Knees are an imme­di­ate indic­a­tion of the boatbuilder’s abil­ity to make good look­ing shapes. Ideally one would like to use an oak crook. However, in these hon­est times, crooks are pretty hard to come by and also must be well seasoned before use, par­tic­u­larly if…

Perhaps the most curi­ous craft which is found in use by the fish­er­men round the coasts of Britain is the Yorkshire coble [writes George Holmes in 1912]. Along with the Sheringham boat—referred to and described in a former number—this type is used for crab­bing by the…

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…

Spring 2009: Constance is just back from her first Old Gaffers event, the annu­al East Coast Race week­end at Brightlingsea, where she mixed it with craft large and small, and attrac­ted much admir­a­tion for both her looks and speed, praise which rightly belongs to her…

Bob Comlay sailed with H W Tilman to Greenland – twice – while still in his teens and formed an endur­ing friend­ship with ‘the Skipper’ which las­ted until Tilman’s loss at sea in 1977. Bob was invalu­able in pulling togeth­er the new fore­words and after­words to our…

Philip Temple’s 1965 account of an out­rageously bold exped­i­tion was pub­lished without fan­fare, without many good pho­to­graphs, and without even the bene­fit of a copy-edit­or; it van­ished without trace. The Sea and The Snow came to our atten­tion a few years ago as we…