Boats With Personality

Sydney Morning Herald

Friday September 8, 1989

By PETER FORBES

With a revival of interest in timber boats has come a renewed interest in the amateur building of them - and at Mortlake there is a new school to teach these new builders.

Rather like the crafts renaissance of the 1960s and 70s, when ordinary people began turning their hands to the potter's wheel or the weaver's frame, amateur boat builders are on the way back to the sheds to mould their dreams in wood.

The reasons? Such things as the "inherent beauty of timber"; the"personality" that wood has over steel or "Tupperware " (fibreglass); and "I'm sick of throwaway boats".

So for those who want to build their fantasies in timber but don't have the skills or the confidence, the Sydney Wooden Boat School at the new River Quays Marina, at 140 Tennyson Road, Mortlake, in Sydney, is running courses in both traditional amd modern techniques.

River Quays Marina is on Sydney's Parramatta River. It is a new yard and will be in full service with undercover repair space, about 16 initial marina berths and a 35-tonne travel lift in the next few months. A 175-tonne ship lift is planned for next year.

The shipwrights involved as tutors at the boat school are practising professionals who work as service specialists at the River Quays yard.

With its school and its timber boat specialists, the yard's management is aiming for it to become the "focus of wooden boat activity in Sydney".

Courses being offered by the Sydney Wooden Boat School extend across a wide spread: West System expoxy building by the strip planking and cold moulding methods; stitch-and-glue techniques of building plywood dinghies and canoes; basic traditional boatbuilding; basic clinker construction; half-model building from line plans of full-size vessels.

Plans for next year include a year-long traditional boatbuilding course during which the class will build a 24ft carvel-planked yacht, with students able to enrol for the full course or for separate weekend seminars in the traditional arts.

They will be able to learn the intricacies of such skills as lofting, lead-keel casting, steam-bending, carvel planking, caulking, laying decks, working on hatches and deck joinery, and spar making.

Courses which may also be added are: yacht restoration and repair, yacht joinery and fitting out, cedar strip canoe building, and advanced clinker construction.

Boats currently being built by students include a 15ft clinker-built flat-bottom skiff under the tutelage of boatbuilder Rick Wood , a 7ft 6ins clinker pram dinghy (tutor, Nigel Shannon) and a 22ft motor launch strip-planked by the West System (tutors Ian Smith and Frazer East).

The Mortlake school began about a year ago when Rob Denny of Adhesive Technologies, the Sydney-based distributor of the West System, helped set up courses in NSW to teach the building of timber boats using the company's modern epoxy system.

The school then expanded into the more traditional areas, employing the talents of young shipwrights who have preferred to work in wood, such as its tutors Rick Wood and Nigel Shannon.

The teaching is on a part-time course basis, with classes generally one night a week and the learning done during the actual building of a boat.

"It is all hands-on stuff. There is no classroon instruction - the school doesn't even have a chair," the school's principal, Mr Ian Smith, said this week.

As an example of fees, the charge for the basic traditional course involving the building of the flat-bottom skiff was set at $340 for the 10-week course.

Student numbers in each course are limited to "ensure thorough learning".

Smith said the school built some boats for sale speculatively to recover costs, and other for clients, and was inviting inquiries for those wanting a boat built.

"But, please, no tyre-kickers," he said.

"Boats built by the school will not cost significantly less than normal custom boatbuilding, which is naturally greater than production boats."

Those interested in courses or having wooden boats built should contact Mr Smith on (02) 7362499 or (02) 7362633.