Watercraft Amateur Boatbuilding Competition

Thursday 6th May 2010

Watercraft – Amateur boat building competition

2010 marks the 10^th anniversary of Water Craft's Amateur Boatbuilding Awards. 

The competition is open to all backyard boatbuilders – not students at boatbuilding colleges working with professional advice and equipment, but people who are building for pleasure in their spare time.

Entrants are tasked with the job of building their own boat in wood and/or plywood from scratch, not from a bare hull or a kit where some parts are pre-cut.  The aim of the competition is to encourage beginners to have a go and for those who already have....to be more adventurous or inventive.

Pete Greenfield, editor of Water Craft magazine says, "We want genuinely amateur efforts but they don't have to be solo efforts, they could have worked with another amateur.  The boat can be any size or type, as long as it is able to make it by river or road to the show."

The judging will take place during the show and the boats will be on display to the public, by the lake, throughout the show.  The winners will be announced on the Sunday.

Water Craft magazine always likes to have eye-catching boats on its stand at the Beale Park Show. This year the'll have two. Celebrating the resurgence of interest in community coastal rowing at opposite ends of the UK will be:

20' (6m) ST AYLES SKIFF

• Up to the 1950's, Scottish miners, fishermen and other members of coastal communities would regularly race each other in elegant double-ended rowing craft.
• It was the dream of Alec Jordan Boats in Fife to revive this old sport. The Scottish Fisheries Museum at Anstruther came to his aid and in 2009, the Scottish Coastal Rowing Project.
• Boat designer Iain Oughtred of Skye was commissioned to create the design for the St Ayles Skiff, a traditional-looking open boat which could be built using modern epoxy-plywood methods.
• After building the prototype which will be on show at Beale, Jordan Boats created affordable precut plywood kits which allowed clubs and communities to build their own St Ayles Skiff without previous boatbuilding experience. The 19 kits now in build are due to be finished and racing at Anstruther in May.

32' (9m) CORNISH PILOT GIG

• Cornish Pilot Gigs, were once used long ago to take pilots to incoming sailing ships, to take supplies to the Isles of Scilly and, of course, for smuggling. Long, slender and light weight, they were able to out-run the fastest revenue cutters.
• But by the mid 70s there were only 3 pilot gigs left in existence; all built before 1835. The late Ralph Bird, teacher at Salmouth Marine School, then had his students build one which they raced against the three originals, creaing so much public interest that more gigs began to be built.
• Gig racing as a sport around the coasts of the west country has now taken off to such a degree that there were 120 gigs competing at the 2010 World Pilot Championships in May.
• The gig on Water Craft's stand at Beale Parks Boat Show is one of two traditionally built of elm and oakby Gail McGarva and the students of the Boat Building Academy for the Lyme Regis Gig Club, which is hoping to send a crew to Beale Park to show her in action on the lake.