16' Gardner Whitehall Rowboat (2022) - MOONSHINE

Moonshine – A John Gardner Whitehall – well nearly….

Since retiring to Arran an island in the Clyde estuary, I have managed to build a boat every two years and Moonshine was the tenth.

A few years ago, I bought a larch tree for £85 from Brodick Castle estate, planked it and left it to season over the next few years. I thought about building a new boat and settled upon a Whitehall design that I had seen in John Gardner’s book. The table of offsets was for a 17ft boat but I took a few inches off each station to give me a 16ft boat that would fit into my workshop. I built a wooden build frame on trolley wheels and set about lofting. That done I built the frames from the body plan and decided to build her glued carvel with planks about 2 inches wide. Starting from the keel assembly covering from stem I cut the rabbets for the keel and stem then started planking. I rather expected to need to steam some planks but as it turned out I only needed to steam the garboard plank at the stern. All the other planks agreed to fit without steaming!! The width of planks was determined not by design but the simple requirement to be able to use what clamps I had to reach over a plank being fitted to the earlier plank and get a wooden wedge in to tap the plank tight.