Clan Gordon’s strange voyage

One of the two big engineless workboat projects taking place in northern Scotland (the other is St Vincent, listed for an award – see last month’s issue) was launched in May and is now complete. The boat in question is Clan Gordon, 37ft 6in (11.4m), lug-rigged Loch Fyne Skiff, built in 1911 by A Munro of Ardrishaig. She originally fished for herring in the Minches, before working as a tender to Rona Lighthouse in the 1950s. By the time Alasdair Grant and the team at Isle Ewe Boats took her on, she’d been sitting in a car park with no deck for a decade. Other than parts of the centreline and some of the original pitch pine planking, it was a complete rebuild over two years. It culminated in Alasdair and three other guys from the yard sailing her to the traditional boat festival at Portsoy, to meet the other workboat, St Vincent, also engineless, and restored in tandem by Loftus and Johnson. It was the first serious sailing trip for Alasdair and crew, who are experienced, variously, in fishing under motor and dinghy sailing. The crew sailed for three days, through the nights. Clan Gordon has a small cuddy cabin with four berths and a coal burner.

Since then, the yard has been busy working on a range of interesting projects. These have included: reframing Gannet a 50ft (15.25M) gaff ketch built 1911; frame repairs and topside planking on the 55ft (16.8m) MFV Marie (1936), built as a herring ringnetter by James Nobles of Fraserburgh and now a family houseboat in Falmouth; and planking and a new deck on Brontë, a Solent smack built in 1915