Boatbuilding A Piece of Furniture

"A piece of furniture" we would often say as we eyeballed those McCutcheon or Souter built Classic International 14 dinghies, cold-molded in mahogany, glowing with multi-coats of varnish, all joints carefully crafted, beautiful wood everywhere. I was reminded of superior dinghy craftsmanship when I came across this stunning photo of  the interior of the most recent addition to the historical Australian 18 foot skiff fleet, the reproduction Myra Too.

Myra Too was built in 2013 by Bob McLeod to reconstructed lines (by Australian National Maritime Museum curator, David Payne) of the 1951 championship winner. Myra Too was originally built and raced by Aussie legend, Billy Barnett. To build the reproduction hull, Bob McLeod used silver ash and, in the inner and outer layers of the hull, Queensland red cedar (the outer layers used rare, full-length pieces estimated to be between 400 to 600 years old).

Here is the original post on Myra Toos construction from the Australian National Maritime Museum blog.

From YouTube comes what, at first view, looks to be a typical mast-head GoPro video -- this of the historical 18 footer Yendys going around the course, However, with the historical 18 footers nothing is typical. Of interest to me was the spinnaker set starting at about 1:50 into the video. It takes four crew members to get the mammoth spinnaker pole out onto the mast, three of them heave-ho pushing and a fourth slotting the multi-piece pole together as it goes out. Once out, this long, long spinnaker pole then wags all over the place as they go downwind. These pre WWII 18s were heavy dinghies with lots of crew and this video shows that they pushed a lot of water around as they bashed around the race-course.

The history of Yendys from the Australian National Maritime Museum blog.

"A rival of Britannia, Yendys was built in 1925 by Charlie Hayes for Norm Blackman. This big hull is also built in the traditional heavy scantlings, but it illustrates an early piece of innovation, its transom bow. Hayes had another legend working for him at the time, Charlie Peel, who had been successful with transom bows on 14-foot skiffs in Victoria. As well, the 1920s was the time when the Restricted 21s showed how fast a lighter-keel boat could go, and Hayes and Peel were in the thick of this class too. Out comes Yendys, with its sawn-off profile and veed bow shapes, a sort of restricted-class yacht crossed with a skiff and with the bow overhang squared off. Despite the odd mix it went pretty well too, but although another two snub-nosers were built in that time, the idea did not catch on. It did show there was room to move in the rules, though, and the Queenslanders took on both innovation and the establishment at the same time."

And a post featuring a photo of a pretty deck on a 505.

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A Piece of Furniture The Woodie Europe Dinghies

The designer of the Europe Dinghy, Belgian Alois Roland, originally built them in wood. When Rolands company went bankrupt, his assistant, Giuseppe Christalli continued building beautiful wood Europe dinghies. When the Europe Dinghy class went Olympic the wood boats were no longer competitive and the class became plastic and has remained one where the new boats are entirely made out of glass.

History of the Europe Dinghy from Classic Classes by Vanessa Bird.

My Dutch friend, René de la Rie, sent along photos of his stunning wooden Europe which is not a Roland or Christalli but a Tebberman. Tebberman was known primarily for his rudders and centerboards, and only built a few Europe Dinghies, but what lookers his Europe Dinghies were! Beautiful deep mahoganies were matched with contrasting lighter inlays to create masterpieces.

George A of Mid-Atlantic Musings also owns a woodie Europe, whilst not as stunning as a Tebberman this hull is very pretty. The lineage of Georges wooden Europe is also open to question. On his blog George A tries to identify the builder of his "woodie" Europe dinghy. George unveiled his woodie with a new Bosquet foredeck at this years Brigantine regatta.

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