Some Row Boats at the 23nd WoodenBoat Show

 A Rangeley Row Boat

The 23nd WoodenBoat Show is now in full swing at Mystic Seaport in Mystic, Connecticut. The weather was beautiful during Friday, and it is said to be equally wonderful during Saturday and Sunday. There are, of course, many water craft on display, and HTBS would like to present a few of them below - all being propelled by oars.

I have to confess, I do not see the charm with this kind of row boat, where the oars are propelled by your feet, unless you like to get some excises on the water while you are knitting...?

This row boat did not have a sliding seat, or a thwart, just a little stool, which really didn't look that comfortable. One could, however, adjust the stool as there were different holes to place the stool in; it didn't look like one could move the foot board, though.

This little '9 dinghy was originally built between 1941 and 1942 in the San Pedro area, California; designer and builder unknown. It had been used as a tender to a 1941 40' cruiser, and had been restored in 2012-2014. The original hull was stained cedar planks, with seats of mahogany. The fellow who had restored the boat had used steam-bent ash for frames and the transom top was mahogany. The oars were also ash, and in the stern was a 2 HP British Seagull, Forty Series. A beautiful craft!

A sturdy boat with two thwarts with back-rests, perfect for a river pic-nick - don't forget the Pimm's!

I am not really sure about this boat, built by Swanson Boat Company. It looks fast, but while the hull seems perfect for a speedy outing, the arrangement of the sliding seats seem 'weak', and so do the oars, which were thin with very small blades.

Above two types of shells with sliding seats.

A traditional 'dinghy'. In the background is the Museum's 1866 Connecticut 'smack', Emma C. Berry, built in Noank. This sloop is one of four National Historic Landmark vessels at Mystic Seaport.

What I did not see this year was a Thames skiff, which I have seen at the Show previous years.

The 23nd Annual WoodenBoat Show at Mystic Seaport

Today is the start of the 23nd Annual WoodenBoat Show at Mystic Seaport in Mystic, Connecticut, which, as usual, is a three-day event. More than 100 traditional classics and contemporary wooden boats of every type will be on display at this festival that celebrates the design and craftsmanship of wooden craft. This year’s event will honour three of N.G. Herreshoff’s most beloved designs: the 12 ½, Newport 29, and Buzzards Bay 25. All three were originally conceived in 1914 and turn 100 this year.

The WoodenBoat Show offers something for all wooden boat enthusiasts and marine history buffs. Wooden boats of every type – large and small, old and new, power, sail, oar and paddle – will be on display including cruising yachts, launches, runabouts, fishing boats, performance powerboats, daysailers, dinghies, rowboats, canoes, performance shells, multi-hulls and racing boats.

As usual, HTBS will try to concentrate its reports on rowing boats and shells. Read more here.

Make Your Own Oars

Pat Mahon of Great Lakes Boat Building School talking about how to make your own oars.

Today, at the last day of the WoodenBoat Show at Mystic Seaport, I attended a so called Expert Skills Demonstration at the Henry B. duPont Preservation Shipyard. Close to noon, Pat Mahon of the Great Lakes Boat Building School (GLBB), located in Les Cheneaux Islands of the Eastern Upper Peninsula of Michigan, was giving a demonstration on how to make oars.

Boat builders' math it not really the same kind of math they taught us at school.

Lines drawn on the loom indicating what you need to shave off to eventually making the oar round. This wood for this oar is yellow cedar.

The kind of oars they are making at GLBB are not the oars used for racing shells, they are more the type you use in a skiff and a dinghy. Good wood for this oar is for example ash, fir, spruce or yellow cedar. Pat, who is a good teacher, explained how to ‘measure’ out the different parts of the oar: the handle, the loom (where the closes part to the handle can be square as that’s the counterpart which balance the oar), neck, shoulder, blade and tip. The boat builders in the olden days – and I am now talking about builders more than 1,000 years ago –  knew that the important part in oar making is to figure out the proportions, not the exact measurements; the most important tool you use in making an oar is your eyes.

Make sure that the oar is fasten when you are working with the tools as you will be needing both hands.

To cut out the piece that will be your oar, you need a band saw. After that, you only need a few tools like a pencil, ruler, drawknife, plane, spokeshave and a patternmaker rasp. Pat showed how easy it was to use these tools – or, should I say, it looked so easy when he did it.

The tools that you need to make your oars: from the bottom, drawknife, plane, spokeshave, ruler and rasp.

I appreciate a good craftman’s work. Pat taught me a good lesson during the one hour session that will save me both time and money. As much as I wish I had the skill and knowledge, and maybe the guts, to make my own oars for my little 10-foot dinghy, alas, I now understand that I do not posses these skills – I just have to buy the bloody oars.

2013 WoodenBoat Show at Mystic Seaport

Welcome to Mystic Seaport!

The first day of this year's WoodenBoat Show at Mystic Seaport in Mystic, Connecticut, looked as it was going to be a wet event, but the rain stayed away during the show which again offered all kinds of beautiful wooden watercraft. Below are some picture taken yesterday, Friday.

The Museum's sandbagger Annie.

The pride of Mystic Seaport, the 1841 whaleship Charles W. Morgan, which will be launched on 21 July this summer. This photo was taken a couple of days ago.

There they are, the whaleboat from the Apprenticeshop which left Maine on 16 June, coming up the Mystic River in the craft that these students have built to donate to Mystic Seaport's Charles W. Morgan. Despite all days out at sea and hitting bad weather at the last leg, the crew rowed up the river in good spirit and style. Photo: Dan McFadden.

The whaleboat is escorted in to Mystic Seaport by the Museum's own whaleboat crew, seen on the port side of the Apprenticeshop's boat.

Finally at Mystic Seaport.

Below are some of the whaleboats that were already at the Museum:

Great Lakes Boat Building

Independent Seaport Museum

Beetle Boat Shop

Lowell's Boat Shop

On a Whaleboat Expedition to Mystic

Today, summer begins at Mystic Seaport – The Museum of America and the Sea, Mystic, CT, as the 22nd Annual WoodenBoat Show kicks off. It is the seventh year in a row that the WoodenBoat Show is held at the Museum. As usual more than 100 exhibitors and vendors will have beautiful wooden boats on display, making it one of the largest wooden boat shows in the USA, drawing approximately 13,000 Museum visitors to the banks of the Mystic River during this three-day event, 28-30 June.

This year there are some special exhibitors, who are building whaleboats for the Museum’s 1841 whaleship, the Charles W. Morgan, which is the last of her kind in the world. During a five-year period Mystic Seaport has restored the Morgan in the Henry B. duPont Preservation Shipyard. She will be launched into the Mystic River on her 172nd birthday, 21 July this year. Thereafter, she will be fitted and rigged so next May she will go back to sea for a ceremonial 38th Voyage, revisiting some of the New England harbours where she once anchored during her whaling heydays.

The Morgan will have seven newly built whaleboats on board. These boats are part of a ten-boat national project to construct replica whaleboats. The organisations building these 28-30-foot long open boats for Mystic Seaport are: the Independence Seaport Museum of Philadelphia, PA; Rocking the Boat of Bronx, NY; Gannon & Benjamin Marine Railway of Vineyard Haven, MA; the New Bedford Whaling Museum/Beetle Boat Shop of Wareham, MA; the Great Lakes Boat Building School of Cedarville, MI; The Apprenticeshop of Rockland, ME; Alexandria Seaport Foundation of Alexandria, VA; Lake Champlain Maritime Museum of Ferrisburgh, VT; Wooden Boat Factory of Philadelphia, PA; and Lowell’s Boat Shop of Amesbury, MA. The seven first organisations on this list will actually be displaying their whaleboats during the WoodenBoat Show.

The boat builders from the Maine based Apprenticeshop will arrive in style as they have rowed and sailed their whaleboat on a 350-mile voyage from Maine to Mystic, starting on 16 June and planning to arrive today. On board the boat is Captain Bryan McCarthy, Apprenticeshop director, at the helm, apprentices Rachel Davis, Daniel Creisher, Simon Jack, Garrett Farchione, Tim Jacobus and Pat Lydon. They have been accompanied by chase boat Advent. The crew has been sharing photographs, videos and daily updates on The Apprenticeshop’s Facebook page and blog.

HTBS welcomes all the whaleboat crews to Mystic!

For those who are interested in learning more about the ten-whaleboat national project, in the current issue of the Mystic Seaport Magazine, which is now available on-line, Mystic Seaport's Morgan Restoration Project historian Matthew Stackpole has written an article about building whaleboats for the Morgan, on pages 10-12 (on page 12 there is also an article about whaleboat racing!). Go to the on-line version of Mystic Seaport Magazine, here.

Photos above © John Snyder/Marine Media