The London Boat Show
From Jonno Barrett
Dear Sir,
While I am a committee member of BMF South West, I write as a sailor who has been attending boat shows at Earls Court and elsewhere for not quite 50 years.
This year (for the first time) I went to ExCeL. Coming from the Westcountry by public transport, it was not fun and put me off going again. Had it not been a Sunday, the journey back to Paddington during a rush period could have put me off boat shows altogether.
I know the efforts the BMF and NBS have put in - indeed that's why I went - but I simply can't see ExCeL as a winter venue. There's no panorama and only an underneath view of boats.
Contrast that with Earls Court, where the main entrance placed you at a hub of different and enticing axes, the pool provided a natural centre - with boats - and the balcony gave a top down view.
At ExCeL the central corridor had a right angle grid layout - mostly leading to rolled down shutters. Nice loos, but not worth a trip to London!
I realise that you can't get big boats to Earls Court and that's a problem - but what's the show for? If it's to grow boating, how many people are going to buy a Predator 108 or whatever, much less at the show! You need boats, but do you need the biggest - shouldn't that be for Southampton when you may want to be outside?
I don't know if the Earls Court Boat Show will work or not. I do know that as a boat owner, I'm more likely to visit there than ExCeL; it's more accessible and it fits better as part of a day out in London.
I don't want too many shows: but does that mean the BMF should circle wagons against a newcomer (as Southampton was once). This may make the ECBS fail: but how will that solve the problem that apparently fewer and fewer people want to go to ExCeL.
So just what is a winter London Boat Show for?
I'm only asking…
yours faithfully,
Jonno Barrett
Kudos Software


Wooden boats
From Phil Swift
Dear Sirs,
In Peter Nash’s article on the London Boat Show at ExCeL, he refers to Classic Boat magazine's stand at the show saying: ‘One stand that always seemed to attract the crowd was the Classic Boat stand... just walking onto the stand brought a smile.... the scent of wood, varnish and glue brought back beautiful memories. But today’s marine industry is more plastic and carbon than wood... Nice though they are, the realism is they have to remain a side show these days.’
It makes me wonder where Mr Nash has been for the past 10 years. Has he not noticed the crowds on the pontoons at Southampton Boat Show congested around Spirit Yachts and their range of wooden Super Yachts, at the leading edge of development? Or perhaps he hasn’t heard of Nigel Irens and his range of WesterMan designs? Or those Ed Burrnett, all built in wood? Surely Mr Nash must have heard of John Corby and his beautiful ocean racers, like Wavetrain and so many more winners. And surely the Jubilee Sailing Trust's latest build Tenacious must be too large to be a sideshow!
He mentions realism. Well, I expect the Trust took advice when they chose wood as the building material and that low maintenance costs were one of their priorities. Perhaps he thinks build costs are astronomical. Well, North Quay Marine build a range of wooden traditional boats between 17 feet and 30 feet and when we compare their prices to a GRP builder making similar traditional boats, Surprise! Surprise! we find the wooden boats are competitive, in fact they cost less. And today, it's the wooden boat builders who develop new ideas and bring them to the market place. The bi-monthly Water Craft magazine recently said of Swallow Boats: if they kept introducing new designs at their current rate, they would have to publish more frequently to keep pace with their output !
Perhaps Mr Nash should catch up and look more seriously at wooden boats built using the best of modern technology. They do not suffer from osmosis, they are built from 95% sustainable materials and have an almost neutral carbon footprint – unlike GRP craft, the manufacturers of which are fighting vigorously to prevent the EU bringing in huge charges to dispose of GRP hulls. Furthermore, a surveyor has brought to my attention that collision damage which would require a GRP boat be written off would only need localised repair on a wood composite hull.
Finally, may I suggest that in future, Mr Nash does his homework rather than using glib remarks to disparage a part of the marine industry which does deserve better.
Phil Swift
Willow Bay Boats

Blimey! What did I do to deserve that? And just how did Mr Swift manage to find disparaging remarks about wooden boats in my copy?
But regardless of the crowds of people (myself included) who wander boat shows gazing in wonder and admiration at the sheer beauty of wooden boats – plain wood and the hi-tech boats - the reality is people buy far more plastic boats than wooden boats.
A great pity, to my mind - and obviously Mr Swift's - but that’s the way things are.
Peter Nash


Loop Keels
From James Macnaghten
Dear Sir,
Your article (BB April) on our Loop Keel raised two issues - structural and weed collection. I would like to take this opportunity to respond.
On the first issue, the loop keel has a significant structural advantage over fin keels in that it is a triangulated structure in the lateral load sense. The hull sides above the keel attachments form a natural load path for the shroud loads and these are transmitted, almost directly, into the keel ballast.
A normal fin keel, on the other hand, transmits these loads to the hull and then requires a significant ring frame, bulkhead or similar to take these loads into the root of the fin root which then carries the reacting loads from the keel in the most disadvantageous direction (ie, bending carried by the section's lowest second moment of area).
The loop keel is therefore much stronger and stiffer laterally than an equivalent fin keel. Longitudinally, the highest section modulus becomes available to carry any longitudinal loads. These are trivial in normal use of course, but anything but trivial in the case of a grounding or collision. In this respect it is no worse than a fin keel however and the hydrodynamic need to have a leading edge root extension at the hull attachment point can actually make the attachment longitudinally superior to that of a fin.
On the question of weed collection. The picture shown is of one of our testing prototypes and the reason the keel bulb is swept forward is to maintain the same centre of mass as the fin keel version against which we test it. If you were to design a yacht specifically to take a loop keel it would have the keel bulb swept behind the keel and the yacht would have a wide full stern. There would be limited opportunity for fouling or weed collection with this arrangement.
Best regards
James Macnaghten
HMT Marine