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Alas, COVID-19 has forced us to push pause on our build. Nonetheless, it’s as good a time as ever to reflect on the past few months, during which we’ve been making steady progress on the St Ayles Skiff build. After final levelling of the build frame, and ensuring that the moulds were all on straight, our members got to work sanding and gluing up the four ribs. Next, the strips of douglas fir that make up the curved ‘aprons’ or ‘inner stems’ at either end of the boat’s backbone were planed down to the correct size, and laminated together using a mould lent by Kinghorn; in the picture, we see Joel and Bill adjusting some of the 20 or so clamps necessary to hold everything in place while the glue sets.

The next step will be to mount the ribs and aprons to the build frame and glue the hog (the inner part of the keel) along the top, creating a skeleton upon which the planks will then be laid. That, however, will need to wait until we can safely reconvene.

In the meantime, we hope everyone is keeping safe and healthy.

Marking the end of an incredible year for our newly formed club, some of our members were pictured sharing mince pies and mulled wine alongside the bare bones of our boat.

We are thankful to our neighbours in Kinghorn Coastal Rowing Club for loaning us their build frame and moulds, which can be seen set up in this picture. These form a sort of ‘template’ around which our new boat will be built, upside down. Our kit – the 243^rd sold in the UK – arrived from Jordan Boats in December in the form of three 50-kilogram crates containing all the plywood parts of the boat. In addition, we have also purchased timber for the keel, hog, aprons and stems (which make up the backbone of the hull) and the gunwales from Abbey Timber in Abbey St Bathans.

We look forward to seeing everyone again in the new year and pushing on with our build – bring on 2020!

Well, it’s a start. Our build has most certainly begun with the erection of the build frame, kindly lent to us by our neighbouring rowing club in Kinghorn. This forms a raised, level surface to which a series of moulds – cutouts in the shape of the boat’s cross-section at different stations along its length – will be mounted, upside-down.

Here we see Joel, Chris, Elisa and David pausing in their work of levelling the frame, which must also be bolted into the floor to ensure it doesn’t move during the build.

It might not look like much, but this is truly the beginning of our build!

A small band of enthusiasts met over the dark winter nights at the end of 2018 – they dared to dream about establishing a rowing club in Burntisland similar to the one established in neighbouring Kinghorn.

On 30 January more than 60 people came along to the Roasting Project on the High Street in Burntisland to register their skills, expertise and (most importantly) show their interest and enthusiasm in becoming involved in the different aspects of establishing a Rowing Club in Burntisland.

Since those early days, and enormous amount of work has been undertaken across a number of fronts. We now have a constitution drafted and office bearers elected; we have a bank account and are exploring multiple funding options; we have held our first social event in the form of a club barbecue, and also our first on-water event by means of representation at the Civic Week raft race. Thanks to Joel for bringing home our club’s first ‘gold medal’!

We are also delighted to announce that our membership have voted on a club name. We will be known as the Black Rocks Rowing Club after the familiar rock formation photogenically captured in the image above.