Practical Boat Owner – September 2019

Launch day!

Nic Compton lends a hand as Jeremy Butler’s

home-built Western Skiff hits the water

W

hat a difference fi ve

months makes. It was the

end of January when the

revamped Western Skiff

kit was delivered by Jordan Boats to

Jeremy Butler’s house overlooking the

River Dart in Devon.

This was the fi rst Nigel Irens-designed

Western Skiff kit to be built for 20 years and

there was a certain amount of

apprehension mixed with excitement as we

carried the sheets of ply into Jeremy’s

garage. The pictures show everyone

dressed warmly for winter, wearing hats

and gloves and with slightly forced smiles.

In the background, the trees are bare and

the river deserted.

Cut to the beginning of July, and the

scene was transformed. Jeremy is in T-shirt

and shorts; the sun is sparkling on the

water, boats of all kinds are trundling up

and down the river, and a line of tourists is

crowding the edge of the dam, fi shing for

crabs. Instead of an awkward pile of

plywood we now have an immaculate new

boat, complete with removable thwarts,

polished brass rowlocks and an interesting

pair of wheels fi tted on the keel. This time

Jeremy’s smile is wide and very real.

In between these two points Jeremy has

put in nearly 150 hours of work, in his

spare time outside work and caring for his

young children. There have been highs

and lows – as with any building project.

A tired mistake

The low point came midway through the

project when, as he was sealing the inside

of the hull, the epoxy started to go off and,

through sheer tiredness, he ploughed on

regardless, keen to get another job done

before bedtime. It took him nine hours to

sand out the resulting runs, along with the

rest of the hull. The high point was – well,

we’ll get to that very soon.

We last met our skiff hero with a router in

his hands, radiusing the corners of the boat’s

gunwales “as if he didn’t have a care in the

world”. In fact, I spoke too soon, as one

alarming wobble with the router reminded

Jeremy that the screw holes on the outside

of the gunwale needed to be fi lled before the

outside edge could be radiused. It didn’t

take long for him to cut some plugs out of

leftover Douglas fi r using a 13mm plug cutter

(10mm would have been ideal, but a 13mm

cutter was all he had) and a standing drill.

The plugs were then popped into the holes

with a bit of glue and chiselled and sanded

fl ush, to get a smooth fi nish. The radiusing

work could then continue.

“This was a really satisfying stage,” he

says, “because the gunwales looked really

blocky and ugly to start with, and I thought

I’d totally overbuilt them. But as soon as

you put the radius on, it totally lightens the

dimensions of the wood.”

The last piece of woodwork was fi tting

the bearers for the removable thwarts.

Having decided that his original idea of

small ‘buttons’ of wood glued to the inside

of the hull wouldn’t be strong enough,

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5

Jeremy Butler gets to

launch row his home-

built Western Skiff for

the fi rst time on the

River Dart

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