Boat restoration with Citizen Sea

We had a fantastic day last Sunday with this group from Citizen Sea. They are Northern Ireland's first boat based enviromental charity, and their aim is to "inspire others to engage with our marine environment through citizen science, education, research and awareness-raising"

But this weekend, they were down in Newry, working on Ballyholme Insect class dinghy, MOTH

After an introduction covering tool identification and clinker construction, shipwright Donall Greene covered how to:

• sharpen chisels and plane irons

• carry out a hull assessment

• scarf planks

• identify plank material

• use removed plank as a template

• mark and scribe a new plank

• cut scribed plank

• plane plank edges

• scarf new plank ends

• correctly bevel plank lands

• fit and fasten new plank

"The skills workshop was amazing, seeing an old boat with a rotten plank and then working through the process of templates, planing, nailing & seeing the end result work was a great insight into the skills of shipbuilders"

Next year, Citizen Sea will be joining us in May 2023 for a 3 day voyage, all as part of our Maritime Heritage project - generously funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund. You can find this and other voyages on our 2023 season calendar

Pictured below: Project Manager, Pat Conway, supervises the scraping of MOTH's mast