Just a quick post to let you all know that one of the boats I built for the hit TV show Game of Thrones is back in my workshop for modifications and I been given permission by the producers of the show to display the boat at the Baltimore Wooden Boat Festival next Saturday and Sunday the 25th and 26th of May. Go on it’s just one more reason to attend Ireland’s premier wooden boat festival. Here’s a sneak preview of the boat.

Photo Credit Helen Sloan/HBO

Photo Helen Sloan/HBO

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

At this stage I have the sheathing of fibreglass on the hull. I’ve applied a thin layer of fairing compound to fill any imperfections and to stop me sanding into the fibreglass when I’m fairing the hull with a longboard.

Here’s the hull with the waterline established and demarcated with two different colours. Te final topsides colour is going to be black, so I got started with the undercoats with the epoxy. The client wanted to have the hull Coppercoated and now was the best time to do it. As you can see below the copper and black looks pretty good.

Next up is turning the hull which I’ll have to do on my own. Anyway I’m flat out getting the boat finished at the moment so some of my subsequent posts will be pretty concise.

Of course if you’d like to have your own custom boat built don’t hesitate to contact me (Tiernan) on +353 86 1586937 and I can fit your project in.

Well progress has been pretty good on the 16′ ply/epoxy microcruiser I’m currently building. Above you can see the sides are planked and I’ve just fitted the aft half of the bottom planking. I had done the sides a single 16′ lengths and they weren’t as difficult to handle as you might think. I did think though that trying to lift a sixteen by four feet 3/8″ wobbly and floppy piece of plywood up onto a boat bottom that has been buttered with a sticky layer of epoxy might have pushed my patience to breaking. So I did it in two halves and it worked out splendidly.

I wanted to make sure that the skeg would be well secured to the boat. So I morticed the keel to receive the centre part of the laminated skeg and gluied the two cheeks on to it. It will be also screwed on from inside the boat and protected with a metal keel band.

Once I had the skeg done and all of the fastener holes filled I was able to start getting ready for sheathing the hull in Fiberglass and epoxy. This make the the hull more abrasion resistant and ensures a good thick coat of epoxy to guarantee watertightness.

At this stage I got the sticky stuff out again so the next batch of photos will be along soon. Epoxy and digital cameras don’t mix well. Until next time.

Here are the first stages in the building of another 16 foot sharpie for a repeat client. This one is going to be a minimalist pocket cruiser for exploring the west coast of Ireland and perhaps trailering to further afield.It may not be completely clear from the photo but the cabin will 8′ long with just under 4′ of headroom. It will contain a single bunk, galley shelf with a bucket sink and a porta potti. All you would need for an adventurous jaunt along the Atlantic coast. The shallow draft and offset centre board will allow you spend some very relaxing time tucked up in many of the sheltered coves spotted along the coast line.You can see here the limber holes are cut and the hog is fitted, I’m just about to start fitting the chine and inwales. I was going to add a pair of longtitudinal stringers each side to stiffen the bottom and provide a foundation for the cabin joinery. I decided against it in the end as it would increase the number of limber holes on the frames and require limber holes in the stringers. The cabin joinery will be well bonded to the bottom in any case and will provide ample additional stiffening for the bottom. By leaving the stringers out I have also ensured that the cabin layout can be tweaked once we have the hull upright and the proposed interior mocked up. In such a small boat every millimetre of additional cabin space counts.

If you like to discuss having your own custom boat built why not give me a call at +353 28 38973 or +353 86 1586937.

Tiernan

Well some of you with a good memory will remember that I did a posting about a model boat that my father started in the mid 1950s and which had remained idle until I restarted the project last year. Not a lot has happened over the year but here’s some photos of recent progress. I’ve been spurred on to restart work as my father had some health issues lately and it brought home the fact that he won’t be around for another fifty years.

As you can see the hull shape is pretty much there and I’ve started priming it in preparation of final fairing. If you look closely at the photos you’ll see a few humps and hollows.

I haven’t as yet decided what to do with the aft end of the keel as yet. I’ve no plans so I’m literally making it up as I go along. I’m planning to make it a free sailing boat with a simple tether for retrieval. So I might hold off on a rudder arrangement until I have the rig designed.

The keel is removable at the moment and will be used for casting the seven pounds of lead that my father can remember was needed. Most likely I’ll give her a yawl rig, they fashionable during the fifties and it’ll make her much easier to balance for free sailing. Of course the real moral of this story is don’t leave your dreams on a shelf for fifty years. Mark Twains call to all men is “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines, Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream.” And of course you’ll be sailing your new custom built Roeboat. Give me a ring +353 (0)28 38973 and I’ll set you up with your dream boat.

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

Finally I have time to post photos of the Catbird 16′ that I built in 2010. The owner launched the boat earlier this year and was very pleased with the results. He was kind enough to forward on these photos.

As you can see she rides quite high when empty but the owner says she settles right down when the crew are aboard.

Since her launch she’s been sailing around Galway Bay, the Lake District in England and now calls Scotland home. There’s even talk of her entering the Great Glen Raid next year.

She has drawn many admiring glances from other boaters wherever she goes and with her matching tender she really is as functional as she is pretty. The tender fits neatly upside down in the cockpit for trailering.

For information on pricing and to discuss having your own custom boat built why not give Tiernan a call at +353 (0)28 38973 or +353 (0)86 158 69 37 or contact me via email.

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

If you’re looking for a handy and  good looking punt to go with your boat why not give Tiernan a ring on +353 (0)28 38973 or drop me a line at Roeboats

Well here she is all painted and finished off. She’s painted to match the colour scheme of the mother boat. I changed it slightly and gave the boat an all white bottom as the punt will spend a lot of it’s time upside down in the sun. If the bottom was black you could probably cook some pizzas inside it on a sunny day it would be so hot.

Here’s another view of the dink with the Ninigret I built in 2009, she’s in the yard for a polish before I brought her over to the Baltimore Wooden Boat Festival, where she was greatly admired.

And here she is again on the grass ion my garden. Regular readers of the blog will recognise it from the 16′ Skin on frame Canoe I built last year. Which also appeared in Classic Boat magazine in January 2012. The owner reports that the boat handles great and fits inside the cockpit nicely of the mother boat when she’s on the trailer, they cut quite a dash on the water.

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

When last you, dear reader, saw this little punt I had just finished coating the outside with epoxy. After three coats of WEST epoxy I applied a very thin skim of fairing compound to level out the transition from the fiberglass tape to the plywood. This was followed by three coats of a two part epoxy primer.

The whole lot was then topped of with another three coats of gloss 2 part polyurethane topcoat. That’s quite a lot of paint for such a small boat but it is a sad fact that small punts like this lead very hard lives. So this one should look for many years to come after all of this protection.

Here you can see the internal arrangement. I made the limber hole oversized because no doubt at some point the boat will have something in the bottom that would block smaller limbers and I oriented the seat supports across the boat so that you could tuck something in under the seat, like a coil of rope, bottle of wine or a can of petrol.

That’s it for now I’ve to get the photos of the finished boat off of my camera so you’re going to have to wait, with baited breath I know, until then. In the mean time if you’d like to discuss having you’re own boat built by all means give me a ring and we can discuss it. Don’t wait too long as I’m starting to plan my winter schedule and would hate to disappoint by not having your boat ready for next summer.

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

I got this photo of the skin on frame canoe I built last October last week and it pretty much sums what’s great about lightweight wooden boats. If you haven’t already heard Ireland is experiencing one of its wettest summers in many years. What? How could it be any wetter in Europe’s wettest country? Well it has been.
Anyway this photo lifted my spirits as I’m glad to see that at least some people are getting the chance to spend time on the water enjoying their wooden boats and their friends company and of course gratitude for opening up a whole new world of fun and adventure.
Hopefully if the weather co-operates I’ll get out sailing, for only the third time this year in my own boat, at the weekend. I feel like I’m going through cold turkey and I really need a fix of some good sailing.
So if you call +353 (0)28 8973 looking to talk to me about having your own boat built and there’s no answer, you can be pretty certain I’ve taken to the boat come hell or high water.

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

Dear oh dear I’ve been neglecting my blog something rotten. Well it is for a very good reason, as I’ve been busy building this boat and doing a few other things that I’ll be covering in subsequent posts. Of course upcycling my 8 year old Mac mini to run on Linux has helped a lot as I wasn’t able to access the web reliably using the old system.  So it was frustrating to say the least.

Above you can see that I’ve wired and cable tied the boat bottom onto the sides. I used wire at the ends as the cable ties I had weren’t strong enough. At this stage the inside filleting and glassing of the joints is complete.

I’ve removed the cable ties and wires and sanded a radius on all of the corners for final filing and the application of the tape on the outside.

On go the two layers of fibreglass tape and epoxy the only tricky parts being the corners where three strips of tape meet.

Then three coats of epoxy resin were applied. I was lucky with the weather that day as it was warmer than usual and I was able to get the three coats on in one day. Ensuring that the coats were well bonded together and saving on a lot of sanding between coats.

If you would like your own custom boat built why not give me a call +353 28 38973 as you can see I can build you your dream boat and to suit your budget.

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