Sharing some wonderful images of Carriacou Sloops from Alexis Andrews

Alexis has kindly allowed Jus' Sail to use some of the images from his wonderful coffee table books, which we are happy to share here on the blog...

The next set of images cover the construction of his own vessel Genesis...

This is a great shot of the frame starting to take shape, very early in the
process.

Whereas this one really shows that these vessels are made right on the beach and from the raw material of local timber, carved by hand in situ! Such scenes have been increasingly rare in the Caribbean over the past four decades. Even St Lucia had its own wooden boat builders in the past including my wife's grandfather in the village of Canaries on St lucia's west coast who made wooden fishing boats on the beach until the 1960's.

Notice the hull planks being formed to the shape of the frames and the skills required to make these joins watertight and durable in the harsh tropical climate. By this time next week Good Expectation will also be having hull planks removed and replaced in a similar manner.

Basic hand tools are used for most of he refining of the wood, such as this shot of an adze being ably handled on the keel....

This wonderful shot below Alexis scanned from a Grenadan newspaper in the 1990's, its of master Carriacou shipwright Zepharin McKlaren the man who originally built our own Good Expectation. it is the only shot we have access to of him so expect to see it again on our website in the near future where we will be paying our respects to this great craftsman.

Zepharin we hope we do justice to your boat during our renovation and trust that you approve of her new life, back as a working boat, but in a different guise here in St Lucia, where she will be laden with people rather than cargo!

Next post we will share some shots of the vessels at sail and some of the characters who sail them!