Building the boats

Installation of an engine

In contrast to most commercial boat builders, Alan Platt worked with wood, and in a wood. Making wooden boats in the 1970’s and 1980’s was going very much against the dominant trend towards plastic hulls; making them inland, some distance from the Benfleet Creek, seemed definitely eccentric.

The Finesse boats were usually built in pairs inside his workshop, using the hands and eyes of craftsmen and the hearts of hardwood trees. Using iroko for the keel, stem and other backbone components, the boats were planked in mahogany at first and later in iroko; frames were steamed into shape from rock elm, then later oak, then later still, danta. The boats were clinker-built, fastened together with copper rivets. Inside, timber is everywhere; the planking, the 4 1/2 ” deep beam shelves, the varnished deck beams (sometimes laminated, sometimes sawn). They were built upright, so the first act was to lay the wooden keel, stern post and stem. Then they were planked up in the Viking method: fasten the planks together around some moulds, then add the frames afterwards, rather than planking up onto a basket of sawn and steamed frames. A more detailed description is found in this article  or in Nick Ardley’s ‘Jottings of a Thames Estuary Ditch-Crawler’.

Steam-bent frames were rivetted to the planking.

The hulls were made so well that the greatest threat to the integrity of the boats comes not from below but from above. Once rain can get through the decking it begins to rot and separate the deck plywood, followed by the timbers of the superstructure. Rain can penetrate through the inevitable shakes that open up in those huge iroko cabin sides, although this causes little direct damage. No, it is the deck surfaces that need the most attention. A common area of penetration is around the forward hatch, where it seems almost impossible to track down the hairline cracks that rain can seek out.

An unknown example seen outside Lincoln, being used as a live-aboard.

The boats took a lot of care and effort to build, and a level of attention to detail is also required to preserve them. It’s worth it; when they were new, a Finesse 24 would set you back all of about £39,000 in today’s money- an amount that seems small for the degree of manual labour and skill that is built in. These days there are highly-restored examples that can be bought for around £12,000. It is most definitely worthwhile becoming a keeper of a Finesse.