Sarum Boats: Oxford Shells

5/1/08

Oxford Shells

In a perfect world, all of these would proceed at the same pace, and we would have 4 identical boats, and would all be doing the same steps at the same time, which would probably be more efficient.

But things are what they are, so two boats are getting their cockpit trim and bow wash today, while two are having the mounts for the Pantidosi Row Wing installed. In any case, we are well on target to finish them all before school is out. Coming up: lots of sanding and varnishing. We will have to either move the boats out or thoroughly clean the work room.

'Rudolf'

Boat Building at Salisbury School

This is a record of boat building at Salisbury School, a boys' prep school in northwest Connecticut. In 2002, Eliot Hovey finished his Annapolis Wherry, from a Chesapeake Light Craft, stitch-and-glue kit. He rowed it to a very respectable fourth-place finish in the Blackburn Challenge.

Since then, students /faculty have built sea kayaks; lake kayaks; a couple of prams; Oxford rowing shells; one canoe; a Chester Yawl, a skiff and two surfboards from kits.

Along the way, I learned how to build low-seat, skin-on-frame, solo canoes, which have become our most popular project. After a few of those, I built a ‘recovery’ kayak and a plywood coracle. As of summer of ’14 we were up to seventy-five boats (I’m not counting the surfboards as boats). My lifetime total is well over a hundred boats.

I've also built three West-Greenland style kayaks and four coracles; for the blog of the latter, go to Steel Coracle.