Just as the first lock-down in March 2021 was starting I received a commission to build another of John Atkin’s brilliant Ninigret 22’s. I built a Ninigret as the first Roeboat in 2009 and it has been loved by its two owners since and has given them years of trouble free boating.

Construction began in early June and started with making up the frames for the boat. I had kept the original lofting for the boat and lot of templates for the planking etc. The lofting was very useful but the templates not so much.

Once the frames were assembled and the keel timber made it was time to set them all up.

It was fairly straightforward to get this done and required a lot of levelling and plumbing to get them in line. They didn’t require much fairing as I was able to pick up the bevels for the frames, most notable in the forward ones, from the lofting. Of course having done it all before made it much easier.

This piece of planking in the forefoot of the boat is probably the most difficult part of building this boat. The designer acknowledges that it’s not quite right for planking in plywood. The plywood is required to bend in two axes and that’s very difficult to do. When I built the first boat it took three attempts and lots of of clamps etc to get the first one in position. Subsequently the second one went a lot easier when I noticed that John Atkin had made the distance that I needed to cover exactly 4′, this allowed rotating the plywood 90º, making it a lot easier to bend into shape. As there is always an odd number of veneers in plywood so it bends easier one way than the other.

I’ll continue covering the build in next few posts. In the meantime if you would like to discuss having your own boat built, restored or repaired don’t hesitate to contact me, either through the contact page, by email or by phone +353 86 1586937.

Roeboats, Ballydehob, Co. Cork, t:+353 (0)28 38973 m: +353 (0)86 158 69 37 e:tiernan@roeboats.com