Hello

Welcome to the web site for the Steam Yacht Befur.

Steam Yacht Befur is a project being undertaken by Malcolm & Louise Duckett. The objective is to record the adventures/disasters/joy and near misses involved in designing, building and sailing/steaming an anachronism! – (and encourage you to have a go!)… as the pages and posts were written contemporaneously (as it happened) some of the plans outlined in the pages were later changed – so to record these changes I have added “replies ” (or adjuncts) to the posts to explain what finally happened, or point to relevant, subsequent posts.

a vision of Befur with Sail and Coach house
Leak compound with pump and alternator drive
A happy builder
Running? downwind to Bowness
Ready for the tow to Windermere – she makes quite a long train!
Beating? Upwind
Part of the engine/boiler plumbing
Belt Drive and Tensioner
Builder watching engine and boiler, underway

A word on Pictures

You can click on almost all the pictures in the blog to get a bigger version. Some open in new tabs and some don’t. Some are VERY big, so clicking on the large version will usually scale it to fit on your screen.

Feedback & Following

Your feedback is very welcome – just use the “reply” boxes at the foot of each page, If you are not logged into WordPress, then you should see a “Follow” button at the bottom right of the screen – clicking this will get you automated notification of new posts on the site!

Reading the Blog – getting about…

I have had a couple of attempts at organising the blog. The latest (Feb 2024) I think works. We have reduced the menu items and made the “sections” (Hull, Steam Plant, Sails) display links to the individual posts in Chronological Order (oldest first).

But I think a guide to finding your way around is not a bad plan – so here are some suggestions:

  • Using the menu: The menu at the top allows you to access posts by category. So, for example, selecting “Hull Build” in the menu will provide you an “index page” which contains ALL the posts related to the building of the hull – Each post is listed with it’s title, date and the first 55!? words. I suggest you open them by “right-clicking” to open them in a new tab, and then you will still have the “index page” available. Also on the menu there are a couple of “sub-pages” which deal with hints and tips on building the Leak Compound and some “side notes” on things you might find interesting.
  • Searching for stuff: You can type anything into the Blog Search box on any page, and you will get back a page with a collection of posts containing that word; Clicking on the title to a post will take you to it…(right clicking and opening in a new window and closing the window when you have read it will allow you to keep the search page list on hand). This list will be in a “latest-first” order.
  • Searching by keywords: The “tag cloud” (also on every page) allows you to click on a keyword and you will get back a page with a collection of posts which had that keyword associated with it (so it’s a topic search not a word search). This list will be in a “latest-first” order. The bigger the word the more posts are associated with it. 
  • Recent Stuff: Recent posts can be directly accessed via “recent posts” links (of course!)

Thank you for reading…

Happy Steaming…