Arwen Marine - En chantier

Arwen Marine at Brest 2008

Arwen Marine was invited into the "Maritime Heritage" part of the Brest festival, and we tried to show how it is possible today to build easily, using a boat kit, some lovely boats which are fully worthy to become integral parts of our common maritime heritage.

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On the road to Brest ! Tis picture is taken in Paimpol in front of my brother Gilles's boatyard. Gilles learned his trade for 30 years while I was playing with computers. Now I am catching up!	The Arwen Marine booth at Brest : I am ready! I brought (left to right) a Chester Yawl, an Eastport Pram, a Skerry and the kit to build another Eastport Pram during the festival.	And there we go! We have a HUGE booth where it's easy to display the boats and build the pram.


	Click on the photos to see larger versions.
The Eastport Pram is almost fully stitched.	I put on some gloves to manipulate epoxy: I am filling the joints with a syringe. Epoxy was the subject of a lot of questions and discussions with visitors, often very knowledgeable.	Many children visiting the booth delighted me by the quality of their interest and the sharpness of their questions.



Having the finished pram next to the one I was working on made it easy to explain many points.	Stitch and glue technique is also interesting generations more used to traditional boatbuilding techniques..	Sunday the 13th and Bastille day were the days with the strongest crowds on our booth.



Epoxy still fascinates visitors (the presence of a "wet glue" sign prompted a lot a finger marks in my joints...) Putting PFDs in the yawl was intentional, to stress the personal safety issue.	I am away capturing a few pictures of the boats on the water, and my wife is now sufficiently familiar with the usual questions that she can answer them all, even the most technical!	Thursday the 17th, it's over... The boats have all set sail for Douarnenez where the festival goes on, and we are also packed to go home. The new pram fits snuggly atop the "old" one, because I expressly omitted to put in any internal structure so far.

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