Classic_Boat_2016-03

NEWS

CB

JOHNNY BLACK, C/O NHS

C/O JAMIE GALLANT, AFG

C/O JAMIE GALLANT, AFG

NORWAY/NZ

From Nordland to North Island

MARITIME HERITAGE

Alumni association

for shipshape trainees

National Historic Ships, Britain’s government-funded

maritime heritage body, recently started an ‘alumni

association’ for the various training schemes it has

implemented over the years, including the current flagship,

the successful Shipshape Heritage Training Partnership

(SHTP) one-year programme. The initiative is called MAST

(Members and Shipshape Trainees) and was launched at a

recent networking day. Members will receive a regular

newsletter, annual networking and social events, and

discounts on all sorts of goodies. A video made by National

Historic Ships about the SHTP programme is now on our

website – just to go classicboat.co.uk and search for SHTP.

Awards

IN ASSOCIATION WITH

Vote now

in our

awards!

So far 2,352 have come

forward to vote in our

2016 Awards, placing us

on track to break the

record for number of

voters (around 5,000).

So vote now. It’s quick,

easy and it gives some

rare recognition to

the boatbuilders and

others who make the

magic happen.

Go to classicboat.co.

uk/awards2016.

Voting closes at 0900

GMT on 7 March.

SUFFOLK

Dredging

finds Rolex

Routine dredging at

Suffolk Yacht Harbour

this winter turned up

an aptly named Rolex

Sea Dweller. It belongs

to a berth-holder

whose wife gave it to

him for his 50th

birthday. He fell into

the marina in June

2014, losing the watch,

but is now delighted to

be reunited with his

battered, but still

working, timepiece.

A new boatbuilding school is about to open in Russell, on New Zealand’s North Island,

thanks to the efforts of two organisations – Wood 2 Water and Adventure for Good.

Principal instructor will be the Australian boatbuilder and steamboat conservator John

Clode, but in a great coup, Adventure for Good have flown in Ulf Mikalsen, a traditional

Norwegian boatbuilder whose shed in Kjerringøy is 150 miles north of the Arctic Circle.

Ulf is a fascinating character, as an award-winning documentary about him reveals.

He lives a timeless woodman’s existence – a real tree-to-sea purist who hunts for grown

bends with a chainsaw in the forest. Ulf will spend four weeks at the school, teaching

students to build a Spissbat (above and right).

Designed in 1895, of clinker build, and between 12ft and 18ft in length, these were

once popular to the point of ubiquity (7-8,000 built, reckons Ulf), plying north

Norway’s coasts under sail and oar until the 1960s.

SOUTH AFRICA

Sextant

winner

Reader Richard Kirk in

Sandton, South Africa,

currently building a

28ft Dudley Dix

designed yacht in

plywood, won our

recent competition,

and received a Davis

sextant. “Astro

navigation is just one

of those things I really

want to learn,”

Richard told CB.