Nigel SharpThe 15′ Fowey River Boat is a modification—without foredeck, samson post, or skeg—of a 1939 design by Reg F. Freeman. The design was the foundation for a popular one-design racing class centered in Fowey, Cornwall, that has undergone a renaissance of interest in recent years.
In Fowey, a small town in Cornwall, England, a racing dinghy fleet was born in 1950 when a local dentist, E.W. Mogg, known to all as “Moggy,” ordered a boat built to plans by the yacht designer Reg F. Freeman. The original plans for the 15-footer, published in Yachting World in 1939, had included a foredeck, samson post, and skeg, but Moggy asked his builder to omit those. By 1965, 36 boats were built with the same modifications, and they constituted a one-design racing class that came to be known as Fowey River boats. Although interest in the class started to wane in the 1970s, a resurgence began in 1991, when an existing boat was restored and lines were taken and patterns made for the construction of a new one. More boats followed, and today, 72 boats have been built, all of them locally. More than 50 are still based in Fowey; 32 of them raced during the 2021 Fowey Regatta week.
Marcus Lewis’s career as a boatbuilder in Fowey has paralleled the resurgence of the class. In his youth, he took an avid interest in boatbuilding and restoration. He soon went to work in a local boatyard, where he remained for years. One of his later projects was the restoration of Prince Phillip’s Dragon-class yacht for exhibit at the 2002 opening of the National Maritime Museum, Cornwall. In 2003, Marcus opened his own shop in Fowey, and since then he has built 18 of the new generation of Fowey River boats. Most recently, he built two boats side-by-side with an apprentice, Toby Poultney.
Fowey River boats are built to strict rules. The class association has amassed a comprehensive set of templates for the stem, deadwood, keel profile, centerboard trunk, transom, stern knee, and construction molds. These patterns are used to check any new boat during various stages of its construction for compliance to the class rules. In addition, a three-page list specifies dimensions that must be met, most of them to the nearest 1⁄8″. Before building his first Fowey River boat, Marcus lofted the lines of the original Yachting World drawing, so he hasn’t needed to do any subsequent lofting work, and over the years he has replicated the association’s templates and molds. However, he has made his own refinements, such as adding marks on the molds to record his own fair plank lines.
Photo 1. For each of Marcus’s new boats, the starting point is to trace the keel profile template onto a 11⁄2″-thick piece of iroko and cut it to shape. As shown in this photo from an earlier construction, the keel, which has 7″ of rocker, is then clamped to the strongback, supported by blocks of appropriate height at each mold station. Marcus laminates the stem from 16 layers of mahogany to a total thickness of 17⁄8″.
The stem’s shape conforms to a template that also establishes its scarf joint with the keel. The aft corner on each side is shaped by router to give a preliminary rabbet, cut not to full depth but instead just deep enough to give a line to work to later, after the stem knee and stem apron are added. Once the matching scarf is cut into the forward end of the keel, the stem can be temporarily clamped to it and checked for plumb using a laser level.
The class rules for the Fowey River boats call for all longitudinal dimensions to be taken from the forward end of the stem at sheer height. One of these measurements is for the centerboard slot’s location on the keel, which can be measured while the stem is clamped in place. Since the stem must be removed before final glue-up, the keel can also be removed, enabling the 1⁄2″-wide slot to be easily cut on the bench. Then the keel is set back in place, clamped down, and held with metal brackets screwed to the strongback blocks. Using epoxy, Marcus glues the stem-to-keel scarf and clamps it in place until the glue sets. Next, the 3⁄8″-thick khaya mahogany “hog,” or keel batten, is fitted atop the keel and butted into the aft end of the stem. The hog is fastened with nails so that the task of replacing the keel in the future, if necessary, would be relatively straightforward. The 17⁄8″-thick laminated mahogany stem knee is also glued and clamped to the top of the hog and inside face of the stem, overlapping the stem-to-keel scarf joint. To avoid slippage, Marcus allows the glue to set before boring five holes through the assembly for 1⁄4″ stainless-steel bolts to reinforce the structure. “I can live without the stress of bolting it all together when it is all moving,” Marcus says.
Photo 2. After the hog piece is fastened in place on the keel, Marcus cuts its necessary centerboard slot while accessibility for the task is best. The slot previously cut in the keel serves as a guide for a flush-cutting router bit’s roller-bearing guide when shaping the slot in the hog piece (also visible in photo 11). After the slot is finished by trimming its ends square with a mortise chisel, he also fits the head ledges, those upright structural pieces at the forward and after ends of the centerboard trunk. Cutting the slot and fitting the head ledges is easiest without the molds in the way, plus the laser level is unobstructed when checking them for a plumb fit. When this work on the hog piece is completed, the three construction molds can be erected, as shown.
Photo 3. The 1″-thick transom is made up of two pieces of khaya mahogany edge-joined with epoxy. Its profile comes from a template, which also has been marked at regular intervals to record the edge’s rolling bevel. Marcus planes only approximate bevels on the bench, making sure to leave some wood to be trimmed later as planks are installed. The transom’s position on the keel, with the hog piece butting its inboard face, and its rake are carefully double-checked during setup. Before securing it in place, the transom is leveled athwartships. It is also “horned” by taking accurate measurements from a centerline point on the stem to each top corner of the transom to ensure that it is square athwartships; at the same time, the boat’s overall length is double-checked for class rule compliance. The stern knee, which is 11⁄4″ thick and made of two pieces of oak mated with a half-lap joint, is glued and through-bolted to the keel along its lower arm, and the transom is glued and screwed to its upper arm.
Photo 4. The three temporary molds are set up to be vertical and square to the centerline. They are fastened to vertical posts secured to the hog and to an overhead beam, as shown. Their outboard ends are braced to the posts, and their outer arms are further braced fore-and-aft. Marks on all three molds correspond to the approximate top edges of all the planks, and similar marks are transferred to the stem and transom from Marcus’s templates.
He has also made templates of 1⁄4″ plywood for each of the boat’s 12 planks per side. These templates serve only as a starting point, not as exact patterns for final planks. For the garboard template, he uses plywood tabs hot-glued to the template stock to find the lower edge’s shape. (This photo shows the garboards during final-fitting, with one in place and the other stored atop the molds.) For the rest of the planks, each template has a row of 5⁄8″ holes bored close to its lower edge, spaced about 9″ apart, which help when the time comes to transfer the marks to the planking stock.
Once there is a plank on the boat, the template for the next plank is wrapped around, making sure it has no edge-set and lies fair on the lower plank and the molds above. When it is in place, the top edge of the fitted plank is marked along n the inside face of the template, along with the mold, stem, and transom lines. Then the template is removed and laid on the 3⁄8″-thick Sitka spruce planking stock. The holes bored along the edge of the template allow the plank line marks to the transferred directly to the planking stock. After the stem, transom, and mold marks are also transferred, the marks are battened off. Marcus uses a batten whose width corresponds to the lap width—5⁄8″—with its upper edge on the marks, therefore marking a pencil line along its lower edge gives the actual lower edge of the new plank.
Once that lower edge is defined, then all measure-ments for plank widths are marked from there, including the widths at the stem, molds, and transom. A batten is bent to those marks to fair the top edge of the plank.
Marcus normally cuts out the planks together as a pair. When building two boats side by side, four identical planks, two for each boat, can be cut from one marked template, saving time. As both boats were planked up, occasional measurement checks were made to ensure that the planking height on each boat is the same, assuring that the hulls would be of identical shapes.
Photo 5. Before fitting the garboards, a 5⁄8″-wide bevel is planed on each hog piece’s bottom outboard corner to receive them. At the same time, the stem rabbets and transom bevels are fine-tuned to receive the plank being fitted.
Photo 6. The garboards and first broadstrakes must be steamed at their forward ends in order to be twisted to shape. (The “broadstrakes” are the first few planks above the garboards, which are typically made wider than the other planks to simplify the rest of the planking.) To prevent damage to the soft planking stock, thin plywood pads are temporarily placed between the planks and the forward mold, as shown. The garboards are clamped in place and left overnight to cool. The next day, they are removed and cleaned up for final fitting.
Photo 7. Marcus planes bevels at the bench, using a specially modified plane that has a piece of wood glued to its underside, as shown, to act as a fence. The wood’s edges leave 5⁄8″ of the plane iron exposed on each side, corresponding to the plank overlap. The bevel is only partly finished, leaving a bit of wood so that the final bevel can be accurately refi ned later, while fitting the next plank.
Photo 8. Also partly visible in photo 7 (at upper left) are the purpose-built wood-bodied rabbet planes that Marcus uses for cutting 5⁄8″-wide gains, or sloping bevels that allow the planks ends to fit flush at stem and at the transom, shown here. These planes, one for each grain direction, have wooden fences that assure the right width of the rabbet.
Photo 9. Marcus’s planking stock is generally supplied in 6″- and 9″-wide boards. He is normally able to use the narrow ones for bottom planks, which despite their widths have expanded shapes that are fairly straight. They can also be used for the comparatively narrow strakes at the turn of the bilge. But not even the 9″-wide boards are broad enough to make full-length planks for the strongly curved top strakes. The answer is to scarf two lengths together at a slight angle to make a V shape that can accommodate the curve. He cuts 33⁄8″-long scarfs in 1⁄2″-thick plank-ing stock with a router while the planking stock is held firmly in a scarfing jig at the angle needed, as shown. After the two pieces are glued together, the now full-length stock is planed down to its final 3⁄8″ thickness, so the joint doesn’t have to be exactly flush during glue-up.
Photo 10. The steam-bent frames aren’t fitted until all the planking is complete, but their positions must be determined so that the intermediate rivets in the plank laps can be positioned. Class rules require the frame spacing to be 61⁄2″ at the hog; from there, Marcus chooses to fit them at right angles to the edge of the hog and to the edge of each of the subsequent planks. This means that although amidships the frames and the row of intermediate fastenings will be nearly vertical, at the bow their tops will be angled slightly aft and at the stern slightly forward. These variations will be barely noticeable forward but more obvious aft, where the raked transom accentuates the visual discrepancy.
The lower edge of each garboard is riveted to the hog, skipping the frame locations, and the plank’s hood ends are screwed to the stem and transom while its upper edge rests gently again the molds. This process is then repeated for all of the remaining planks, except that their hood-end fastenings to the stem and transom are copper nails instead of screws. The first few planks amidships start off quite wide—“partly because you can’t see them and we want to make up a bit of ground in the girth,” Marcus says. The tighter curve at the turn of the bilge requires those planks to be narrower. The most-visible planks are in the topsides, so they are made increasingly wide. The visual width of the third-from-top plank is normally about 3″ at its widest point, the next one up about 31⁄4″. The sheerstrake is planned so that when its maximum width amidships, 43⁄8″, is covered along the top outside edge by the 1″-wide rubrail, about 33⁄8″ of the plank will still be visible from the exterior.
Photo 11. Before the frames are fitted, the inside of the hull is sanded and a coat of thinned-down varnish is applied to it. Most of the Fowey River boats have sheer-strakes of a contrasting color to visually compensate for the design’s relatively flat sheer. Some boats use different colors of paint to make the contrast; CRAIG-B, hull No. 71, was intended to be bright-finished, so Marcus used khaya sheerstrakes to contrast with the Sitka spruce planking. “Also, the top plank takes a bit of a bashing from various things,” he says, “and it has quite a few fastenings through it, so it is best to have a tougher, more-resilient grain structure than spruce, which is more likely to split.”
Photo 12. The 7⁄8″ × 7⁄16″ frames are made of green oak, and their inside corners are rounded-over before steaming. Marcus always starts with the longest frames, the ones running gunwale-to-gunwale; there are six of these forward of the centerboard trunk and six aft of it. Any of these frames that break can be reused for one of the half-width frames, of which there are eight per side in way of the centerboard trunk, five per side at the bow, and two per side aft in way of the stern knee. On CRAIG-B, eight frames broke during steam-bending, which Marcus said was “a fairly typical number.”
Before bending the frames in place, Marcus installs a permanent 1⁄4″ by 13⁄8″ khaya full-length strip along the inside top edges of the sheerstrakes as a filler piece between the planks and the frame heads. This avoids the need for filler pieces later and also contributes to longitudinal stiffness. He also installs 3⁄4″-thick temporary battens immediately above the sheerstrakes and fastens them to the molds and the extensions of the stem and transom. These battens protect the sheerstrakes from being damaged while steam-bending the frames in place and also provide a place to clamp the frames securely without marring the planking.
A dozen or so frames are steamed together for about a half an hour. Once removed from the steam, they must be installed within a couple of minutes. For each full-girth frame, Marcus gets inside the hull and uses his feet to press down on the middle, then push it out to the turn of the bilge, while Toby clamps it to the temporary sheer batten on one side and then the other. The fact that the frames are square to each plank rather than square across the boat means that they require less twisting to ensure they lie flat against the planking. Once the frames have cooled, the clamps are replaced by screws at the sheer batten, above where they will be cut off later.
Photo 13. The frames are left overnight to cool, and then they are removed and cleaned up for final installation. They are returned to the boat, in their final locations, and loosely clamped to the temporary batten. Working from the lowest to the highest fastening, Marcus bores the holes through the frame and the plank laps simultaneously, then rivets the frame in place.
After all the frames are fitted, except for those in way of the molds, the Fowey River class measurer is called in to confirm that the hull is accurate to the molds. Only then are the sheer battens and molds removed and the last few frames steam-bent and riveted in place.
Photos 14a, 14b, and 14c. Once the framing is completed, blocking must be fitted in way of rowlocks, chainplates, thwart knees, quarter knees, and the breasthook before the inwales can be installed. The blocking ensures that all of the rivets fastening the pieces in place go through solid wood. Photo 14a shows chainplate blocking as finished; the inwales have a router-shaped bead on the lower inboard faces for a traditional look. The rivets fastening the inwale in place are slightly staggered to prevent splitting, which might occur if they were in a straight line. This pattern also helps to pull both edges of the inwales against the frames. Photo 14b shows the wooden support for a rowlock socket, and the lower support to receive the rowlock shaft. Photo 14c shows the breasthook, which is made of a half-lapped assembly. Its fastenings extend from the exterior through the rubrail, sheerplank, filler piece, blocking, inwale, and breasthook.
Photo 15. Like the breasthook, the various knees of Fowey River boats were once made from grown oak crooks. Today, such crooks are hard to come by, so to avoid “a waste of everyone’s time,” as Marcus says, they are made from two pieces of dry 1″-thick oak, with a half-lap joint glued with epoxy.
Photo 16. The heights and fore-and-aft positions of the thwarts, which are determined by class rules, are particularly tricky to fit. Their ends intersect plank overlaps and awkward frame angles. The forward thwart has a single hanging knee. Its lodging knee, shown here, supports mast loads, since that thwart doubles as a mast partner. The lodging knee not only has a rolling bevel where it fits against the plank but also is carefully notched to fi t around the frames.
The spruce seat risers, made of planking stock offcuts, are fitted parallel to the waterline. The center and forward thwarts are of 1″-thick khaya, with beaded edges.
Photo 17. Both thwarts support the centerboard trunk. The center thwart rests on top of the aft end. The forward thwart has khaya pieces fastened underneath and extending aft along the trunk sides. The trunk sides are made of 1″-thick khaya, two pieces each side butt-joined together. Before they are final-fitted, pilot holes are bored from above through the hog and keel so that screws can later be inserted from below. In the meantime, bar clamps extend down through the trunk, the slot in the hog and keel, and a corresponding slot in the strongback to hold the sides down. A foaming polyurethane adhesive is used between the trunk sides and the head ledges. A flexible sealant is used between the sides and the hog piece to allow for some movement and also because it is easy to clean up later inside the slot.
By rule, the centerboard must be 1⁄4″ thick. The early boats always used galvanized steel, but as the Fowey River boats have become less of a picnic boat and more of a racing class, stainless steel is now universally favored for its smooth finish and longevity.
The side seats are also made of 1″-thick khaya. The aft ones have always been fitted on Fowey River boats, but those between the thwarts, as Marcus is shown fitting here, are a more recent addition. They not only provide the crew a little comfort but also support the jibsheet car tracks and cleat. These are supported by wooden chocks protruding from the undersides of the thwarts. The aft seats have support from cleats attached to the transom and under-seat hanging knees partway along.
Photo 18. The 16″-long, 3″ × 3″ oak mast-step has a slot for the mast tenon and is bedded and screwed onto the hog. Douglas-fir floorboards are fitted with small oak rotating buttons screwed to the ribs to hold them in place. Here, Marcus is fitting a floor timber for a separate sole forward, which is flat and level.
Photo 19. After the tops of the stem, transom, and frames are trimmed to the correct height and the waterline is measured by laser level and marked, the hull is released from the strongback and turned over. This allows the 3″ × No. 14 stainless-steel wood screws to be driven through the keel and hog into the centerboard trunk sides, and a 1⁄2″ iroko sacrificial shoe to be fitted to the keel.
The rivet heads are now closely inspected to ensure they are all flush. Any that aren’t are hammered while a bucking iron is held inside. The hull below the waterline is primed and given its antifouling paint, the topsides are varnished, and a brass stemband is installed. The boat is then turned right-side up so that the bilges below the floorboards can be painted and the remainder of the interior varnished.
Photo 20. The Fowey River boats are gunter-rigged, and they have a long tradition of brightly colored sails. The spars are made of Sitka spruce, starting with one solid piece that is cut down the middle, one piece end-for-ended, and then glued together, as Marcus says, “to try to stop them going one way or other in the sun.”
Before gluing, the boom and gaff are machined to create boltrope grooves for the gunter mainsail’s foot and head.
Nigel Sharp is a lifelong sailor who owns a share in an 1898 Falmouth Working Boat. He ended a 35-year career in the British boatbuilding industry in 2010, when he started working as a freelance marine writer and photographer; see www.nigelsharp.co.uk.
For more information, see Fowey Gallants Sailing Club.
Marcus Lewis, Windmill Industrial Estate, Fowey, Cornwall, UK, PL23 1ZHB; 00-44-7973-420568; www.woodenboatbuilder.co.uk.