I thought it was a late April fool, apparently not:

Apart from making the thing out of Kingspan instead of buying it from Lidl, it's really just the standard "rubber dinghy blown out to sea when the monkey-metal oar tubes snap" story repeated dozens of times around the coast every summer. Had they picked a more forgiving spot, rather than an open beach with an offshore wind, and had slightly better oar shafts (I'm curious whether they made them too, or scavenged them from a plastic beach toy), they might now be congratulating themselves on the free fish for tea.

Pete
 
A lifeboat crewman is quoted as saying “Going to sea in homemade boat is certainly one we've never seen before.”

Plenty of seaworthy home made boats I suggest!

This is a particularly good ( ferrocement) one

Gregsboat2reduced.jpg
 
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A lifeboat crewman is quoted as saying “Going to sea in homemade boat is certainly one we've never seen before

More likely the journalist misquoted. Many journalists seem not to have a clue about what they are reporting about, right up to BBC standard, judging from the nonsense I hear on mainstream news sometimes. A first for a boat made of insulation panels, probably.
 
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More likely the journalist misquoted. Many journalists seem not to have a clue about what they are reporting about, right up to BBC standard, judging from the nonsense I hear on mainstream news sometimes. A first for a boat made of insulation panels, probably.

Perfect timing, to prove my point: 6pm news, Radio 4 carried this story about a.....two and a half foot boat. You couldn't make it up.
 
Nothing wrong with the boat-building technique - a common way of building model yachts when I was a lad! We owned several model yachts made by our grand-dad using exactly the same method; they were a bit better shaped than that, though!
 
The original boat (not the ferro cement boat) reminded me of a peculiar Australian game of competition to build a boat out of beer cans and racing them in a regatta. Some get quite complex with dare I say quite a lot of beer cans. Usually demolished after the regatta. But in this case is was not the boat that go them into trouble but the propulsion and seamanship. olewill
 
Now't wrong with the boat (apart from looks, durability and probably stability) - Even if it had turned turtle it would probably have rowed and floated just as well, it being a fundamentally raft with spraydodgers.
Reading the article, it would appear that the only component (of the three: boat, anchor & paddle.) they didn't make was the one which failed them.
 
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