TeThe Fifie is a design of sailing boat developed on the east coast of Scotland. It was a traditional fishing boat used by Scottish fishermen from the 1850s until well into the 20th century. These boats were mainly used to fish for herring using drift nets, and along with other designs of boat were known as herring drifters.
Design
While the boats varied in design, they can be categorised by their vertical stem and stern, their long straight keel and wide beam. These attributes made the Fifies very stable in the water and allowed them to carry a very large set of sails. The long keel, however, made them difficult to manoeuvre in small harbours.
Sailing Fifies had two masts with the standard rig consisting of a main dipping lug sail and a mizzen standing lug sail.[1] The masts were positioned far forward and aft on the boat to give the maximum clear working space amidships. A large fifie could reach just over 20 metres (66 ft) in length. Because of their large sail area they were very fast sailing boats.
Fifies built after 1860 were all decked and from the 1870s onwards the bigger boats were built with carvel planking, i.e. the planks were laid edge to edge instead of the overlapping clinker style of previous boats. The introduction of steam powered capstans in the 1890s, to help raising the lugs sails, allowed the size of these vessels to increase from 30 feet (9.14 m) to over 70 feet (21.34 m) in length. From about 1905 onwards sailing Fifies were gradually fitted with engines and converted to motorised vessels.
Isabella Fortuna 830820
There are few surviving examples of this type of fishing boat still in existence. The Scottish Fisheries Museum based in Anstruther, Fife has restored and still sails a classic example of this type of vessel named the Reaper. The Swan Trust in Lerwick, Shetland have restored and maintain another Fifie, The Swan, as a sail training vessel. She now takes over 1000 trainees each year, and has taken trainees to participate in the Cutty Sark Tall Ships Races to ports in France, Denmark, the Netherlands, Ireland as well as around the UK. The Isabella Fortuna is owned by the Wick Society.st

last pictures l posted l painted the wave princess l changed my mind and decided to go for some planking on the decks and cabin roofs l have also done a little bit of tarting up using some brass welding rod and brass tube l am quite pleased with the out come so far. these piccys are about a month old now so she has had a god rub down and given six coats of clear varnish. l will post more piccys when l have installed the windows and frames.

So here’s another partially built Riva Aquarama, my second project and Plan B after Ciao Bambina ran into stringer difficulties. I started this one on 14 April 2016, and had only 16 days, none of which meant full time working on the boat but merely an hour or two available some evenings and at weekends, to finish this before a friendly “Boat Race” at Coate Water in Swindon with a few friends. Not much in the way of rules for the event, just bring along an RC boat. I didn’t get it finished in time, and since the event, which is the last picture in the post, I have only been able to spend a few more hours, mostly spent planking small mahogany strips over the hull and fore deck. I will be moving this Project 2 forward in between phases of work on the Sea Commander (Scrumpy 3), which is a kit build and is going well after around 6 hours work so far.

😆Hello everyone. I’m a relative novice with 3 projects on the go at the moment. Project 1 is a Riva Aquarama, which stalled at the stringer stage. Project 2 is a smaller Riva Aquarama which stalled at the planking stage. Project 3 is an Aerokits Sea Commander, photos to follow. Kit delivered Tues last week and spent about 4 hours on it so far. Keen to hear of any motor/shaft mods anyone recommends. Thanks

My three latest aquisitions: a pleasure launch, a speed boat and a landing craft rigged out for the Vietnam war. The landing craft is ready to go, as is the speed boat (speed boats not my thing to be honest) but the pleasure launch will be a project. I intend to replace the upper cabin, strip the paint and maybe just varnish the hull, add some planking for the deck plus it needs all the running gear....should keep me busy for a while

Making progress with MOLLY my Northumbrian Coble 1st picture jig for the planking, named Molly after my dear late Mother, my other boats are named after my wife and 2 daughters

It's been a month since my last post. Here's a few of my latest. I'm very near the end of "planking".....

wheelhouse plus some deck planking in place deck planking complete plus gunnel cappings complete boat completely scratch built on a fibre glass hull working winch scratch built boat powered by a 545 motot driving a 60 mm 3 blade prop Robert waterson angus

Saw the plans of 'Farmont' and could not resist the challange of this model. First problem was where and how to creat a removable cabin and decided on having the whole top removable other than the forward and aft decks. I also realised that the plans were simplified so a bit of research on Google revealed pictures of the real things for sale and some indepth pics of the boats being constructed. They omitted the bow breaker for ease of modelling but short cuts are not in my vocabulary. it is also difficult to visulise where all the stair cases go, so going online helped clarify this. I opted for a plank on frame construction covering the hull with a single layer of fibreglass and using lite ply and plasticard for the cabins. The deck planking was marked out with pencil before varnishing. I also wanted the boat to be fully lit and both radars to be operational and counter rotating (looks better from a spectators point of view). Completion date sometime in 2015, watch this space!

My fist at attempt not that great I know built from scratch using old wood from the garage cutting it into 1mm thick planks and double planking it and spliting 6mm ply to get 2mm, found some old veneer to do the deck,Powerd by two 480 electric motors 7.2.
Only had the bath test at the moment but hoping get on the water soon at Fariford leys Aylesbury

I built this one about 3 years ago she is built at 1/24th scale 50"long and is a plank on frame hull , scratch built using lime wood planking and 9mm ply for the frames and keel, the rest is birch ply of various thicknesses.
she has a 12volt cooling fan motor driving a 4" prop,and has a 12volt 48amp hour battery ,plus some lead for ballast,with working lights and revolving radar scanner