Sail, Salt and Sawdust: Home Build - Oughtred Sailing Canoe

For a photo blog covering the construction of this canoe, please see entries October 2008 to March 2010 click here

'MacGregor Sailing Canoe'

Design Plans - Iain Oughtred
Built by Jonathan and Chris Wren
Length 15'8"
Construction - 'Clinker' Epoxy Marine Ply
Design Origin - 19th Century (John MacGregor)

Welcome to my world of Salt, Sea and Sawdust

Time for another boat build I think. Well I have covered epoxy clinker and the cedar strip, so time for something learning a new construction technique. This time in will be a West Greenland Kayak in the form of ‘skin on frame’. It will be held together this time, not by toxic epoxies, but traditional wooden trunnels and artificial sinew.

My blog started with our home build reconstruction of a 19th century Sailing Canoe (updated for modern epoxy construction techniques by Iain Oughtred).

We then moved onto building a Bear Mountain Sea Kayak using cedar strip plank construction.

Of course all of this is 'in the workshop' and to me using boats is just as important and enjoyable as building them. So I decided to expand the blog to include some 'on the water' activities (and sometimes in the water, in the case of not sheeting out fast enough on the sailing canoe!).

On the slightly larger boat size, I own a much loved and sailed Hurley 24. I have sailed and worked on 'Concord' for the last 15 odd years, so she deserves a few pictures. As does my wife in our 'splashing about', plastic canoe jaunts!

In between all this small boat building and sailing off the coast of Pembrokeshire, the other extreme has been some crewing on a 55' sailing yacht up in the Arctic Circle (so a few pictures from these trips have also found their way to my blog).

The combination of boat construction, the sea and sail, of course results in "Sail, Salt and Sawdust".

Sail, Salt and Sawdust

Home Build - Oughtred Sailing Canoe

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