Luke Powell’s Working Sail is back!
The success of Christian Topf’s epic production From the Loft Floor to the Sea shows that interest in traditional wooden boatbuilding, and the pilot cutter as an exemplar of it, is unabated. We’ve now reissued Luke’s 2012 account of his life in wooden boats – covering the entire bevy of his earlier pilot cutters.
You can learn more and secure a copy here.
Truly, a place apart
It’s not just about the boats, but their presence is strong in the North Yorkshire fishing village of Staithes. We had a lovely weekend in November accompanying author Gloria Wilson – who was brought up here – to local signing sessions. Local historian James Stoker gave us a grand walking tour of this hardy, self-reliant, eccentric, and now much changed settlement, for which the term ‘higgledy-piggledy’ might have been invented.
Let Gloria guide you too on a stroll around the village she loves; start here.
How it all began
George Holmes was an influential figure in the design and sailing of small boats from the late nineteenth century until well into the twentieth. His prolific writings, drawings, etchings, and designs had never been collected when, in 2009, my friend Tony Watts of the Humber Yawl Club agreed to take on this task, and incorporate a biography of Holmes. The success of Holmes of the Humber, our first book, got Lodestar Books off the ground.
Holmes is finally out of print, but you can now enjoy a copy in PDF form – click here.
The romance of a proper dinghy
The light north-easterly breeze continued during my watch until midnight, and Juanita sailed on through the darkness, her jib shimmering with the phosphorescence of the lee bow wave, and little Punch, the 8’ dinghy following in our glistening wake, with a...
Too fast for accurate navigation
The year was 1955 and H W Tilman was undertaking his first 'sail to climb' expedition, aiming to cross the Patagonian ice-cap in both directions—starting from the 'other side'. This would necessitate a transit of the Magellan Strait; as Sir Robin Knox-Johnston puts it...
Tangaroa
By March of 1954 we had enough money for me to stop working and begin building in the farm loft. I cleared the chicken shit out, blocked up the gaps in the walls and levelled the floor. Building a small boat alone is like an exercise in meditation; throughout the...
More stories >>
Getting sea-value
My good friend Fabian Bush built me a (-nother!) boat a few years ago and we launched her together in 2014 at West Mersea in Essex. Teal is named for the 'small dabbling duck' in recognition of the direction my sailing was expected to take in my dotage, and she has...
In all weathers by a crew of two
Tom Cunliffe writes:For fifty glorious years from the time of the 1861 Pilotage Act until the Great War nailed down the coffin lid on commercial sail, the Bristol Channel was a free-for-all for competitive piloting. This great funnel of tide-swept water stood wide...