Bronze Age boat, on the water

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We took our Bronze age boat to Faversham to use the slipway at Alan Stayley’s boatyard. Boatyards are very photogenic places so here are a bunch of random pics. I love the mug above, if you are a boatbuilder, when you handle breaks off your much you stick back together with boat epoxy.

We covered our boat in hessian and soaked it overnight to allow it to “take up” that is to allow the wood to swell, a bit like a wooden barrel boats don’t like being dry, they only really get watertight when they are wet. Here out project leader Richard Darrah is sealing the last of the stitch holes with bees wax.

now we were ready to launch, it was very exciting.

Loaded onto the slipway cradle and waiting for the tide to come in a little more.
gently into the water

and finally afloat

Now this is where it suddenly became huge fun. We had a few hours to paddle up and down Faversham creek and get a feel for how she handled. She was an absolute dream, just like paddling a big canadian canoe. Having plenty of rocker she was very manoeuvrable yet was also very stable.

And then we took her out of the water and headed for Dover for the official launch. Here was are paddling out in the harbour.

You can see a rather nice film from the launch day here, the Time Team documentary will air sometime in 2014.