some boats yesterday

[peter radclyffe]

[Dave Gray]

Great video Peter. Amazing number of boats!

[PaulT]

That is amazing! Thanks for the post. Great way to start the day.

Paul T

[callsign222]

THAT is a messabout! Damn!

[RFNK]

Wow! Thanks Peter - beautiful! What's French for lee-oh!?
Rick

[peter radclyffe]

croisson, vino,pastis, pinot,

[StevenBauer]

I pray I get to go to this event someday. Their Facebook page is worth a look, too. Just search "Semaine du Golfe" in Facebook.

Kathy Mansfield has some awesome shots of this event, too: http://www.pbase.com/kathymansfield/morbihan&page=all/


Steven

[Bernadette]

there is heaven on earth after all!! i want to be there already!!! thank you for posting this lovely video!
bernadette

ps. i had a look at some of the other videos. i see in the "close sailing" video, that the boats all seem to be of one class, and that they have fancy topsails. is this a a peculiarity of that particular class? the topsails look quite good.

also, how do i save the original clip to my own computer?

[Duncan Gibbs]

Right at 1:43 is the shot. Pardon while I de-drool my chin!

Thank you very much Peter!

[RFNK]

croisson, vino,pastis, pinot,

Hmm, I hope your Italian's a bit better than THAT Peter! Sacre bleu!
Rick

[peter radclyffe]

here only the fat lady sings , lee ho

[RFNK]

Thank God for that!
Rick

[peter radclyffe]

there is heaven on earth after all!! i want to be there already!!! thank you for posting this lovely video!
bernadette

ps. i had a look at some of the other videos. i see in the "close sailing" video, that the boats all seem to be of one class, and that they have fancy topsails. is this a a peculiarity of that particular class? the topsails look quite good.

also, how do i save the original clip to my own computer?

yes, if its the one i think you mean, they are falmouth working boats which are only allowed to trawl fish under sail

[Dick Wynne]

It's not all excitement, here I am waiting for the tide having run aground near Auray in Morbihan Week 2003



This was followed by a hair-raising tow from the marshalls to catch up with the fleet. Yes, canoe yawls can plane.

But the tide there is something else, up to 9kts through 'The Gut', and at the end of the week the fleet poured past Port Blanc with no wind and a lot of swirling tide, boats were oriented every which way, the marshalls in their RIBs knocking them into some sort of order.



This looks like a fairly calm scene but in fact the small sailing boat between the two larger ones is stuck between the wake of the boat in front and the bow wave of the boat behind. The small rib just behind it is the marshalls trying to ram them out the way to safety!

The marshalls, by the way, are the CRS, otherwise known as the French Riot Police, an unnecessary precautionary measure as it turned out.

[peter radclyffe]

http://forum.woodenboat.com/showthre...ign&highlight=

[peter radclyffe]

I had been working under the arches at Kew Bridge building loudspeaker cabinets for rock bands. I made the routing jigs too for all the guys to use and we made the cabinets of birch and gaboon plywood. I layed the concrete floor in the workshop, I had learnt to do this making swimming pools in Norfolk.

When I got involved with a lovely Frenchwoman I wanted to stay with her, so I thought I better get a long term job. I'd heard about the Brentford yard so I went along to ask for a job as a labourer. It didn't occur to me to be a shipwright or yacht joiner; when I asked the boss for a job he jokingly said to me you can replace our shipwright, a south coast trained guy who had just left. I thought he was joking but six months later I was a shipwright. The boss said I'd become a boat builder overnight and a year later I was the shipwright foreman.
I had studied hundreds of boats and lived on them most of my life so I knew how they went together. I'd studied every book I could find: I knew how to rig them and when I started work at that yard in Brentford it all came together. I found something I was very good at and it became my career. What a surprise, I worked with my girlfriend.
Brentford is where I learned the main shipwright techniques. I made spile boards, patterns, jigs, planks ,frames ,floorboards ,panels, roofs, decks, shearing, bulkheads ,linings. The boats were usually elm or steel bottoms 3" x 7' x 6” to 30” wide bottom planks, fastened across the boat to steel or wrought iron knees which were also fastened to the first strake, the chine. The first strake was slightly angled. The rest of the oak side hull planks were slab sided until the top strake, which was angled in. The forward and aft planks were mostly steamed in a steambox that was.fed by a fire made of old planks and anything else, sometimes started with paraffin. These oak planks were very difficult to steam into place as there was any amount of junk either side of every boat or on the dockside over the water. Tanks, boards, panels, plywood, cupboards taken out of the boat to get to the hulls to repair them, fridges, cookers, a car or van, trolleys, baskets, oil drums, water containers. You could barely find a way through the yard sometimes. Bicycles and motorbikes, stacks of oak, elm, pine, mahogany. If you can steam 2 inch thick by 10 inch wide oak 25 foot long planks round the bow of a narrowboat you can probably steam them around most boats because the bows of narrowboats have sharp shoulders. And the smell of fresh steamed oak soaked in linseed oil in the sunshine is great along with tobacco ,red lead and creosote. It smells great though dangerous.
We replaced cratch beams, foredecks, stern decks, cabins, beams, gunnel caps, and counter blocks. The whole world of narrowboats is very particular. Apart from us repairing them there didn't seem to be many people who repaired them on the canals in southern England. The other yards mostly did interior work.

Some of these narrowboat owners go to odd lengths to buy replica tollgate tickets from 100 years ago. Some of them dress up like people from 100 years ago. One guy walked into the yard and asked if we had a narrowboat. He had bought an old clapped out engine , maybe 60 years old a Bolinder, the holy grail for these boat owners. With a faraway look in his eye and his hand on his wallet we could tell he was serious.

[peter radclyffe]

Media for user: peter radclyffe | Boat Design Net

[RFNK]

Very impressive work there Peter!

[peter radclyffe]

thanks rfnk

[peter radclyffe]