Heritage boat builder Gail McGarva has set up a workshop on Topsham Quay.

Her aim is to raise awareness that the art of building small wooden boats “by eye” is in danger of extinction.

Gail has been touring schools and community venues with her educational workshop The Creative Cabin. Last Saturday, August 14, Gail was at Topsham Quay in support of Topsham’s forthcoming Charter Day event Fish & Ships, being staged on Saturday, August 28.

Preserving the art of boatbuilding by eye - without the use of designer drawings and construction plans – is a fast-disappearing skill.

Gail, a traditional wooden boat builder based in Lyme Regis, is passionate about preserving the lineage of craft like traditional gig boats and lerrets and other similar open clinker-built boats.

She specialises in building what she calls “daughter boats” or replicas to scale, so breathing life into a new generation of traditional craft.

In 2014, Gail was awarded a British Empire Medal for her services to clinker boatbuilding and heritage crafts.

One traditional craft under threat is the lerret, a small fishing boat once common to Dorset’s Chesil beach. In 2009 Gail built a daughter boat to the lerret and called it Vera. Over the years Vera has been upturned and converted to a miniature mobile maritime museum now known as The Story Boat.

The Creative Cabin is a more flexible mobile concept of a maritime museum, kitted out with climate change and conservation information and a specialist hands-on workshop area.

While telling the story of the mother boat, Gail demonstrated the traditional art of riveting tiny planks together and sanding them smooth. Children eagerly took up the challenge to paint or crayon a sea scape on their planks of wood which could then be taken home as keepsakes. Some of the plank artworks will be on display in St Margaret’s Church, Topsham, on Charter Day.