Plans By Paul Gartside

Plans and Designs by Paul Gartside
Introduction
Paul Gartside was born in Yorkshire but his family moved to Malpas on the Truro River when he was quite young. His father took over the Bar Creek Yacht Station, building and maintaining a wide range of wooden boats. Paul began his boathuilding experience early and was soon drawing his own designs. An early influence was the designs of William and John Atkin and the first boat that he built for himself was a version of John Atkin's 'Florence Oakland' design that he named 'Poppy'. When a decision was made to move the family to Canada, Paul spent the intervening period measuring and drawing as many of the local boats that he could, and their influence will be seen in the designs that he has produced over the last 25 years whilst residing and working on Vancouver Island.
In the specifications we include the designer's assessment of building times and skill levels, the key to which is shown below.
Building Times
Building times are always difficult to estimate, but some way of describing the amount of work involved in a design is necessary. The times given in this catalogue are taken from time sheets in the case of boats built here, or estimates I would use for costing in our shop. Some people might be faster; those with less experience are likely to be slower.

Skill Level
You will notice that skill levels given are independent of the size of the boat. One of the most exacting designs in this series is the 13 ft 6 in Clinker Rowboat (see its page). This project would give the builder a chance to practice most aspects of classic wooden boat building.

Basic level designs require basic woodworking skills - the ability to sharpen tools and make things fit - but little or no previous experience with boat building is necessary. While the plans provide all the information needed to build the boat, they do not necessarily detail procedure. It is assumed that you would have access to reference books on the subject. Basic designs would require lofting of the drawings to obtain full-sized patterns, building a level platform and setting up molds accurately.

Intermediate level plans require some additional techniques of bending and fairing, some spiling, etc. Most glued boats fall into this category.

High skill level plans require the full range of wood boat building skills: laying out plank rabbets, steam bending, lining out planking, and so forth. These are less skills of manual dexterity than knowledge of procedures, so don't be put off. If you have good woodworking ability and are prepared to do the background reading they are within your reach and will prove among the most rewarding.

Plans by Percy Dalton

The late Percy Dalton was my wife Pamela's father. He had a long and distinguished career in ship and boatbuilding. He was also a talented artist specialising in maritime subjects, usually in water colour. Born into a large family in Plymouth, his career started with a five-year apprenticeship in the Royal Navy Dockyard at Devonport. This was an engineering apprenticeship which included naval architecture and he eventually became an Associate Member of the Institute of Naval Architects. After a brief interlude as a professional sailor, crewing aboard the Jolie Brise in the Bermuda Race, he returned to Devonport during WWII where he worked on torpedoes. In the 1950s he accepted a post with Sellick Nichols & Williams in St. Austell, as an architect, designing the Cornish Unit houses. Later on he moved to Falmouth where he worked for a while under Rodney Warrington-Smyth at Falmouth Boat Construction before eventually going freelance. It was at this stage in his life that he began to study the Falmouth Working Boats, yachts, and other inshore craft, as well as continuing to paint. He was a great advocate of reinforced concrete construction, a method now sadly associated with badly built amateur construction, but still a technique, if properly applied, of considerable merit for blue-water cruising boats. We have a limited number of full plan sets for wooden and ferro construction.