Sgoth Arcach, ' Gobhlan Gaoithe' aka Swallow, an Orkney Yole on the Isle of Skye

"The rebuilding of an Orkney Yole from the 1920's. Work done in Camuscross from 2002 onwards, mostly by Fergus Walker between 2004 and 2007, with timely help from family and friends."

Building

Good lines

Boat in 2003 after several planks put in by Gus MacLean

Lots to do

The boat would be ritually taken out every year to make way for hay into the hayloft. Sometimes she even blew over in gales.

Night light

This is the boat after I had spent a summer replacing the planks on the starboard side.

New plank

The work done here was as done at the end of the summer of 2006. New material was a while in coming - this is it having arrived in about May 2007!

Progress

Having been ill for two months, the arrival of Tjerand (fellow student from boatbuilding in Norway) and Paul - the both of them being students at the Chippendale furniture school near Edinburgh - was a godsend! Just about on the mend, the work they did was a real kick start

Celebrating a good day's work

Tjeand and Paul at the local

Hard at work

Tjerand removes most of the stem

One strake up

6th strake ( one full plank length of boat) all done

Not a patch on the old plank!?

Screwing patches onto joins (scarphs) of a strake made up of dodgy short bits stops it losing shape when you remove it

Frames

Sawn frames fitted on the port side.

Floorboards begin

Middle floorboard section resting on beams fixed to the sawn frames

Marking floorboards

Fergus uses skills learnt at Bunnpris, Coop and Rimi in Norway

Floorboards finished!

High speed tarring

Tar mixture is 1/3 pine tar, 2/3 linseed oil and a bit of turps on the inside.

The smell of tar

Susan and Malcolm

Getting tanned

Fergus and Jared

Arrgh the midges!

Jared scratches, Fergus sensibly has his shirt on




THE LAUNCH

"The launch, on the 11th August 2007, turned out to be brilliant day, with crowds of people from Camuscross and beyond, as far as Norway, Germany and the Netherlands, coming to see the spectacle and join in in their boats. A dance was held with Fergie MAcDonald afterwords at Duisdale hall."

The boat sets off

Heave ho





Beannachdadh

Sea blessing from Carmina Gaedelica by Ian Urquhart. The boat is named "Gobhlan Gaoithe" - Swallow

Og båten går å hoooiiiiii!

Only the intrepid Fosen people remain in the water





Sailing well

Having come through the dornie, heading for Eilean Iarmain Pier



TRIPS

"All trips are sunny on Gobhlan Gaoithe. The camera never lies."

An Cuiltheann

An Cuiltheann is a sawtooth range of mountains on Skye (ed.)

Machiel and Fergus

Easy sailing





On watch

Gavin, Fergus, Machiel

Beach

Malcolm

Turas gu Loch na Beiste

Fergus with makeshift boom

Through the Kylerea narrows

Jared

Gabhan

Malcolm a streap

all photos, titles, headers and captions courtesy Fergus Walker except where indicated

Here's a story that 'warmed the cockles of me heart'. An Orkney yole restoration on the Isle of Skye . A young Fergus Walker is the main protagonist in this story, with supporting roles from his father and other members of his local community. The boat was purchased in 1997 by Fergus and his father from a man who'd been working in Caithness, said he'd bought the boat there. Built, he said c. 1920, rigged with a single lug sail and jib, but later Fergus discovered a mast step forward and figures she was originally rigged in the traditional manner of these boats, two masted sprit rigs with a jib tacked to a bowsprit. Fergus suspects she's a Stroma Yole. They sailed her, Fergus and his dad, for a couple of seasons, then the leaks got so bad they abandoned her ashore for a decade or so, until Mom threatened to burn the boat if they didn't do something with it. Moved into a shed, they had a local boatbuilder replace a few of the worst planks. Fergus then went off to Norway, attending the renowned folk/craft school Fosen Folkhøgskole, where he built the local craft (the Åfjords Boat) and learned traditional Norwegian boatbuilding skills which would prove useful in his endeavor to recreate his boat. Upon his return he commenced his restoration. As you can see from the photo essay, Fergus had lots of help from family and friends. The boat was christened 'Swallow' or Gobhlan Gaoithe in Gaelic, for the birds that took up nest in the shed during the rebuilding. The literal translation of the Gaelic is 'fork in the sky'. Fergus reports that as they launched the boat, a flight of swallows careened above the boat. You'll find more about his journey through this process on Fergus' weblog about the renovation accompanied by his photo log on Flickr. I've asked if there are drawings, did they take off lines, but have yet to hear from Fergus about that. I'll let you know.

Fergus pointed me to the Orkney Yole Association, where I found a new boat, Lily, under construction, and, surprise, it's been built in the traditional Norwegian way, right side up, though they did use molds.

Fergus has finished his course in Product design at Dundee University. His 'Degree Piece' , a sort of thesis project, is the Human Powered Flour Mill, found here.

Jigsaw 2.0, addendum

Mike, Phillipa and Kate, with Jigsaw in the background, all at an' earlier stage of development'.

construction photos of Jigsaw

"Clouds of sail"




all photos courtesy Mike Harrison

Mike Harrison, resident on the Channel Island Jersey, sent me some additional material on Jigsaw (see previous post). Mike says:

"I learned about traditional Jersey Fishing boats as a child crewing for Bob Kempster, an old Le Rocque fisherman, and also Reg Nicholle, my sailing master at Victoria College. He was an amazing character who used to tell us tales of the La Rocque Boats, racing under "clouds of sail" (photo attached) and how they fished the Ecrehous and Minquiers reefs under sail and oar.
It was by chance that Mike Jackson was restoring the Volunteer for the Jersey Museum when I was looking for a "handy boat" for day sailing and fishing with my young family.

Volunteer would have been built as a sprit cutter and later changed to lug. Different rigs were used according to the type of fishing that the boat was doing. It was not unusual for a boat to have three mast steps."

Chuck Cole: Sunspirit

This book ultimately brought Chuck to my attention.

Chuck Cole

Deb, seen here sailing Moondancer, is a recent addition to Chuck's crew, in the role of first mate.

Chuck built his Lynaes dinghy Moondancer from the book above, adapting the drawings to his needs.

She has traditional pine tar finish, though the lug rig is Chuck's adaptation.

The first Sunspirit was a 22' Block Island 'Cowhorn' (Chapelle)or Double Ender (Block Islanders),
*see Chuck's comment below

The boat appeared in Block Island: The Land by Robert M Downie

Chuck's sail loft in a yurt

Spar construction for the more recent, larger Cowhorn, with what looks suspiciously like a Hobbit dwelling in the background.

The larger, newer (building commenced in 1983) boat is a 37' Block Island double-ended cat schooner, built lapstrake with white cedar on black locust.

I said 37' lapstrake! Double-ender!

Could Chuck Cole be a reincarnated Viking?

Trying the rudder

From the stern

From the cockpit before...

and after stepping the masts



all photos courtesy Chuck Coles

Living off the grid, in yurts, heating with wood, building traditional boats by traditional methods, using wood felled and milled on his property in Wellfleet, Cape Cod, Chuck Cole is living a life that many of us would envy! (Maybe not all of us.)
I found Chuck on a WoodenBoat thread while searching out info on Christian Neilsen, a Danish traditional boatbuilder and historian. I'm not going to say a lot more other than to refer you to the thread and discover Chuck for yourselves, except to add that in recent email conversation Chuck reports that he's found his ship/mate, Deb, and that they hope to launch the 'cowhorn' sometime in 2010 and to begin cruising more southerly climes. I wish them godspeed in doing so, but not before I can arrange a visit to Wellfleet, maybe for the launch!

Charlie Hussey, Boatbuilder

Charlie Hussey

Harlequin, Clyde 17/19 Lugger

'No photos of Katydid from this period have come to light but another 17/19 Clyde Lugger was the subject of a photographic supplement from The Yachtsman and gives an impression what it must have been like to race these boats.'

Katydid as Charlie found her

With Katydid in his shop, Charlie questions the originality of her deck. His intention is to restore he to her to 'look and sail as she did when launched in 1892'.
This entails a bit of detective work.

Garboard off

Sighting down the keel

Keel shot

Heavy Metal

Katydid opened up

all photos courtesy Charlie Hussey

Charlie Hussey is an interesting boat builder, with an interesting weblog. He is apparently meticulous and exacting in his work and has an artists eye that shows in his photography and the presentation of his blog. I like his attitude: "Let’s get one think straight. This blog is not a chronological account of work as it gets done. It is selective, irregular and completely biased in favour of the colourful aspects of what I do." And so it is. You can see from the evidence above that Charlie's got a real sense for color and proportion in his photographs. One gets a sense of Charlie's keen observation, sense of proportion, his discerning approach to his work and his process in this statement about Katydid, relating to her photo in profile view.

'This entry is more or less all about Katydid’s profile – the way that she looks when viewed from the side. There’s lots more to say about her ‘end-on’ view but that will have to wait.

More or less the first thing that I did once Katydid was moved into the shed was to level and measure her. Together with the design offsets provided by Fairlie Restorations from the Fife archive I had enough information to compare Katydid as designed and Katydid as she is now. While the tables of offsets and raw measurements were adequate to confirm a few basic facts I decided to create CAD models of Katydid’s hullform in order to investigate how and to what extent there are differences. The whole process was, for me, amazingly illuminating. I really don’t think that I would have got very far at all in interpreting the history of Katydid’s hull form without the use of CAD. For those of a technical inclination I am using PolyCAD for this work.

Katydid’s sheerline is a bit flat (and bumpy). The weight of the coach roof on the deck structures has nipped her in at the waist and paradoxically, lifted her sheerline amidships, contributing to her rather flat looking sheer. The damage that the running backstays have done to the beamshelf and frames where they attach also indicates that her hullform has been pulled about a fair bit over time. This photo, of Katydid on the water (probably in the 1970’s) gives a general impression of what she most recently looked like afloat.

(note that she is a bit fine in the stern and not really designed to carry weight in the cruising cockpit – hence the nose-up attitude)"...read the full article here.

Charlie reports to me that much of his current work is what he calls 'boat joinery', ie: making glass boats look better. I suspect he'd prefer some more challenging work, say a commission for a wood boat, or another classic restoration. Based in Edinburgh (UK), Charlie can be contacted at 07870 104471 or by email at charlie.hussey@gmail.com. If you have a building or restoration project, I suggest you could do worse than to give Charlie a call.