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.

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:

All done by Mirrors

Chris Waite, who is a man of infinite-resource-and-sagacity like the Shipwrecked Mariner, was sporting a self-designed rear-view mirror at the Amble up the Hamble on Saturday. It was knocked up from an old belt, an old TV aerial and an old wing mirror. However, Chris was disappointed with performance as he reported on the HBBR forum:

"Despite the proximity of the mirror to my eye, the view is still quite limited, so it is necessary to move your head around to check the wider view of approaching impediments. The added problem is that everything is back to front, so all your head movements need to be reversed to obtain the necessary information. This then has to be translated to pulling on the oar that will move the bow of the boat the other way to the way you are seeing it as you are not only sitting the wrong way round, but looking backwards as well and having to move your head rather than your eyes as they need to stay fixed on the mirror and ingnore the oscillating view astern, in order to scan the scene ahead.
My ageing grey matter could not cope.
Not even slightly."

I have never really liked mirrors. They don't give a good enough idea of what is ahead so you have to look round fairly frequently anyway. The closest thing to a useful mirror is on the Clovelly Scull, where it is mounted on a bipod mast so it is just above your head, so you get a good view straight in front which is handy for both navigation and spotting immediate peril. The mast is also a good place to mount a GPS.
This is Paul Zink demonstrating it.
More on this in the upcoming issue of Water Craft, so subscribe now!

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)

Octavia's paint dries

Chris Waite's much-anticipated rowing skiff Octavia is nearing completion for launch at Lechlade and rowing down to the Thames Boat Show at Beale Park next week. She is looking very good, with wooden outriggers, a particularly stylish aft seat for girl+parasol, and Chris's trademark paint scheme. I'm really looking forward to rowing her.