The Guillemot is a strong, capable boat along the lines of a 19th Century ship's boat or large yacht tender. She floats on her designed waterline with three adults aboard and can take a great load of gear as well; she'll carry five people for moderate distance in suitable conditions.

Monday, November 3, 2008

Iain Oughtred's Guillemot Getting Started

We have been commissioned to build a tender for the Alden schooner Summerwind nearing the end of a major rebuild in Riviera Beach . The rebuild is being done primarily by Moores Marine at the yard of Rybovich and Son. It is really a beautiful boat and it's a pleasure to be a part of this project. Summerwind was built in 1929. She is now owned by Don Williamson and skippered by Captain Carl Joyner. The owner wanted a traditional flavored tender to stow in bunks on the foredeck. It needed to be just under 12" and capable of carrying 5 adults in protected waters. These requirements meant that a full bodied rather burdensome hull would be needed. So I looked through a lot of my books and at a lot of plans on line. Finally I found Iain Oughtred's Guillemot design. I think this design fills the requirements almost perfectly. So I presented this to Captain Joyner. He liked it and showed Mr. Williamson who also liked it, and we struck a deal. The boat will be built of 1/4" okoume plywood and solid teak lumber with a painted exterior and an interior finished with Deks Olje #1. The boat will not be set up for sailing but for a small outboard motor and a couple of Culler style oars.

The first step is constructing a building frame or strongback. Care must be taken to ensure that it is straight, square and level. Then mold stations are transferred from full size paper patterns to 3/4" plywood. The molds are then set up at the locations on the building frame and every thing is again checked for straight and square. In the photo below you can see the molds set up with a string line run through holes in each one to align the centerlines.


Below we are resawing teak strips to laminate the inner and outer stems. This bandsaw is a 42" Tannewitz built in 1963. We acquired it at an auction last year and have rebuilt it. The blade travels at 8800 feet per minute and with a 7 1/2 HP motor cuts through large teak boards effortlessly. We installed new bearings and tires and trued the tires and rebalanced the wheels and the result is a truly magnificent machine. They don't make saws like this in China.

We screwed blocks down in the shape of the inner stem and then laminated both the inner and outer stem at the same time with some plastic between them to prevent epoxy gluing them together.


After the epoxy cured we removed the clamps and shaped the inner stem to the correct size.

Here we have let the keelson into the molds and clamped the inner stem to it and the strongback. The molds have been checked for fairness and beveled as needed and have had battens screwed to them to keep them properly aligned.


Below we have glued up some teak boards into a piece large enough for the transom. To increase the glue joint size we have splined the the seams.