The boat tends to swing from side to side wildly, and is difficult to steer without pulling the blade right out of the water and moving it to a new position. The device is probably much more effective in shifting a heavier boat. It would be handy for propelling a yacht out of a crowded harbour, for example.
But it was very much easier to get the hang of it than using a regular sculling oar, and much easier on the wrists too. Here's a video taken by Chris Perkins of me swanning about at Barton Staithe.