In Spring 2018, Mr Sean Ahern who lives close to Birdham Pool, came to us saying that he was about to buy the kit of parts to build a Chester Yawl, but would like us to build it for him, if I came up with an acceptable price - I did, so it all went ahead.

It was very interesting to see the boat take shape from all the precision CNC machined plywood components fairly rapidly, using basically the same method used to build the old Mirror dinghies, but much refined to achieve a very graceful hull form.

All joints are made integral using epoxy fillets, part of the interior and exterior of the hull are sheathed with glass cloth and epoxy, and the whole hull is then coated in clear epoxy prior to painting and varnishing. The kit included the seats for the rowing positions, oars, rowlocks etc.

Sean also asked us to do all the finishing work, and when completed, the boat was christened Polly.

The whole project took just under 2 months, start to finish, so Mr Ahern had quite a lot of the splendid 2018 Summer to get out on the water with the new boat.