Sarum Boats: January 2011

1/27/11

Makin' Progress

Jesse Langer's Jimmy Skiff

You can't have too many clamps!

Most of the ribs in Spencer Karls skin-on-frame canoe.

Lawlor Coe's sea kayak

Putting the sharp bend in the bow/stern ribs.

1/21/11

Progress update

In the 'epoxy room', work is well under way on the Jimmy Skiff and the Chesapeake 17LT sea kayak.

Out in the open space of the art studios, the three skin-on-frame canoes are getting their ribs steamed and lashed in place.

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.