Boat Plans And Patterns | Opera Class

Boat Plans And Patterns

To the south west of Liverpool, the Wirral peninsular forms the northern shore of the estuary to the River Dee. The unique geography created a deep water sea-lake, the Hoyle Lake around which were established fishing communities and safe havens in the protected waters was far back as Roman times.

The Hoylake Sailing Club was established in 1887, in response to the silting up of the river and channel at the turn of the twentieth century the members decided to adopt a shallow draft boat which was suitable for the area. The boat they chose became the Opera Class, a 16 foot gaff rigged clinker boat, based on a design by club member Captain Winchester and built locally by another club member and boat builder Alex Latta.



The first race of the Opera Class took place in 1902 and boat numbers quickly grew to 17. The class celebrated its centenary in 2002 with 14 of the original boats still racing at Holylake Sailing Club, another boat "La Poupee" is on display at the Merseyside Maritime Museum.



In 1909 one of the class "Orchid" made a voyage to Ardrossan, in Ayrshire, Scotland and then acros the Irish sea to Ballycastle in Northern Ireland, a remarkable voyage for a 16 foot open boat.



All the photographs are kindly provided by John Hughes who sails his Opera Class Iolanthe, named after the operetta by Gilbert and Sullivan.

Opera Class boats at Hoylake Sailing Club

1: Fidelio
2: Aida
4: Valkyrie
5: Country Girl
6: La Poupee
7: Princess Ida
8: Geisha
9: Carmen
10: Orchid
11: La Boheme
12: Betty
13: La Tosca
14: Silvana
16: Iolanthe
17: La Gioconda

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Boat Plans Bolger | Elfsteden 11 Towns Rowing Marathon Give us a HUG!

Boat Plans Bolger

Which would you rather do on the last weekend before Christmas? Go shopping, or go rowing with a bunch of people you hardly know, in a foreign country, over the longest night of the year?

Obviously, it was a no-brainer, and so it was that I spent a freezing weekend having a tremendous time, rowing past the occasional windmill.

And as so often, but still unexpectedly happens with events like this, it was a cultural eye-opener too.

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Event: Elfsteden "Serious Request" Rowing Marathon
Where: Leeuwarden, The Netherlands
Distance: 185km, 4-crew relay
Time: 15 hrs ish
Boat type: Touring coxed quads and doubles
Number of crews in the event: 12, I think
Event Organiser: ElfstedenRoeimarathon

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The Elf WHAT?
"Elfstedentocht" means 11 towns tour. The 11 towns in question are all in North-West Holland, in a region known as West Frisia, which has a lot of canals. Which, like much of the Netherlands, very flat and right next to the North Sea.So any strong winds that might be happening in the North Sea because its, say, the middle of winter, can come whistling across the area. Im sure you see where Im going with this.

So its a rowing event, right?
Yes, and no. Originally, it was a speed skating event. A Dutch competitor in the version we rowed explained that it started with the local farmers (a widespread occupation in the area) skating (because everyone could) from town to town along the many canals, to check out whether the girls in the next town were prettier than the ones in your own town, not being able to make up their minds, moving on to the next town, and so on, till they finished up back home, where they decided there wasnt so much wrong with the local lasses after all. This is probably fiction, but its a nice thought.

What with modern weather an all that, the skating event hardly ever happens any more because its very rare that the ice ever gets thick enough. But apparently when it even looks like it might take place, the whole of Holland grinds to a halt with the excitement.

Waiting for the start.

However, since this is a rare event, at some point someone realised that it was also a great course for a rowing event, which takes place on the Friday and Saturday after Ascension Day in May every year (and one of the many cultural things we learned on this trip was that, despite their reputation for being, er, liberal about some things, your average Dutch person knows exactly when Ascension Day is and finds it quite reasonable to organise events in relation to it, whilst obviously the average Brit wouldnt even have heard of it).

The race involves up to about 100 crews, all in touring coxed doubles, which are highly popular in the Netherlands - again, theyre practically unheard of here. The format is that each team comprises up to four "crews", and they swap in and out at regular intervals round the route. We did a slightly shortened version of the usual 210km course – because it was too windy to row across a lake called the Slotermeer – and coxed quads were allowed as a slightly less challenging alternative to the coxed doubles..

Why were we doing it in the bleak midwinter?
I hope my Dutch rowing buddies will forgive me if Ive got any of this wrong – sometimes the language barrier was a bit impenetrable: the normal Elfstedentoch starts and finishes in a town called Leeuwarden (pronounced Loo-wah-den). OK, park that thought.

Each year, the weekend before Christmas, the Dutch equivalent of Radio 1, does a big charity event which includes DJs being shut up in glass rooms and stared at for 48 hours, amongst other activities. This spectacle is based in a different town every year, and this year the honour fell to Leeuwarden.

So, somewhere along the line, some bright spark said "Since were all doing this in Leeuwarden, why dont we get those crazy rowers to do a special charity edition of that rowing event they always do here n the summer, when its warm, and the nights arent very long?"

The lights on the rowing boat were extremely cunning:
sterotypically, designed by the German. They were
UNDER the tape that went over the riggers, so we
didnt lose our night-sights, but could be
 seen by the land team.

Now, the Dutch are pretty keen on long-distance rowing – to the extent that they actually have a league for which individuals have rowed the most miles in long-distance races each year. Which is why there were two Dutch crews of five doing  the Tour du Léman à lAviron round Lake Geneva earlier in the year, where our crew were the sole British representatives. And because of the Dutch crews excellent English, wed got chatting, and swapped some email addresses, and so when even they couldnt quite find enough local clubmates who thought that rowing through sleet in the dark was a good idea, they got in touch, and thus it was that Team HUG for Life (Holland, UK and Germany - there was a random German too) was formed.

And despite the fact that there 17 of the rowers and all 6 or so of the land team were Dutch, they did the whole thing in English just to accommodate the two of us (me and my husband) and Stefan the German. I mean, can you imagine a bunch of Brits swapping to another language for a complicated, everyones-tired event? Even in the best-case scenario, wed all still be standing at the start asking whether someone had seen any pens, gardeners or aunts.

Attention, Go!

Dramatic steering at the start to avoid another crew
that suddenly set of ahead of us.

No. The start format was truly unique and set the tone for the wackiness of the whole thing. All of the boats were lined up along the river bank in Leeuwarden. However, the start point was in the town square (where the incarcerated DJs were) about 150m away. 

At the "go", a card was handed to the Land Team Manager, who then had to sprint to the river to hand the card to the cox, and then the crew could depart. This was a useful way of separating out the crews so that there wasnt a total pile-up at the first bridge. 

The card – "stempelkaart" in Dutch – had to be stamped at various points along the route in the manner of an orienteering event. Despite spending most of the time in a plastic canister, it had practically disintegrated by the end.

Why does Holland have so many windmills?
We rowed the first section, which soon took us out of town and through some fields. In the rain.

There were some little windmills that looked like they were sort of Wendy-windmills, although they also appeared to be functioning. And at this point (whilst still rowing along), I had a lightbulb moment. Now, this may be obvious to you, but pause for a second to ask yourself "Why does Holland have so many windmills?". The answer "Because its very windy", merely explains why having many windmills is a sensible idea there. But what are they FOR? 

In Britain,  windmills were traditionally used for grinding wheat. And so no one would build a Wendy-windmill, unless it was some kind of Petit Trianon-style indulgence for rural rich kids.

Which these werent – Dutch windmills arent used for milling flour, theyre used for pumping water. In which case, a small one can be appropriate. 

All change!
After about an hour, we reached our first changeover point, where the next crew from our team, and our land supporters (wearing high-viz vests that, in a nice touch, sported the same HUG for life we had on our rowing tops, although these were almost all buried under layers of fleeces and waterproofs).

Equipped with boat hooks, they hauled us quickly to the bank, hands reached out to pull us out of the boat, and we then helped our replacements in. Feet were not to be adjusted.

Then we piled into the two minibuses and camper van that were our support fleet, and headed off to the next swap point. Once we were there, it was time to strip everything off and put on dry kit (I had packed 5 complete sets of kit in separate bags within my kit bag, which proved a useful, and widely-used approach). It was SOOO cold, that it was essential to remove any damp item. And all items were damp (though I kept the same pair of waterproof socks on the whole way).

The camper van was a brilliant changing room, and the engines were kept running on all 3 vehicles the whole time, so that the heaters could stay on. Although we were within sight of civilisation the whole way, for the rowers, it was an exercise in good personal management or you could very easily have got hypothermic.

Dutch bridges arent like British ones
In the UK, and in much of the rest of Europe, most waterways are navigable. In the Netherlands, there are so many canals, required to drain water out of the "polder" land that has been reclaimed fro the sea, that lots of them are just there, and theyre not designed to take boats. Theyre narrow, and the road or foot bridges over them are mostly flat - theyre cheaper to build that way, and easier to walk or drive over. 

To take a rowing boat through the lowest and narrowest bridges (which was probably 90% of them), we had to lie back and put our blades parallel with the boat. We rapidly learned that this was called "liggen and slippen", which doesnt translate well (because we just dont "slippen" in the UK) so the Dutch phrase was used.

With the water levels in the canals particularly high because of recent (and present) rain, the bridges were even lower than usual – at the most northerly point, in a town called Dokkum, which had three massive windmills, the bridges carry four lanes of traffic, so once wed done liggen and slippen, the boat was almost coming to a halt before wed got out the other side. Fortunately, the bridges were also so low, that we could easily reach up and pull ourselves along on its girders.

At one point wed slightly misjudged the steering through a particularly narrow bridge, and one of my blades had got broken. After a hasty phone call to our land team, it was decided they couldnt quickly get a spare to us, and as we were quickly going to freeze if we didnt keep moving, we put the blade inside the boat, and set off. It was an interesting exercise in core stability to scull 10km with one blade!

A real team effort
After the race finished back in Leeuwarden, our crew rowed the boat back to Wetterwille Rowing Club where the trailers were parked, and where traditional Dutch pea and ham soup was being served. It was around 3.30am at this point.

The end.

The club bar was lovely, warm, and a live race tracker was being projected on the wall. Pity the poor crews in doubles still out on the course! I think we were 4th in the end (a 2nd broken blade allowed wed been holding off to get past us), and the race was won by members of the Dutch national squad, in a coxed double. They admitted it was harder than their usual training! Although they also rated a lot higher than the rest of us.

Strangely, this wasnt a major rowing endurance challenge – after all, we only rowed 4 x 10k pieces over a 15 hour period (and coxed 1). Frankly, the greatest achievement was managing the logistics of the whole thing, and the heroes of the trip were the land team, who flawlessly found each changeover point, some of which were seriously in the middle of nowhere, in the pitch dark, at the right time, and even managed to find cafes where they bought bags of chips from time to time.

And thats why it would be extremely difficult to do this event as a brand new entry form another country: you really do need local knowledge, so your best bet is to chat up any long-distance Dutch rowers you come across.

Some cultural things we learned
For a European country thats only on the other side of the North Sea from the UK, we were struck by some quite deep-seated cultural differences, as well as some fun and superficial ones:

1. Around town, people only ride "sit up and beg" bikes. 
2. They dont wear cycle helmets.
3. Handlebars are often decorated with plastic flowers.
4. One team member explained that we parked before the race in a car park that was a bit of a walk form the town center because it was free "and were Dutch people so we dont like to pay". Id heard this from a friend beforehand, but it was interesting to get it from the horses mouth!
5. Even people with well-paid jobs often dont own a car.
6. It is quite normal to mention bodily functions using language that would make even open-minded Brits raise their eyebrows.
7. Most rowing clubs have a mangle in the boathouse to wring out the boat-wiping towels.

A final note on the charity fund-raising
The event raised money for the Dutch Red Cross for a special campaign to do with stopping children dying of diarrhea in third world countries. I wont mention the campaigns slogan – see cultural point 6, above. However, apparently well over 50,000 Euros were raised – I THINK just from the rowing bit (all crews combined), which is amazing. It seems Dutch people are very happy to pay after all when its for a good cause.

The video below was made by the Dutch squad team. Near the beginning theres a great bit of the land team managers all sprinting to the boats with the stempelkaarts. Around 2.40, one of the rowers appears to throw his water bottle ashore with some vehemence: this contained their stempelkaart, which is why the land team chap runs after it, (gets it stamped), and throws it back.

)

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Yacht Boat Plans | Meander 2011 Part 1 From tadpole to opera

Yacht Boat Plans

Many, many rowers, myself included, row regularly on one of the 45 stretches of the Thames between locks. We often race on another two or three. 

But that leaves an awful lot of Britains most famous river left to explore, which was one of the best bits of this 135 mile skiffing tour from Lechlade to Teddington over an Easter weekend.

There were also chocolate eggs, history lessons and a Handel aria in an unexpected place.

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Event: Private Expedition
Where: Lechlade to Teddington, on the River Thames

Distance: 124 miles

Locks: 44 

Time: 4 days – it was a tour!

Boat type: Thames skiffs

Number of crews in the event: 6

Event Organiser: www.tvsc.co.uk (ourselves)

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Why this chunk of the Thames?
The source of the Thames is near Cricklade in Wiltshire, but its too narrow to be easily navigable at that point, and Lechlade is held to be the top of the navigable Thames. Teddington, some 135 miles, 44 locks and a drop of 225ft towards sea level.

We rowed to the Boundary stone which is about 100m below Teddington lock, marking the official start of the tidal Thames, and so our course covered the entire navigable, non-tidal Thames. Its good to have very specific challenges.

If it wasnt a race, what was it?
The tour was the 2011 edition of a regular event undertaken by most of the Thames racing skiff clubs. My club, Thames Valley Skiff Club, hadnt done one for some years, so the old hands were keen to do it again, and the six of us who hadnt done it at all were just plain keen.

The cast list
Our little flotilla comprised five coxed doubles and a crazy lady in a single. The skiffers in some of the doubles swapped round according to various schedules that best suited the personnel involved, whilst others skiffed the whole way, being steered by a rota of volunteers.

And the production team
The whole trip was only made possible by the stalwarts of the land team, who packed bags into the minibus, made sandwiches, went shopping, drove around like demons (observing the Highway Code at all times, of course), and had the beer in the fridge at the end of each day. 

They were supplemented by other Club members who appeared without warning at various points along the route, which was always a nice surprise for us and, actually, allowed them to enjoy feeling part of the whole thing too. Never underestimate the pleasure thats to be had in playing a part in an expedition, however small – people really enjoy helping, so dont be afraid to ask, if youre planning one.

Lock 1 of 44.

Up the pointy end
The River Thames in Lechlade is totally unrecognisable as the same river that may of us row on in Oxford, Reading, Henley, Walton and elsewhere. Its narrow, and its extremely bendy – in places, like a bunch of sine waves huddling together for warmth.

Another way in which the upper reaches of the Thames differs from the lower stretches is that until you get to Oxford, the locks all have to be mechanically operated. So the plan was that members of our land team would try to get to each lock before us and have the gates open so we could just row straight in. This didnt quite work, in fact the illustration above was the ONLY lock they actually got to at the same time as us. Although they were invaluable in many other ways and frankly did jolly well given one of them had only passed her driving test two weeks before and neither had much knowledge of M4-corridor geography. Or so it later became clear.

Are the wiggles in the river like a tadpoles tail?
Arguably, yes. But the tadpole of the day is Tadpole Bridge. Whence this idyllic scene of rural navigation was taken. This is just a straight forward photo – there has been no retouching of the colour of the sky or the calmness of the water. Exquisite, isnt it?

Gotcha!
The next surprise for us meander novices was the string of concrete pill boxes along the banks at frequent intervals. Wed heard of the Maginot Line but had no idea that there was a Meander Line that provided the final line of defence before invading Nazis reached the Midlands manufacturing base!

We noted 27 of these. And then lost count. They ran out before Oxford. Maybe it had other ways of defending itself? Invader (and anyone else for that matter)-repelling piles of student laundry, perhaps?

One of the pill boxes had had a piece of plastic pipe humorously inserted in the gun slits, to look like the barrel of a bazooka. Now, I realise thats not going to go viral on a social networking site as "the funniest thing you ever saw", but in the general atmosphere of bonhomie that went with unexpectedly good Spring weather, and lovely English countryside this brought smiles all round. Sorry that I omitted to take a photo - were repeating the trip with new club members in April 2014, and its top of my "must snap" list.

Wherere you walk... or row
Sometime around mid-afternoon, we approached Oxford, where the river splits in two. Half of it goes off sightseeing round town for a bit, whilst we stuck to the other bit which is consequently rather thin, and also shaded by tall trees, houses, and what I think was once a brewery. We then squeezed our six boats into Osney lock, along with a narrow boat, and a punts. 

Every lock was an opportunity to chat with the other crews about the highlights of the previous stretch of river, and to swap possibly unwanted reports on the current states of hands, knees and boomsydaisies. With all this going on, it took us a few seconds to realise that, as the lock gates were swung shut by the look-keeper (thank you, sir!), a good, old-fashioned, "his masters voice" type gramophone player was being wound up in the punt. 

And then a gentleman stood up in the said punt, and launched into the famous aria "Whereer you walk", from Handels opera Semele. Only in Oxford. With the exception of the one with the topiary (more on this in a future post), it was without doubt the most unusual lock experience of the trip, and its not easy for a 1790 lock to get noticed.

The verb "to dongol"
Whilst rowing is an efficient way of propelling a boat through water, one of the biomechanical aspects of it which makes it so efficient, is the fact that the blades are quite long, and pivoted at just the right point on the edge of the boat. Which means that rowing boats cant easily be propelled through narrow spaces.

This man is dongoling.
His girlfriend, in the foreground, is apparently
not interested in joining in.

Now, if youre in a traditional racing boat, theres previous little you can do about this. But in a skiff, which is wide, and is stable in its own right – not needing the blades sticking out the side to give stability in the manner of a tightrope walker – you have an alternative method of propulsion, when youre in a tight spot. And that is to stand up and "dongol" the boat as if it were a Canadian canoe.

As the trip went on (and this is still only day 1 of 4), our crew got very slick at dongoling out of locks like our lives depended on it – each of the 2 skiffers grabbing a blade on the opposite and pre-determined side, paddling out, and then pirouetting round, dropping the blade neatly between its thole pins, flicking the other one out, and skiffing off. Not that were competitive or anything.

At summer skiff regattas, there are sometimes "fun" races at the end of the day which often include a "dongola" race - lots of people paddling with small paddles in a wide punt, one of which invariably slews right off course, probably crashing into the other boat, and certainly getting everyone very wet as a water fight ensues. Anyway, thats just some added colour about dongoling. 

Day 1 over
After an interminable wait at Iffley lock, at the bottom of the stretch on which the Oxford College crews row (except they werent, because it was Easter weekend, and well out of term time), where our senses of humours were getting rather tired, and even the sight of a plastic heron failed to cheer us up much, we eventually reached Radley College, where we had arranged to leave the boats for the night.

The main questions in our minds at that point were, "Will the City of Oxford Rowing Club bar be able to revive our flagging spirits?", and "Whats for supper?". (By the way, the chocolate eggs and history lessons are in the next blog posting.)

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Boat Plans Pdf | Sylphe – by André Mauric Sunk before Launching!

Boat Plans Pdf

André Mauric was the most prolific and best known of Frances 20th century yacht designers. His career started in the 1920s with radical designs for racing yachts to the International Metre Rule in the days when the bermudan rig was still considered new-fangled and fragile, and carried on well into the 1980s when, among other winners he designed the the highly successful Atlantic crossing record breaker Kriter VIII. In between he designed dozens of great boats, including Pen Duick VI for Eric Tabarly, the 1972 Half Ton Cup winner Impensable, the popular and successful First 30, and Sylphe, a classic yacht hidden for 5 years underwater.

(photos: Sylphe racing at St Tropez: www.sail-in-style.com)

Sylphe (originally Ariel) was commissioned by Paul Blanchet, an owner who wanted a yacht to win races under the British RORC rating rule. His timing was not good – it was 1939 when Mauric started designing the boat, and she was still unfinished on the slipway at Chantier Pharo, her builders in Marseille, when the Germans invaded France. In the days of uncertainty and chaos after Frances surrender, believing that the Germans would steal the yachts ballast keel – a 13 ton lead casting (imagine the price of that today!) - Mauric ordered the yard to sink the unfinished hull in a deep part of the harbour.

So it was that Sylphe spent 5 years in hiding under water before she was even launched. Many of the Marseilles shipyard and dock workers knew the secret, but no-one breathed a word, and Sylphe remained safely concealed with all her ballast until the war was over.

After the war Sylphe was recovered and completed. Her long submersion had done no harm – indeed it may have further improved the seasoning of her timbers and made them less liable to distort, crack, or split in later age. She was finally launched in 1947, and though Mauric had designed her with one of his trademark tall bermudan cutter rigs supported on a slender mast, her sailplan was modified in 1953 to give her a larger and taller foretriangle, its foot extended by a short bowsprit. These modifications were no doubt intended to keep her competitive with the latest offshore racing boats which, encouraged by the allowances in the old RORC rating rule, had begun to sport big overlapping genoas and high aspect mainsails.

During the next 50 years or so Sylphe was sailed and raced in the Mediterranean. It seems she was well maintained, with Mauric himself advising on a number of alterations and small repairs. Her original mast was replaced with a new hollow wood mast in the 1980s, and an engine was fitted at some time (she had been designed and launched without one). The teak deck was also renewed during this period. So when she came up for sale in the south of France in 1999 her new owners found her to be in reasonably good structural order, but scruffy, dated, and in need of a lot of attention.

Her new Dutch owners sailed her to Turkey and set about a 7-month total overhaul to make her more suitable for Mediterranean charter use. Although the interior had mostly to be stripped out and rebuilt to provide more comfortable charter accommodation, the original hull timbers and planking, having endured such a long submersion so many years ago, were found to be in excellent order. Only a couple of rot-infected frames had to be replaced. Her owners are proud to claim that Sylphe still has none of the steel bracing and reinforcement that many other yachts of her day now need to keep them in sailing order. They are equally proud that she retains her original mast winches and her unique, custom made, cockpit sheet winches.

Now equipped with all the modern trappings of a top-quality charter yacht, including satnav, full B&G sailing instrumentation, water-maker, autopilot, etc., Sylphe is currently believed to be available for charter in the Mediterranean. She is also occasionally to be seen taking part in classic yacht regattas at St Tropez, Cannes, and at other glamorous yacht harbours.

Sylphe - a classic Andre Mauric design:

LOA: 18.50m
LOD: 17.25m
LWL: 12.68m
Beam: 3.95m
Draft: 2.50m
Air draft: about 23m, masthead 21m above deck
Sail area: Main 84 m2, Yankee 29 m2, Genoa 78 m2, Spinnaker 205 m2, Reacher 105 m2

Link to Sylphe Charter site

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