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Portsoy Faering Project - boat building
for more photos
click HERE
| As part of the 2005 Scottish Traditional Boat Festival
12 young teenagers from Portsoy, working in 2 teams of 6, built 2
Optimist dinghies. The project was very successful and gave the boys
experience of working in a team, of using tools to shape wood, and of
drawing the hull shapes from a table of offsets. They also sailed
their boats with the RYA during the Festival, further broadening their
experience and increasing their confidence. The success of the 2005
project has led to designing a much more ambitious and demanding
project for 2006 and beyond - the PORTSOY FAERING PROJECT.
This will involve a boat of traditional type with links to the
area. The project will have 2 phases: phase one will be the build and
phase 2 will teach the builders to sail their boat.
However, the Festival is essentially a short-term annual event
while the boat build is expected to be a 2-year project - it involves
felling a suitable tree and extracting tar from tree roots.
Consequently, it was decided to form an independent group for the
project.
To see more photos - click HERE |
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The Faering tradition
During the 1700s displaced Highland families established crofts in the
poor soil along the northern coasts of Scotland and quickly started
fishing to supplement their diet and income. At the time communication
from the north of Scotland was effectively easier to Oslo than it was to
Edinburgh and the Norwegian faering became a major import into the area.
Initially it came as a complete boat but was later brought to these shores
as a kit to be assembled by local labour.
From those beginnings a boat building industry developed, making the
complete craft from local materials. Subsequently, the boats were modified
and developed to meet local conditions, eventually becoming the scaffie,
fifie and zulu that provided the bulk of the fleets in the herring booms
of the 19th and 20th centuries.
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