Lukas Schwimann’s home is in the village of St. Gilgen, Austria, at the top end of Lake Wolfgang—Wolfgangsee in German. A friend who lives near him owns a 16′5″ rowing skiff that has been in his family for about 100 years. The boat is not in great condition, but it is still serviceable. Over the years it has been patched up with chopped-strand mat and polyester resin. Lukas has had several opportunities to use it and has found it to be an enjoyable boat to row. He already has three sailboats, and his wife, Irmfried, insisted that if he were going to attend the Boat Building Academy at Lyme Regis and build a boat there, it would have to be a rowing boat. Lukas decided he would build a replica of the skiff.

Lukas Schwimann

New and old: the reproduction, here rowed tandem, has the same flat sheer as the original skiff behind it.

Lukas’s starting point was to take the lines off the old boat, although this proved particularly difficult as its shape had distorted somewhat over the years. “It was kind of hogged and sagged all at the same time,” said course tutor Mike Broome. When Lukas arrived at the Academy, he gave Mike the information he had. “It was a bit like a fairground ride,” said Mike, “but I breathed on it a bit with CAD and produced a table of offsets.” From this, Lukas and his fellow students lofted the boat full size and then “tweaked it here and there.”

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