Our December Tool Box Meeting at Harry Speight’s was a chance to see the almost finished Farrier F82A that Harry has been working on for a long time, in fact the first visit from our group was on the 6th April 2002. At that time Harry told us he had already been on the project for two years and three months.
There have been two other visits to Harry’s Retreat plus a visit to Boating Hardware in O’Connor to see some of the rigging being made, a trip to Henderson to unload the floats / outriggers / amahs ready for finishing (which did not properly proceed) and a visit to Exclusive Coatings in South Fremantle where the final finishing we now see was completed. A lot of the ground in terms of design and construction has been well covered by Mike Beilby in previous editions of our news letter June 02, Aug 04 and Jan 09 and there is a very good website for Farrier designs which has a lot of detail, see www.f-boat.com
Harry’s project looks absolutely SUPERB with the mast stepped and all the standing rigging gleaming in the sunlight .The quality of the paint job by Exclusive Coatings is first class. Any short comings on the part of the builder would have been very apparent so the finished product is a tribute to both parties.
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Harry gave us a demonstration of raising and lowering the Amas. The articulation, the design and construction is brilliant. In fact, there is a look of de Havilland about the whole job. The spelling of the word Ama in its various forms led to some research on Mike Beilbyfs part, and my suggestion would be another piece of marine / aeronautical nomenclature :- SPONSON
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As the saying goes, ‘a picture tells the story of a thousand words’. The complexity and extremely high standard of construction and finish that Harry has achieved is apparent from all the above images taken during the Toolbox visit.
Our thanks again to Harry for his hospitality and inspiration.