MartinC

The next stage was making the masts and spars. I do not have a full workshop, but there is a bench to which I attach a vice and various portable tools, including a cheap pillar drill, which, it turned out, served very well as a lathe for tapering the spars. I also had to make Appledore roller reefing gear (which is not intended to work, just to look OK as stand-off scale), fit the jackstays to the booms and run some silicon tube for leading the mizzen sheet on a rather long run under the deck to where the r/c equipment will be.

This is a somewhat backdated blog of my latest project, a West Country Trading ketch. Having built a topsail schooner more than 30 years ago, I wanted to get back into boat building (I have done many trains inbetween!) and built a powered kit, the Caldercraft Cumbrae, last year, but my real interest is sail. I decided to progress to a sailing vessel that I could get in the water in a reasonable time scale, so settled on a ketch based on a commercially available fibreglass hull available here. The hull is based on the Irene of Bridgewater launched in 1907, and appears to be 1/32 scale, like both my other boats. However, I did not want to build the Irene as such, particularly as she has been modernized with an auxiliary engine and I wanted a sail-only version, with the mizzen mast further back (it having been moved forward to make more room for the fitting of the engine). The model is therefore freelance, but realistic, with considerable information taken from the book "West Country Trading Ketches" by W.J. Slade and Basil Greenhill. The name Jennifer C. encompasses two significant women - my dear wife, who happily supports my hobbies, and a character in Daphne du Maurier's first novel, "The Loving Spirit", which was based loosely on the life of the woman and schooner Jane Slade of Fowey. The fourth generation heroine of the du Maurier's fictionalised version is called Jennifer Coombe. The first set of photos covers the measurement of the weight of ballast required, making a removable lead keel, checking the trim and setting up the masts, the required internal support for the r/c equipment and the rudder.

Hello from the great shipbuilding city of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. I build "stand-off scale" sailing models in 1/32 scale. My topsail schooner Sophie Williams is a representation of a Portmadoc Schooner (Western Ocean Yacht) built for the Newfoundland trade; I am currently working on a West Country trading ketch. Martin