Practical Boat Owner – June 2019

Turning and

sheathing the hull

Nic Compton follows progress on the home-built Western Skiff

B

oatbuilding can be a lonely

business, especially if you’re

stuck on your own in a cold

garage trying to fi gure out how

to hang your garboards.

And it’s fair to say, the last time I went to

see him, Jeremy Butler was having trouble

not only with his garboards but his geralds

too – that’s the bit where the overlapping

planks on a clinker boat merge at the stem

and transom. Nothing was sitting quite

right, and he knew he still had an awful

long way to go.

So it was a pleasure to visit him this

month and fi nd that, not only had he sorted

out his garboards and geralds, but he had

fi nished planking the entire boat and

turned it the right way up – all in the space

of two months, starting from scratch.

“It’s very satisfying to see the boat

progress, because you can get quite a lot

done quite quickly,” he enthused.

“It’s not classic boatbuilding; it’s more

like boatbuilding for busy people, because

you get to build something that looks and

feels like a wooden boat, but very quickly. It

doesn’t require too much effort, or too

much skill – and a tiny number of tools. It’s

really impressive.”

Regular readers will remember that Jeremy

is building the latest version of the Western

Skiff, a 14ft dinghy designed by Nigel Irens

and Ed Burnett 22 years ago and now

revived as a kit, available from Jordan

Boats (www.jordanboats.co.uk), and as a

set of free plans from the PBO website

(www.pbo.co.uk/western_skiff). Jeremy is

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The join between

bottom board

and garboards

is smooth, but

thereafter planks

overlap

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