Swimming in the Tyne in 1901

The British Film Institute is putting a lot of fabulous early film online on their website and YouTube, including this lovely clip of a swimming gala in Tynemouth in 1901. The novelty obstacle race, swum in full evening dress, is followed by diving.
The event was filmed by Mitchell and Kenyon, who showed the results that evening with other footage to an enthusiastic audience.
Two things of note:
1) All the boats are rowed, and all the men (no women allowed) step from boat to boat with the easy confidence of a lifetime's practice; and
2) Nobody is being taken off to hospital with acute poisoning - the Tyne was already one of the most heavily polluted rivers in the world.

Building a boat in 1min 41sec

Chesapeake Light Craft in Annapolis (named after our own dear Queen) makes a rather enticing Northeaster Dory, a remake of the classic fishing vessel for recreational rowing. They rightly point out that the dories described in classics such as Captains Courageous were designed to be cheap, stackable and easy to deploy, and only acquired their legendary seaworthiness when you had a ton or so of cod in the scuppers.
So dories have evolved to cater for recreational rowers, and the Northeaster Dory is intended to be light, easy to row and seaworthy without all that fish.
CLC run boatbuilding classes and have produced a great time-lapse film of one of them, in which you can see a line of Northeaster Dories taking shape before your very eyes.
And here is a picture of Antone Konst proudly rowing the boat he built at a similar class in Rhode Island, on the Lieutenant River in Old Lyme, Connecticut.

Halloween rowing

Every year the Hull Lifesaving Museum in Hull, Massachusetts hosts a Head of the Weir race in the estuary of the Weir River, one of the rivers that empties into Boston Harbour.
This year the race was on Halloween, so fancy dress was the order of the day - lots of great pictures taken by Beth, including shots of the many pilot gigs taking part, here.

Thanks to Kathy Martell of IROW for the heads up.

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!

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.

A new Whitehall

Famed American oar and paddle makers Shaw & Tenney are celebrating 150 years in business by creating the first boat they have ever sold - a beautiful Whitehall skiff.
The firm was founded in Orono, Maine in 1858 and has been making wood oars and paddles with their trademark burned-in name on the blade ever since. But this is their first boat.

The hull is nearly 18ft long with a beam of only 3ft 8in, so she should go lickertispit especially with a pair of long oars in the rather stylish folding outrigger rowlocks.
It looks fab, with lots of varnish and brass, but it is definitely a what-the-hell-I-deserve-it purchase: the 'fancy rowing boat' version pictured is listed at $19,000. The vanilla version will cost $14,000, plus sliding seat option, sailing rig option and trailer option. And UK buyers will have to add import tax, VAT and shipping.....

St Ayles Skiff is officially launched

The St Ayles Skiff has been officially launched at Anstruther, where the harbour was sunny and still yesterday, as it was down here in the South. Methil Sea Cadets took her out again (above), with builder Alec Jordan in the bow.
Chris Perkins came over from Scotland's left coast to take the pictures (he is a rather good snapper) and the designer, Iain Oughtred, put hand to oar (at number 3, below) and was, says Alec, very pleased with how it came out.

Several groups who have ordered or are interested in kits for the St Ayles Skiff also came along, including one of the groups from Portobello, in Edinburgh, pictured below. Two international orders, from Germany and the Netherlands, are already in the pipeline, showing how fast the idea has spread.

The only substantial modification being considered is a wider spacing between the thwarts to reduce the amount of oar-handle-banging-person-in-front-syndrome (I'm sure the Germans have a word for this). Alec says the length of the boat will not be increased because at least two strakes would need to have three scarfs instead of two as a result, which would violate the 'keep it simple' principle. Still, speaking as a larger than average rower, more leg room is always better, I feel.