News

COVID-19 may be with us for a while longer, but club business goes on. Some members of our steering group recently met in the now-clichéd 'Zoom' format; topics included everything from the first tentative steps in the direction of remobilising our build to the Row Around Scotland event in which Black Rocks will be participating later this month. Originally conceived as an on-water baton relay around Scotland in celebration of 10 years of Scottish Coastal Rowing, the event has had to reformat as a virtual row ... a 'dry run', if you will. Kinghorn Coastal Rowing Club will be handing the baton to us on Wednesday 19th August, and we'll have until Thursday evening to walk it to Donibristle Bay for the handover to North Queensferry Coastal Rowing Club. We will need to coordinate carefully, as we'll need to observe all the relevant advice from the Scottish Government as regards social distancing and the permissible sizes of gatherings. Details will be circulated to members shortly; anyone else who would like to get involved is welcome to get in touch.

Alas, COVID-19 has forced us to push pause on our build. Nonetheless, it’s as good a time as ever to reflect on the past few months, during which we’ve been making steady progress on the St Ayles Skiff build. After final levelling of the build frame, and ensuring that the moulds were all on straight, our members got to work sanding and gluing up the four ribs. Next, the strips of douglas fir that make up the curved ‘aprons’ or ‘inner stems’ at either end of the boat’s backbone were planed down to the correct size, and laminated together using a mould lent by Kinghorn; in the picture, we see Joel and Bill adjusting some of the 20 or so clamps necessary to hold everything in place while the glue sets. The next step will be to mount the ribs and aprons to the build frame and glue the hog (the inner part of the keel) along the top, creating a skeleton upon which the planks will then be laid. That, however, will need to wait until we can safely reconvene. In the meantime, we hope everyone is keeping safe and healthy.

Marking the end of an incredible year for our newly formed club, some of our members were pictured sharing mince pies and mulled wine alongside the bare bones of our boat. We are thankful to our neighbours in Kinghorn Coastal Rowing Club for loaning us their build frame and moulds, which can be seen set up in this picture. These form a sort of ‘template’ around which our new boat will be built, upside down. Our kit – the 243rd sold in the UK – arrived from Jordan Boats in December in the form of three 50-kilogram crates containing all the plywood parts of the boat. In addition, we have also purchased timber for the keel, hog, aprons and stems (which make up the backbone of the hull) and the gunwales from Abbey Timber in Abbey St Bathans. We look forward to seeing everyone again in the new year and pushing on with our build - bring on 2020!

Well, it's a start. Our build has most certainly begun with the erection of the build frame, kindly lent to us by our neighbouring rowing club in Kinghorn. This forms a raised, level surface to which a series of moulds - cutouts in the shape of the boat's cross-section at different stations along its length - will be mounted, upside-down. Here we see Joel, Chris, Elisa and David pausing in their work of levelling the frame, which must also be bolted into the floor to ensure it doesn't move during the build. It might not look like much, but this is truly the beginning of our build!