Launchings

THELMA is an 11’4” cedar strip canoe with Douglas Fir gunwales and Ash stems. She is the first boat built by cousins Tristan and Tom and was made under a tarpaulin shelter at the end of their garden in Southampton, England.

AYLA is my first attempt at boat building a 12 foot wooden rowboat engineered for an outboard (8hp Tohatsu) and was titled and registered by the Virginia Dept.

NEREUS was built in 2006 by Harry Bryan Boatbuilding in Canada and designed by John Alden.This 2006 21′ Alden Sloop was sitting on the hard at The Landing School for 10 years after being donated.

Launching Renetta, Rooster # 746, at the first annual Rooster Week, in 2014.

Rob Caveney launched this glued-lapstrake plywood Annapolis Tandem Wherry in April this year following plans from Chesapeake Light Craft. The hull is 18′9″ long, Rob reports that,“As advertised, this boat is a real rocketship.

The Northwest School of Wooden Boatbuilding in Port Hadlock launched on June 14, three classic Whitehalls built for the British Broadcasting Corporation. The BBC used the boats in August 2013 to recreate John Wesley Powell’s 1869 exploration of the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon.

When Andy Bradbury started building the Cartopper dinghy on his patio, he promised his wife it would only take a couple of months for him to finish. Just short of two years after that, he finally launched the 11′ 6″ WREN in his home waters of the Pamilico River Washington, North Carolina.

Sometimes it is fun to put together a boat that takes little time to build and has a wealth of uses. Last winter at the Cowichan Bay Maritime Centre and Wooden Boat Society in Cowichan Bay we downloaded from the internet a set of plans for a small dinghy that is stitch and glue.

IBIS is a 15’plywood lapstrake Duck Trap Wherry built in the late 1990’s by Will Buchanan to a design by Walter Simmons.  Now in the care of Miles McCoy of Orcas Island, Washington, IBIS was rebuilt over the past two winters and relaunched this summer, just in time for Miles and his bride Louelle

The handsom new 44 ft schooner LEAH CAROLINE launched at Trinity, Newfoundland July 7 2012. The latest of many vessels large and small built by 86 year old shipbuilder Henry Vokey of that town. Hundreds of onlookers waited for hours in the rain for the big splashdown.