Other Boats

I haven't done any practical work on the boat since Tuesday, when I posted last, so there's not much to report on that front.
Fred today has given me much practical advice on the rigging of a sail, as the sail plan is the purely hypothetical state at this point. My mind tends to wander these days to the hypothetical future, running to 'what color shall I paint my boat?' (I've long since given up the hope that my fiberglassing will be suitable to be seen and not hidden under several coats of paint), to 'what shall I name my boat?' (a very pressing issue, with longstanding ramifications), to 'where will I take my boat?' (I have several good ideas).

I've also started mentally equipping the craft with supplies. I've started with the essentials: a compass, a spyglass. Of course, I will also need a sextant, a 30-minute glass and ship's bell (to set the watches), and an anchor before I take any long trips.

In the course of this process (already more than a month in), I have come across many other boats about which I had never heard, and for that I am grateful. I want to enter a couple into this log so that I can remember them in the future.

I think the first, chronologically, that I learned about was the coracle.

Oval in shape and very similar to half a walnut shell, the structure is made of a framework of split and interwoven willow rods, tied with willow bark. The outer layer was originally an animal skin such as horse or bullock hide (corium), with a thin layer of tar to make it fully water proof - today replaced by tarred calico or canvas, or simply fibreglass. The structure has a keel-less, flat bottom to evenly spread the weight of the boat and its load across the structure and to reduce the required depth of water — often to only a few inches, making it ideal for use on rivers.

Coracles on the River Teifi, West Wales 1972. The two people pictured are John (forefront) and Will Davies of Cenarth — the last two legitimate Coracle fishermen in Cenarth. They are both using the single arm method of propulsion — a way of gliding downstream in a controlled way. They carried their boats (and their fish) home on their backs.

Each coracle is unique in design, as it is tailored to the river conditions where it was built and intended to be used. In general there is one design per river, but this is not always the case. The Teifi coracle, pictured below, is flat bottomed, as it is designed to negotiate shallow rapids, common on the river in the summer, while the Carmarthen coracle is rounder and deeper, because it is used in tidal waters on the Tywi, where there are no rapids. Teifi coracles are made from locally harvested wood — willow for the lats (body of the boat), hazel for the weave (Y bleth in Welsh — the bit round the top) — while Tywi coracles have been made from sawn ash for a long time. The working boats tend to be made from fibreglass these days. Teifi coracles use no nails, relying on the interweaving of the lats for structural coherence, whilst the Carmarthen ones use copper nails and no interweaving.

They are an effective fishing vessel because, when powered by a skilled man, they hardly disturb the water or the fish, and they can be easily manoeuvred with one arm, while the other arm tends to the net. Two coracles to a net.
Another important aspect to the Welsh Coracle is that it can be carried easily on his back by one man. 'LLwyth Dyn ei Gorwg' — the load of a man is his coracle. (Welsh saying).

It is believed that St Brendan (the patron saint of sailors) was thought to have used a coracle..


The second boat I have learned about, courtesy of Fred, is the Taraibune.

Tub boats are made of local sugi (Japanese cedar) and madake (timber bamboo). The construction is the same as Japanese coopering, except that the bottom of the tub boat is slightly concave and the boats are oval. The planking is doweled together with bamboo nails but the braided bamboo hoops are what really hold these boats together.

The woodwork in a tub boat is not at all beyond the skills of an experienced carpenter, but the braiding of the hoops is now an extremely rare skill. Each hoop is comprised of four 45-foot long strips of bamboo. The hoops are pounded onto the hull and each must fit precisely since the hull is slightly tapered. Mr. Fujii could cut, split and weave three hoops for a boat in less than four hours. He also relied on an obscure zodiac called hassen which governed when he could cut bamboo.

The last boats I have discovered are the Swallow and the Amazon, from Arthur Ransome's series of books from the 1930s. They are two small sailing dinghies, used by creative and imaginative children (with excessively permissive parents) to get into all kinds of adventures. I've imagined my boys having those kinds of adventures in my to-be-named boat. I hope they have something of that much fun, at least.

The Crew of the Swallow
(Incidentally, pictures of Arthur Ransome, the author, really make me want a mustache: But I doubt I could pull it off with the same elan, if that's the word I want.)