Sarum Boats: May 2010

5/26/10

Final Exam

Here are some photos from the launching and of finished or nearly finished boats.

5/25/10

5/23/10

5/17/10

5/15/10

Its coming down to the wire. No doubt we will be able to finish the boats; what is up in the air is whether we can get them all varnished/painted completely. We are looking at May 26 as our 'exam', or launching.

5/6/10

The Sassafras is pretty much 'done' - except for sanding, sanding, sanding, priming ,painting and varnishing.

Richard's sea kayak is nearing completion, as well. Trimming the cockpit and opening up the deck hatches is all that remains.

Doubler on the bow of the Eastport Pram.

Gunwales on the Chester Yawl.

5/5/10

Extra-long kayak paddles for the low-seat canoes:

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.