Making Blades

I had a trip out to Windsor yesterday to collect a set of new gig oars from J Sutton Racing Blades, one of the few companies left to specialise in making traditional wooden oars.
They live in a corner of a boat shed at Romney Lock, at the end of an unmarked track, the satnav's downfall. We took a long time finding it using old fashioned methods including following-one-nose and asking-directions-from-locals-who-haven't-a-clue.
The shop is a lovely mess of wood and varnish and chippings and sawdust and cramps and tools and templates. Our gig oars are stacked up on the right.
In residence was Peter Martin, who has been making oars from Canadian sitka spruce since 1963.
The shaft of an oar is basically a box with a hollow in the middle for lightness and 'cheeks' glued on the ends to form the blades.
He showed me how the blade is planed into shape using ball-shaped planes. It must take years to learn now to get a good even cut without digging into the wood.
The basic shape of the blade is marked out from a template, but the final shape is determined by just three measurements. If you make more, the blade inevitably comes out shaped like a 20p coin, he explains.
As the shape emerges from the wood, he ensures it is symmetrical by putting his thumbs on the spine in the middle and feeling the width. Much quicker and more reliable than fiddling about with a ruler, he says.
Our set of six 13ft gig blades took a week to make. Goodness knows how long he will be taking on his current job, a set of second-best blades for the Royal Rowbarge Gloriana (left). He made the best set, of course, with their ornate painted and gilded blades, but she is now being made available for trainee and disabled rowers so some workaday oars are required.

Wave

We cut across a very curious line of waves coming out of Dell Quay yesterday. The tide was coming in up the channel in a north-easterly direction, and the bitterly cold north-easterly wind was blowing straight over it. The result was a band of standing waves where the channel turns to the north. It was only fifty yards or so wide, but really quite choppy. 

You can just make it out as a line across the crapphone pic.

That's Dell Quay behind, with the crane that chose that very day to plonk all the yachts stored on the staithe for the winter onto the slipway we wanted to use. We had to wait for a whole HALF AN HOUR for the water to reach the other slipway. But the sailing club gave us coffee which was nice of them.

A Paul Fisher skiff in Canada

Sailstrait, a serial boatbuilder and yacht owner on the Northumberland Strait between Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia on Canada's East Coast, has started his first proper rowing boat.

It is a Medway skiff from the pen of Paul Fisher, a design that combines simplicity and elegance in a way that is really appealing for me. 

And I love the way Sailstrait has put out the flags to mark the day the hull came together.

Ade Goes Gigging

There's been a queue of fading comics heading for the West Country recently to make a bit of easy cash filming soft features for the tourist board. First it was those three guys in a boat that used to do satire, then that woman who was on Jonathan Creek for a bit, and now Adrian Edmondson who was in a couple of sitcoms that I never bothered watching back in the 1980s.
Anyway, in Thursday's Ade in Britain he went to Cornwall and looked at pilot gigs. First he visited Peter Williams, a gig builder in Bodinnick, where he looked at a gig from 1930 that Peter is restoring. He even 'assisted' in a bit of restoration, nailing on a bit of gunwale and steaming a frame. Clearly it was all done for the cameras but actually rather interesting.
Then Ade went rowing with the Newquay women, which was exceptionally brave of him. Not only did he seem to the timing well, he even managed to lift his loom in time to avoid catching a crab, which was slick. Didn't avoid breaking a pin, though.
Keep it up, Ade, and you might lose some of that tum.....
The episode is available here.

The Fitzgerald Sculling Oar in Action

Cliff Martin kindly sent me a video of him sculling with his home-made Fitzgerald pattern sculling oar.
The oar came in for some critical examination when I posted about it recently. Fitzgerald places the crank in the oar below the rowlock, which goes counter to the traditional yuloh design which is bent above the rowlock.
Cliff made his Fitzgerald pattern oar 'from stolen hardwood'. He writes:

"The video shows Sarah rowing with a pair of Plastimo 8 footers while I scull with the Fitzgerald pattern oar over the transom. The boat is a Wayfarer, heavily laden with cruising gear and being rowed into a headwind. Towards the end of the video it seems as though Sarah was barely able to keep up with the Plastimo oars. I think you will agree that it is a long time since you saw a Wayfarer being rowed so quickly."

Sarah is a strong rower despite having to use Plastimos, which like the lives of the poor are nasty, brutish and short, so I suspect Cliff may be contributing less to the speed than he thinks, but the performance is impressive nevertheless.

Steve Bradwell shot the vid at the lovely Wootton Creek, IoW. Which reminds me, I have been mulling a row to Wootton for some time. If the weather improves this must happen soon.

St Ives Punt Launched

Here's a great video of the launch of the new St Ives punt, Sija, with the builder Jonny Nance giving a bravura demonstration of the art of scullying. Apparently he was giving lessons within five minutes of the boat hitting the water.

Jonny uses a traditional straight oar for scullying, as is right and proper for such a traditional boat. Tomorrow, I return to the vexed question of the correct shape for a Chinese sculling blade....

Duck Punt For Sale

Andrew Berry has drawn my attention to this very nice looking duck punt on eBay. It was professionally made by Littens of Beccles and even comes with a sailing rig, though that looks a bit home made with a cut-down Mirror sail (is there some sort of law that mandates cut-down Mirror sails for every home-made rig?).
There are riggers for rowlocks but no apparent mounting for a gun.

Colin Willock describes how a punt is very handy for wildfowling even without the monster cannon, as it can be used to transport the shooter out to the best locations before dawn, and get him back again after the tide has risen.
Currently, bidding seems to have stalled at £121.00 but as several people seem to be interested I imagine there will be a last-minute surge. Under a week to go...