Planks (More Thoughts)

Jan, who commissioned the Gartside skiff I am building and about whose appearance I have been agonising over,  sent me a link to this photo, of a class of clinker dinghy they sail in the Netherlands as an example of the different ideas builders have about the line of planking.

To my mind the dinghy on the right looks pretty awful, and yet it is leading the fleet, so either the helmsman is good, or the planking makes the boat fast. I hope it's not the latter as all conventional wisdom about "if it looks right..." goes out the window.

The boat on the far left looks OK, and the middle boat is, to my eye, the sweetest looking, although the ones in the background may be better. They are clearly slower than the trio in the foreground. Hmmm.

I suspect the leading boat was amateur built, and good for whoever it was. He's either built himself a rocket ship, and to hell with good looks, or is a demon helmsman. I don't think, however, his idea of a fine line will catch on. Better a slow, but good looking boat, than a fast ugly one? But then look at Myth of Malham, a rocket ship from the 1950s that most people thought ugly. They also thought Britannia was ugly too, when launched in 1893.

But they were smooth sides, carvel. I think it's different with clinker, where the eye immediately notices any discrepancies in the lines of the planks. And the ones in the dinghy on the right are pretty wild.