Classic Boat — February 2018

90 CLASSIC BOAT FEBRUARY 2018

CRAFTSMANSHIP

New boats and careers launched

on the wild Dorset coast

WORDS STEFFAN MEYRIC HUGHES

LAUNCH

DAY AT

LYME

REGIS

Lyme Bay was a surf zone. Even from high above the town of Lyme Regis,

as the car breasted a blind summit and began the run down into the town,

it was obvious that, despite the warm sunshine, it was a savage day, with

lines of swell stretching across the bay like corduroy. Outside the Boat

Building Academy (BBA), the standing rigging of boats on the hard was

howling, but luckily, Lyme Regis has a harbour, the famous seven-century-

old Cobb featured in Jane Austen’s Persuasion, these days a winter haven

for commercial fishing vessels. After six months’ intensive work to build

their student boats, the graduates from BBA weren’t going to be scared off

by a bit of wind, and they gathered on the town hard to launch them into

the Cobb. It was, it always is, the most joyous of occasions – not just in

terms of the boats, which represented a more-than-usually ambitious fleet

this year – but in a less definable way – the feeling of new horizons, better

lives, hope. Giving up a good career, as many of the students we met had

done, takes a leap of faith and that exhilaration was heavy in the air.

L to r: Jamie Chitty and Sam Smith, with the Lakes runabout; interior of the oak fishing boat; Rod Anderson Boyle with his Orkney yole

GREAT LAKES RUNABOUT

Here is a boat designed to fly. Lead builder Sam Smith,

ex-clarinetist for the Coldstream Guards, built this two-

seater to plans by US designer Kim Bassett, beefed up for

coastal use. She is cold-moulded, stretched to 16ft 4in

(from 14ft 10in) and the 60hp Tohatsu two-stroke on the

stern should give her 52mph!

GARTSIDE LAUNCH

Behold the biggest boat ever built by a BBA student! She’s

a new design from Canadian resident Paul Gartside and at

20ft (6.5m) with wide beam, foredecks, side decks and a

wheelhouse, represents a very ambitious project. The hull

is strip-planked yellow cedar and the 100hp Honda outboard

should give plenty of grunt to match her butch appearance.

BOAT BUILDING ACADEMY

JENNY STEER