For Sale:

Fifteen foot double-ender dayboat.

George Holmes' design the 'Ethel' of 1888 was digitised then stretched by Selway Fisher - who then drew up their own stitch-and-glue strake pattern for the hull, which I used when constructing the first one.

I further modified the appearance of the design during construction to produce the boat in the photo by altering both deck camber and sheer, and building a different deck and cockpit layout - with in particular the narrow, sweeping side-decks and coamings - as well as a new high aspect-ratio semi- pivoting daggerboard, a high aspect ratio lifting rudder and a wider, more practicable tiller (all necessary as I intended racing the boat), and altered the rig twice - both during construction and a few  months after.  Most construction details are different, too.  Further detailed changes were listed in 'The Boatman' review in the October/November issue of 1992.

The final appearance of the boat - though not the hull - is different to both Selway Fisher's digitised design and the original 'Ethel'.  Fisher's modified version - which he named the 'Lillie' - follows Holmes' original layout of deck and cockpit, low aspect centreboard and non-lifting rudder, but with his own rig; and it is this which he offers in his on-line catalogue - though illustrated with a photograph of the changed deck and cockpit of my boat shown below.

LOD 14' 10"
Beam: 59"
Draft: 8" - 3'6"
Weight 350lbs
Planking: 9mm ply, epoxy coated
Decks 6mm ply epoxy coated
Hull finished inside and out in white 2 pot poly; hull still bottle smooth

Pretty and very distinctive
Sails exceptionally well
Well balanced in light or strong winds, upright or heeled to the gunwale
Exhilarating or docile to sail - to choice
Easily handled - on the water or on the well balanced trolley
Self steering ability in light winds
Heaves-to easily for reefing or picnics
Rows very easily

Price: with launching trolley only: £1450

td@campionboats.co.uk

Though the gloss is no longer -some fifteen years later - as deep as here, you can still see your own face in the original finish, and the hull is still mistaken for moulded glass fibre..

WHISP

Glued Clinker rowing skiff: 15' 6" x 3' 6". Designer: S. Redmond

"Whisp" is an elegant, stable and light rowing skiff, a type of craft popular in the U.S.A. in the nineteenth century, and one wbich has found favour again in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, due in no small part to the resurgence of interest in traditional designs.  Redmond, like Herreshoff, Culler and Gardner, appreciates the many virtues - and few vices - of long, lean and light flat-bottomed skiffs, and has drawn a particularly attractive and able example of this type of craft.  The "Whisp" is relatively narrow, but thanks to the strongly flared clinker sides and flat floor is quite stable; and whilst not being as fast as the rather extreme racing craft, she can still show a surprising turn of speed for very little effort, particularly for a fixed seat craft: according to her designer, the "Whisp" will do an "honest 12 minute mile under oars". This skiff is considerably more stable than a conventional single skull, much lighter than a conventional clinker built boat, and the interior - let alone the exterior - has far more appeal than any other comparable rowing skiff of simple construction.  The "Whisp" is, quite simply, an exceptional craft with a distinguished heritage.

Indeed, 'Woodenboat' has hailed her, along with Bolger's "Gloucester Light Dory", as one of the few craft truly deserving of the name 'modern classic'.

Finished in two pot poly, with bronze offset locks, sitka spruce leathered oars and recent fitted cover.

Asking price: £690.