YARD VISIT

MIND OVER MATTER

Boatbuilder John McShea is finding cleverer ways to do things, from laser-guiding fastening positions to multi-purpose knees

WORDS AND PHOTOGRAPHS NIC COMPTON

It’s not often you walk into a boatbuilding workshop in rural England and find yourself confronted by an art installation. Yet that was how it seemed when I visited boatbuilder John McShea at his workshop near Kingsbridge in Devon. At first sight, I assumed that the fairy lights attached over the moulds of the new wooden launch he was building were a leftover from a birthday celebration (after all, he does have two young daughters). But then

John turned off the main overhead lights so all that was left was a series of parallel red lines shining over the keel and ribbands from what turned out to be laser lights carefully spaced out on a copper bar.

“We use those for lining up the fastenings, to make sure they are evenly spaced,” he explained. “We had to make special fittings to fit the lights on the track, but we’ll save time on measuring as well as increasing accuracy.”

And the innovations don’t stop there. When I visited Frogmore

Boatyard, the launch’s centerline had been assembled and the first plank was just being fitted. Where most boatbuilders would fit a socking great oak knee between the keel and the transom, John had fashioned a ‘three-in-one’ stainless steel knee with a tube running down through it for the rudder stock and a rounded lifting nut welded onto the aft face. True to his wooden boat roots, he then sandwiched the metal knee between two pieces of oak to give it a more traditional appearance.

With the knee in place, the lifting nut emerged through a specially-cut hole in the transom and was matched by another nut on a stainless steel plate at the bow, allowing the whole boat to be spun with ease while it was being worked on – both now and, in the future, for maintenance. As John wrote on social media: “There was a time when this [turning a boat] would have taken around four people, a whole bunch of matresses and a lot of grunt. Now I’m weak and old, I’m having to use my brain a little more.” (Not that he’s either weak or old.)

In a similar vein, the keel was fitted with a 1/2in (12mm) stainless steel shoe, with two eyebolts running through the keel and tapped into the shoe to act as lifting hooks, so the boat can be hung from davits at the owner’s home overlooking the Kingsbridge estuary. Even before the first plank had been fitted, then, the new boat had all the makings of a sophisticated, carefully thought-through piece of work.

Whisper, as the new boat is called, is only the third boat John has built from scratch. His first was the 18ft 6in (5.6m) Tempest, a motor launch designed by Ian Howlett for Tristan Stone of Stones Timber and Stones Boatyard fame. She was followed by the 19ft 6in (5.9m) Tenacity, which John designed himself and started building on spec, before a buyer turned up and paid for the boat to be completed. The finished boat had a more traditional shape than the Howlett design, with wineglass stern sections rather than Tempest’s flatter run.

For the new boat, John took his lines for Tenacity and pumped them into a CAD program. It so happened that he had just cut the end of his thumb off on a bandsaw and, in the resulting month off work, decided to “do something I’d never done before” and learn to use CAD. The result is a slightly leaner boat – John reduced the beam from 8ft 2in (2.5m) to 7ft 6in (2.3m) – with a finer bow, which John hopes will build on his previous design.

Elsewhere in the yard, John and his team (boatbuilder Jim Day and apprentice Jake Raine) were restoring a 112-year old launch called Diane, built by Brooke & Co in Lowestoft. Their main task was replacing the keel, which involved drilling a 6ft (1.8m) hole for the propeller shaft, drilling 3ft from one side, then 3ft from the other – much to John’s delight, the holes met perfectly.

John has also been helping with the restoration of the 1896 gaff cutter Moonraker of Fowey, rebuilding the hatches and making new spars. Moonraker (ex-Lily) was sailed extensively in the Caribbean by the former GP Peter Pye who wrote a celebrated series of books about his adventures.

But it’s not all about boats. John is married to artist Naomi Vincent (you might remember her floating sculpture at the Beale Park boat show a good few years ago) and produces his own line of organically-shaped (mostly wooden) sculptures. When I visited, a pair of wooden forks which I took to be the wishbones for a small windsurfer on closer inspection turned out to be a sculpture in progress. Renaissance man indeed.

DIANE

John and his team replaced the keel on this 1909 Brooke launch. Behind is a new spar being made for Moonraker of Fowey

BROOKE ENGINE

The refurbished engine from Diane. Brooke started off building engines and cars and subcontracted its boatbuilding until 1911

WHISPER

This 19ft 6in launch is only the second boat John has built to his own design. Look closely and you can see the laser light lines for lining up the fastenings.