Preview: Norwegian Faering at Port Townsend Wooden Boat Festival

18 Responses So Far to “Norwegian Faering at Port Townsend Wooden Boat Festival”

• 

  William McCaffrey says:

  Absolutely love this style of boat. I’m going to have to learn more about these carved planks that trap an air cushion.

• 

  Ron Molk says:

  Just came across this video. Very interesting.

• 

  John Lewis says:

  Beautiful boat, wonderful video! Where do you folks get your sweaters?!

  • 

    David Tew says:

    Good ones here: https://arthurbeale.co.uk/products/devold-nordsjo-sweater

• 

  John Rawlings says:

  Nay sayers should watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJC-rHhtPT4

• 

  Walter Connolly says:

  Can OCH do a video on building this boat?

• 

  Kevin Marvel says:

  carved garboards? Are you kidding me…that is a ton of work…kudos to the maker for the effort there…wonder what fraction of the build time was the carving of those two planks…

• 

  Jeffrey Silva says:

  That’s insane. It reminds me of George Dyson’s discussion of flex & wetted surface in the skins of traditional baidarkas. Traditional builders should not have this depth of technological knowledge … and they didn’t. They just sailed/paddled/rowed the damned things & tried to work out how to make that an easier effort. They’d likely tried many variants to discover what worked best … and the builder next door would have sworn they were wrong anyway.
  Typically great video, & lovely boat no matter what.

  • 

    John Rawlings says:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJC-rHhtPT4

• 

  Brandon Ford says:

  Beautiful boat! Looks like it would be a lot of fun to sail.

  I built an Atkin Valgerda, which he modeled after a Norwegian faering from the Hardanger region. It is a wonderful boat too. A lot of fun to row and sail alone or with four, five, or six people.

  Atkin designed it to be built out of plywood planks, three to a side. So I guess I’ve been wrong calling it a faering all these years. “Note that a færing must be built within the Norse boat building tradition to qualify as a færing. (Løset, Jørn Olav)” Just when I think wooden boat people can’t get any more rarefied, they find ways to make themselves more exclusive. I’m going to keep calling my Valgerda a faering because that is what best describes it.

  Brandon Ford
  http://www.valgerda.blogspot.com

• 

  Andy Reynolds says:

  Another fine video from OCH, and it tickled me to see a Thunderbird, smack in the middle of the shot describing the abundance of beautiful boats at the NWWBF.

  My curiosity is aroused by Jay Smith’s use of the term benchmark as the unique planed pattern placed by a maker of a boat (or other woodworks?) on some part(s) of the work, the edge of the planks, along the laps, in the case of this faering. The word currently gets used a lot in a general sense (as a standard) and a particular sense (a survey marker), but I have never heard this usage before, nor do any dictionaries I could access include this definition. But the word itself implies it comes from, or actually exists upon, a bench. Can anyone shed any light on this usage?

  Thanks, AR

• 

  Art Plewka says:

  The information you bring to light amazes me. In this case, judging by the look on Eric’s face I’m not the only one who was totally blown away with this 800 year old design technique to reduce drag and increase efficiency!

  • 

    Brandon Ford says:

    Excuse me for being a little skeptical about the “floating on air” principle to reduce drag. Seems like the extra turbulence would actually increase drag, not to mention the additional wetted surface the concave planks produce. There’s a lot of myth surrounding Norse boat building and I think this is one of them.

    Now if the bubbles escaping from the stern were actually unicorn farts…

    • 

      Fred Rappley says:

      I can’t vouch for the concave planks as my Chip Stulen built faering doesn’t have them but I can vouch for the bubbles trailing astern. I have heard it said that the air bubbles rolling along the bottom of the boat act as ball bearings might but the unicorn bit is funnier!

    • 

      Neil Moomey says:

      I wonder if it’s the golf ball effect:

      Dimples on a golf ball create a thin turbulent boundary layer of air that clings to the ball’s surface. This allows the smoothly flowing air to follow the ball’s surface a little farther around the back side of the ball, thereby decreasing the size of the wake

    • 

      Ben Fuller says:

      I do know on my Afordsfaering that bubbles run along the laps as I was getting air bubbles out of the laps when sailing it a bit dry. The keel rabbet swings up amidships to promote this.

• 

  John Mahoney says:

  Beautiful boat people and video. Thanks

• 

  James Beltz says:

  Awe inspiring! Thanks for including the construction sequences with the video.