Classic Boat May 2022

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MAY 2022

T H E W O R L D’ S M O S T B E A U T I F U L B O A T S

ECHOES OF THE PAST New Mylne schooner

CB AWARDS All the winners JACK FRANCIS JONES Versatility in design NORTH BY NORTHWEST Sailing solo to Scotland COLOMBO RACEBOATS

Fast mahogany

TRUE EAST COAST MAN

Robert Simper

CUNLIFFE MASTERCLASS

Neat sail stowage

www.classicboat.co.uk

June 11–12 2022 A CL A SSIC E N V I RON M E N T FOR T R A DI T ION A L BOATS Birdham Pool is the oldest marina in the UK and our haven for classic and traditional boats. Even its location, just four miles from the historic county town of Chichester, nestled in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, reflects the pace and elegance of a bygone age.

S T O R A G E , R E PA I R A N D M A I N T E N A N C E Looking after traditional boats is what we’re exceptionally good at. Our 30 tonne hoist and transport, dry storage ashore and a boat yard of modern

and traditional skills offered by our tenant artisans means we’re geared for storage, repair and maintenance of all watercraft.

To complete the experience, we have five-star customer facilities, café and great transport links complementing the enviable one-hour access to the Solent and sheltered inland location.

Birdham is owned by Castle Marinas, a group of 11 coastal and inland marinas each with its own unique character. We are, and always will be large enough to cope, small enough to care.

Boatyard services by

STEFFAN MEYRIC HUGHES, EDITOR

THE TIDE IS TURNING

PAGE 23 CB AWARDS PAGE 22

Here they are... the winners of our 2022 Classic Boat Awards, as voted for by thousands. As always, every entry lists the boat’s designer and builder, and we are always happy to paint this holy duo in the lustrous varnish of praise. But, as I say every year, and make no apology for doing so again, you could argue that the most important person is missing from that list; and that is the owner. That’s deliberate: some owners don’t like to be named. And while the achievement of the task belongs to the designer and builder, let’s also not forget the electrician, the plumber, the rigger, the painter, the varnisher, sometimes the interior designer, the sailmaker, the blockmaker, the cleat caster, the measurer, the engineer, the systems guy, the tank makers, the epoxy manufacturer, the sawyer, the tool-maker, the old hand who teaches the way of the saw, the apprentice who cracks the jokes at lunchtime. A wise man said that if you want to grow an apple, you have first to create a universe. Well, this universe is created by those mad enough to own a classic boat, and I thank them all for it.

COVER PHOTO: NIGEL SHARP

ISSUE No 407

CONTENTS

classicboat.co.uk Jubilee House, 2 Jubilee Place, London, SW3 3TQ

COVER STORY

EDITORIAL Editor Steffan Meyric Hughes +44 (0)203 943 9256 steffan@classicboat.co.uk Art Editor Gareth Lloyd Jones Group Editor Rob Peake Publisher Simon Temlett Publishing Consultant Martin Nott ADVERTISING Andrew Mackenzie +44 (0)207 349 3779 andrew.mackenzie@chelseamagazines.com Advertisement Production Allpointsmedia +44 (0)1202 472781 allpointsmedia.co.uk Published monthly ISSN: 0950 3315 USA US$12.50 Canada C$11.95 Australia A$11.95 PUBLISHING Managing Director Paul Dobson Director of Media James Dobson Chief Financial Officer Vicki Gavin Group Sales Director Catherine Chapman Head of Sales Operations Jodie Green Publishing Consultant Martin Nott

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4 . NAEMA The glorious schooner Naema stems from two Mylne schooners of the past 20 . PHOTO COMPETITION It’s time to snap. The National Historic Ships Photo Competition is open COVER STORY

22 . CLASSIC BOAT AWARDS The best boats, the best people 38 . SAIL STOWAGE The trouble getting new crinkly sails to stow neatly... and what to do about it 42 . THE SPEEDSTERS The four mahogany rockets created by Giacomo Colombo in the 1960s

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NAEMA

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COVER STORY

48 . NORTH BY NORTHWEST A solo voyage from Dover to the wilds of Scotland aboard a motor-sailer COVER STORY

54 . VERSATILITY IN DESIGN English East Coast yacht designer Jack Francis Jones and his life’s work 60 . TREE TO SEA Progress report on the new Atkin double-ender in build on a farm 62 . TOM CUNLIFFE Tom remembers a singular man...

74 . DON’T FEAR THE REAPER We visit the Scottish Maritime Museum, where volunteers are restoring the herring drifter Reaper

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Singular souls PAGE 6 2

CLASSIC BOAT MAY 2022

3

NAEMA The new yacht Naema draws from two great Mylne schooners of the past

WORDS AND ON-BOARD PHOTOS NIGEL SHARP SAILING PHOTOS JAMES ROBINSON TAYLOR

NAEMA

O

n 29 June 1938, a new yacht was launched at Camper & Nicholsons’ Southampton yard. Panda was the ninth schooner built by the company since World War One but, whereas most of the others were designed in-house by Charles E Nicholson, this was the second to come from the board of Alfred Mylne, and for the same owner: Captain J Duckworth Hodgson. Her hull was constructed from Colvilles Ducol high-tensile steel “which, owing to its noncorrosive qualities is very suitable for yacht building,” reported The Yachtsman.

She had two six-cylinder 100hp AEC diesel engines, one of which had a McAllister clutch to drive a 13KW dynamo which provided power to the windlass, refrigerators and various pumps. Although Mylne initially drew a sail plan with gaff rigs on both masts, before she was completed he modified this and gave her a bermudan mainsail while retaining the gaff fore-main.

A large square sail was also set on the foremast.

In 1951, Captain Hodgson sold Panda to the French government who gave her to Bao Dai, the emperor of South Vietnam. Later in the 1950s she was put into the care of the French navy in the Mediterranean, and from the mid-1970s she was based in the Caribbean. Not long after she arrived there, the surveyor Ian Nicolson was asked to fly out to survey her and, in doing so, he soon discovered that she was in “terrible condition”.

This seemed somewhat incongruous with the fact that an apparently current Lloyd’s certificate was on display in a frame on a bulkhead in the deckhouse. “It turned out that it was a very poor forgery which depended on hiding it away in a dark corner behind a dusty bit of glass,” said Ian. “When we took it out of the frame we could clearly see that it belonged to a different boat whose name had been hidden by Tippex before Panda’s name was typed over the top.”

Panda was bought in 1980 by American couple Bill and Grace Bodle who used her for charter work. In 1983 – apparently after a two-year circumnavigation – she was back in the Caribbean where she sank on her mooring in Martinique as a result of a fire. Luckily no one was on board. Somehow she was salvaged and

6

CLASSIC BOAT MAY 2022

Above left: The mighty keelstepped mainmast at the bottom of the companionway stairs Above right: The dining area in the saloon

taken to Florida where the Bodles hoped to restore her, but after finding that the fire had distorted her hull too severely, she was sunk as an artificial reef just north of Fort Lauderdale.

In 2013, a new boat – inspired by Panda – was launched and was initially named Noelani. Her steel hull, which has very nearly the same lines as Panda, was built by Graafship in Holland and was then taken to Turkey to be completed by Bodrum Shipyard. A year or so later, extensive modifications – particularly to her engineering and electric systems – were carried out at Hodgdon Yachts in the USA, and she was then renamed Naema. “When we took on the boat we had lots of difficulties,” explained Florian Franke, who has been her captain since the beginning. “Now we are where we want to be and she is in near perfect condition.”

Naema’s sail plan has a gaff rig on both masts. Not, as it happens, the same as Mylne’s original Panda design, but with a mainsail scaled up from Panope, the other, smaller schooner which Mylne and Camper & Nicholsons produced for Captain Hodgson in 1928.

“So Naema is Mylne through-and-through,” said David Gray, current keeper of the Mylne archive, “and we’ve given her own design number in the archive.”

On deck, the main differences between Naema and Panda are that the new boat has a sunken cockpit and a larger deckhouse, which combine to give much improved shelter when it is needed. The deep bulwarks give a tremendous feeling of security. Inside the deckhouse, there is room for seating areas port and starboard, a day head, a pantry area and a chart table.

The most striking feature at the bottom of the curved staircase is the mighty keel-stepped main mast in the middle of the aft passageway. Surrounding this passageway there are three guest cabins and a captain’s cabin, all with en-suite heads but with varying bunk arrangements. Forward of that there is a large fullbeam saloon with a dining area to starboard and more informal seating to port. Further forward again is the crew area comprising the galley, crew mess and sleeping accommodation for the other six permanent crew. All the joinery is made from beautifully contrasting areas

Main image: At Les Voiles de St Tropez in 2021 Inset: Hank Halstead on the helm with tactician Thom Perry

NAEMA

of varnished mahogany and white paint, while the upholstery is all buttoned leather. Naema’s engine is a MAN six-cylinder 300kw diesel that gives more than twice the power of both engines combined in Panda for which, according to The Yachtsman, Captain Hodgson “wanted a particularly powerful engine installation”.

NAEMA RACING It wasn’t until 2016 that Naema took part in her first race and she has competed in a couple of regattas most years since then. Ideally, she and her crew prefer to race against other schooners which are more likely to provide the fairest competition in most conditions and over most courses. With her high bulwarks and large deckhouse, Naema doesn’t look as racy as the similarsized schooner Mariette, for instance, but Florian told me that, surprisingly, Naema tends to do better in lighter winds and Mariette when it gets breezier. I joined Naema for a race at Les Régates Royales in Cannes last September (along with a couple of dozen additional race crew brought in to sail with the permanent crew) where, as it happens, all six other boats in our class were Fifes and none of them schooners.

They all got the better of us, with the 1928 Bermudan cutter Cambria taking line honours, and the 1909 15-Metre Tuiga winning on corrected time. Nonetheless, it was a tremendously enjoyable race, taking place as it did in a force four to five and glorious sunshine.

Particularly enthusiastic was American Hank Halstead who was on the helm, having first raced on Naema at the Candy Store Cup in Newport in 2017. “I have never known team work like there is on this boat,” he said. “We have 30 crew from 10 countries speaking four languages, yet everyone speaks perfectly fluent ‘schooner’ with a passion. That is what it is all about and that fuels the team work and the esprit de corps in the whole team. What a joy it is to sail with these guys.”

But during that day there were a couple of scary moments – both resulting from the same issue – the first of which occurred just as we were setting sail before the race. With a limited number of deck-mounted winches around each mast, in several cases a winch needs to be freed up as soon as it has been used for one job in readiness for another. To do this, one end of a short length of Technora is secured to a deck plate while the other end is tied with a rolling hitch to the halyard itself so as to take the load while it is transferred from a 8

CLASSIC BOAT MAY 2022

Above left to right: Gear and throttle control; Sheet horse for the fore main; Discreetly hidden instrumentation

winch to a mast cleat. Just at the moment when the mainsail peak halyard was being thus transferred, the piece of Technora broke and the outer end of the gaff dropped alarmingly. Luckily the throat halyard prevented any damage, although three crew members suffered rope burns on their hands when they instinctively (but unwisely, they admitted afterwards) tried to grab the halyard. The same thing happened during the race with the spinnaker halyard at the foremast when a further two crew members suffered rope burns, but the spinnaker itself was very quickly retrieved before it could start acting as a brake. “It could have been a lot worse,” said Florian afterwards, “but then we had to transfer people around to do jobs they weren’t used to. We will replace all the Technora strops now and then do so more frequently in future.”

Florian also told me after the race about the constant steep learning curve in racing a boat as complex as a schooner, which often sets eight sails simultaneously.

“We are still working it out,” he said. “There is never a black-and-white answer to the best sail configuration.

The variety is so vast.” He also talked about the importance of “co-ordination and deck management” with such a large crew, of trying to make sure that as much as possible the same people sail in the same roles at each regatta, and of the need to make constant improvements to the boat. Immediately before Covid hit us, the rigs were removed and extensively modified, to make them “more elegant” and lighter. In fact this resulted in a reduction of half a tonne of weight aloft which gives great benefits for racing, of course, but also from a safety point of view. “The difference in the sailing performance is very noticeable just by feel, without even looking at any instrumentation,” Florian said. That work was carried out at Pendennis’s Barcelona yard where, at the same time, some areas of teak decking were replaced, the interior was painted and varnished, and the guest heads’ bath tubs – “which were very small and didn’t make any sense,” said Florian – were replaced with walk-in showers.

After the race, Florian took a philosophical view of the disappointing result. “We do take it seriously to a certain level,” he said, “but obviously at the end of the day everyone should enjoy it; it is not the America’s Cup.” Hank told me about a particularly light-hearted moment, which seemed to emphasise such an attitude, at Monaco Classic Week in 2019. “Halfway up the

LAK II

Clockwise from top left: Hard on the wind on starboard tack; The bow man calls headsail trim; The moment when the spinnaker nearly acts as a massive brake; The saloon; The deckhouse with pantry area on the right; The author hard at work

CLASSIC BOAT MAY 2022

9

NAEMA

RUNNING TIDE DESIGNED

Mylne BUILT

Graafship/Bodrum, 2013 LOD

116ft 6in (35.5m) BEAM

22ft 8in (6.9m) DRAUGHT

14ft (4.3m) UPWIND SA

8,160sqft (758m2)

weather leg there was practically no wind and we are doing about a knot and a half,” he said. “Twenty eight crew were sitting to leeward and suddenly they are passing banjos and guitars and all kinds of instruments around, and then we have got an Irish shanty going on in the middle of a race. I’ve sailed a lot of miles and I have never seen that before. It adds a whole delicious dimension to sailing.”

The owners are generally only on board for the odd day of racing (and occasionally also send friends to take part in regattas) and they weren’t on board in Cannes.

“But we all think it is really important for Naema to go racing,” said Florian. “It makes us test the boat and push her to her limits, and it is important for boats like this to be in the public eye. People get excited about them. It is amazing that wherever we are, other boats come close by and give us a thumbs up and tell us how pretty she is.”

But the owners use the boat extensively for cruising, typically for six or seven weeks each year and very often with eight members of the family on board together. Naema has previously taken them to Majorca, Corsica, Sardinia, Cagliari, Croatia, Montenegro, the Greek islands, Turkey, the Caribbean and up the east coast of the USA to Maine; and Florian has been trying to persuade them to go to Ireland, Scotland and even further north to Norway.

“They are not the keenest sailors,” said Florian, “but they love the boat. They all have very busy 10

CLASSIC BOAT MAY 2022

Above: Naema at Les Voiles de St Tropez in 2019 Below: The crew relax at the end of the race

business lives all over the world and the great thing for them is to use Naema as a connection point where they can unite, as they don’t see very much of each other otherwise.” Wherever they are, Naema always stays at anchor rather than in a marina, and “a normal day is usually breakfast, swimming, reading in the cockpit, lunch, afternoon sailing, go on the anchor, swimming, reading books, drinks, dinner, bed.”

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OFFSHORE

1959 Vertue takes on modern fleet in Round Britain & Ireland Race Competing in this summer’s Round Britain & Ireland Race against a fleet of cutting-edge race boats will be this 1959 Vertue.

The 25ft Laurent Giles design is below the minimum length for the race and has been given a wildcard entry for the race, run by the Royal Western Yacht Club.

Owner Matteo Richiardi will be sailing double-handed with a

He estimates the trip could take between 20 days and a month, while the first boats will be finished in a week or less: “I have created two scenarios: a low speed scenario, with an average speed of 3 knots, and a high speed scenario, with an average speed of 5 knots.”

He added: “Let’s not overestimate the whole endeavour. This is not the Vendée Globe, it is not the Golden Globe and it is not even the

mate, having been inspired by the offshore

other Round Britain & Ireland Race [non-stop,

reputation of Vertues, as told in classic

organised by the Royal Ocean Racing Club].

books such as Humphrey Barton’s Vertue

“Our race is a relatively long one, true, and

XXXV, David Lewis’ The Ship Would Not

you are pretty sure you’ll find some rough

Travel Due West, and Peter Woolas’ Stelda,

weather – which I don’t like. But you can

George and I.

replenish supply at the three stops, you can even

The Round Britain and Ireland Race

get a warm shower and a cold beer, and perhaps

starts on 29 May, open to double-handed

a decent sleep if you do not exaggerate with the

and short-handed monohulls and multihulls

beer. So I won’t make too much of a fuss of it.

of between 27ft (8.23m) and 70ft (21.34m),

“But I want to make a point: I can do this,

starting and finishing in Plymouth, Devon,

with little means, and a little boat, without

with 48-hour stopovers at Galway on the

sacrificing my life, my job, my family, my other

west coast of Ireland, Lerwick in the Shetland Islands and Blyth on England’s north east coast.

Mea (meaning “beauty and grace” in Chinese) is an Ocean Vertue, built in Hong Kong by Cheoy Lee of teak planks on ipol frames.

Matteo, 50, a Professor of Economics at the University of Essex,

present and past, with the wood that grew in Asia decades ago and was cut and shaped into the idea of a ship by craftsmen long gone, with the sailors that sailed Mea through time, temporarily handing her

said: “Why? Because if not now, when? It’s time to stop dreaming

to me. Sailing through history, and through culture, if you wish. Sailing

about things I might not do. I want to give my sailing a purpose, test

to the edge of time, as John Kretschmer put it in what I consider one

myself a little bit. I’m going because every time I went on a sailing

of the best sailing books ever written. The competition is just an

adventure, it enriched me.”

excuse, an opportunity. But having said that, we won’t be there for

He has a team of four, among whom to select one or two mates, given that one crew change is allowed in Lerwick.

12

interests. And I would like to do it my way, connecting with the geography of the sea and the land, with people

CLASSIC BOAT MAY 2022

tourism.”

Follow Mea’s progress via Matteo’s blog measailing.wordpress.com

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TELL TALES

Classic class at Volvo Cork Week Following on from the announcement at the Paris Boat Show last

Class for the first time in the biennial regatta’s history. It is a relief to

December that a dedicated Classics Class will be run at Volvo Cork

be able to sail gloriously into post-Covid times in the company of

Week 2022, the Royal Cork Yacht Club is seeing a steady flow of

other classic yachtsmen, especially as the 2020 plans were cancelled

entries for the regatta, which will be held inside and outside Cork

despite the tremendous efforts put by former Admiral Colin Morehead

harbour from 11-15 July.

and his team as the pandemic unfolded. I am therefore very much

Racing will be conducted using the Jauge Classique Handicap (JCH) system “to allow classic boats with very different characteristics

Elsie, owned by Patrick Dorgan, will also feature on the start line of

to race together as well as other handicapping systems as

the classics class in July. A William Fife-designed Cork Harbour One

appropriate”.

Design, built in 1896 at the Gridiron Works in Carrigaloe in Cork

In addition, Pascal Stefani, President of the Atlantic Yacht Club

Harbour, she will also be joined by at least one, Jap, if not two more of

(AYC), with the support of the Yacht Club de France, announced that

these Fife classics in July. Jap (top right) was racing in the Med last

they are arranging ‘Goto Cork 2022’ which will entail up to 20 classic

season, fourth at Cannes Regates Royales and winning her class at Les

yachts heading to Cork via the Scillies together. A delegation from

Voiles de Saint-Tropez last September.

AYC has since been to Cork to prepare for their visit in July.

AYC member Yves Lambert will be participating in his yacht Persephone, a 37ft Tina designed by Dick Carter, and said: “In 2020 we had plans to attend and help the Royal Cork Yacht Club celebrate

Volvo Cork Week has always been regarded as a ‘must-do’ regatta for modern yacht racers, due to its reputation for exhilarating racing in fair waters, as well as its renowned social scene ashore.

Mike Rider, who is Chair for the Classics Fleet at Volvo Cork Week

its Tricentenary, enjoy some Irish beers with our Irish friends and

and Rear Admiral of the Royal Cork Yacht Club, said: “The world-

everything else Cork has to offer. Sadly, Covid put stop to our plans,

renowned biennial regatta, first held in 1978, is expected to attract a

but when we were advised of a classic class at Cork Week in 2022, we

bumper fleet of entries and as always, the atmosphere in Crosshaven,

had to come. A 302-year-old birthday does not happen so often!”

home of the Royal Cork Yacht Club, will be second to none both

Another confirmed entrant is Jamie Matheson, owner of the

during and ahead of Volvo Cork Week 2022. The addition of a

Lallows-built S&S 41, Opposition. She will be arriving by road and

dedicated Classics Class is proving to be very popular and I look

supported by mother ship Rhum Jungle, a Nelson 75. Jamie said: “We

forward to welcoming as many as possible to Crosshaven in July.”

were very sad that after all their hard work and preparation, the Royal Cork had to cancel their 300th celebrations in 2020 – though I applaud their decision to cancel early. We are now delighted to have the chance to come over albeit a little late to help the Royal Cork celebrates its momentous anniversary. It will be great sailing again in the most beautiful part of the world.”

Royal Cork member Terry Birles’ Erin (pictured top left), a 1919 Fred Shepherd design, is also entered. Erin will arrive in Cork from the south of France in May to allow her crew to get accustomed to sailing the boat in Cork Harbour. She will be accompanied by her mother ship, Shamrock, a sea-going luxury commuter yacht built in 1957 in Seattle. Shamrock will also serve as Committee Boat for the classic fleet throughout Volvo Cork Week.

Terry is keen to revive classic sailing in Cork and said: “I wouldn’t have forgiven myself for not entering as it is such a delight to see classic yacht racing returning to Cork Harbour. Those beautiful ladies can again grace Cork waters with their alluring presence, crispy white sails and varnished teak decks.

“I must commend the Royal Cork in having a dedicated Classic

14

looking forward to taking part.”

CLASSIC BOAT MAY 2022

Online entry to Volvo Cork Week 2022 is open at corkweek.ie.

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TELL TALES

SOLENT

Cowes Classics Week Entries have opened for Cowes Classics

Tradition yachts designed to classic lines

Week 2022, with racing from 27 June

are also welcomed. There will be a

to 1 July.

non-spinnaker division for classic yachts above 30’ in length.”

The regatta – billed as the “world’s biggest classic yacht regatta of its kind” –

Entries are anticipated from multiple

takes place right after the Island Sailing

dayboat fleets including Dragons,

Club’s Round the Island Race, making a

Swallows, Solent Sunbeams, Loch Long

week afloat for yachts and smaller boats.

ODs, XODs, BODs, Squibs, Flying Fifteens and many more, together with metre

Cowes Classics Week, run by the Royal London Yacht Club, is open to a wide range

boats, old gaffers and cruiser/racers such

of yachts and offers multiple race courses

as Folkboats, Contessas, SCODs, Twisters

catering both for large one-design fleets

and Nicholsons.

and for all-comers in handicap fleets.

On Sunday 26 June, around 60 classic cars and classic boats will assemble on the

“Classic yachts built in wood or steel before 1975, or GRP yachts designed at least 50 years ago, are

Parade and the Trinity Landing for the second edition of Cowes

eligible,” says the club. “So too are all classic S&S-designed yachts,

Classics Day.

including Swans and S&S 34s, regardless of design date. Spirit of

Early bird rates are available at cowesclassicsweek.org

Ranger is J-Class winner at Saint Barth’s An enthusiastic owner new to racing

Hanuman, and even after losing six

under sail and a crew of experienced

tonnes in a recent refit is the heaviest

sailors at their first J-Class regatta

at 196 tonnes, compared to Velsheda’s

together proved a winning combination

180 and 172 tonnes for Hanuman.

as Ranger clinched the Saint Barth’s Bucket J-Class title in March.

Under America’s Cup-winning skipper

John Kostecki is Ranger’s tactician, supported by Jordi Calafat and Jules Salter, a unit that can boast two

Ed Baird, Ranger finished one point clear

recent TP52 world titles.

of Hanuman and Velsheda after four

Recent updates to the boat included

races at the French Caribbean island’s

improvements to the hydraulics to

annual superyacht regatta.

Ranger was built of steel in Denmark from 2002-3 as the first of the ‘replica’ Js, constructed to the original Starling Burgess and Olin Stephens lines of Harold Vanderbilt’s ‘Super J’ which won the 1937 America’s Cup 4-0 against Endeavour 2.

At 28.6m Ranger is the longest on the waterline of the trio racing at St Barths, compared to 27.7m for Velsheda and 26.8m for

give more winch power, as well as better weight distribution, aiming to move weight forward “as Ranger has always sat stern down”.

Hanuman’s skipper Ken Read said: “Getting these boats around the race course on a light airs day isn’t easy and so I am very proud of the team, especially how we were doing in today’s conditions. But congratulations to Ranger and to an owner who is new to the sport."

A smile for Skylark Boatbuilder Rebecca MacAskill and colleague Ronnie Mckechnie are pictured alongside the Dunkirk Little Ship Skylark IX, at a new exhibition, Hope Floats, at the Scottish Maritime Museum in Irvine, Ayrshire. The exhibition shows how the Dumbarton-based Skylark IX is maintained and how the boat’s story “of hope and resilience” is used to help people recovering from addictions, through engaging them in boatbuilding training.

16

CLASSIC BOAT MAY 2022

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TELL TALES

OBITUARY Solo circumnavigator Les Powles, 1925-2022 Les Powles, who died earlier this year, was one

On his third, eight-year voyage, in the late 1980s,

of those eccentric, Corinthian Brits who was

he was given up for dead, but surprised everyone

content in his own company and never

when he returned to Lymington four months after

understood the public admiration or fuss he

setting sail from New Zealand. He had lost five

received for sailing solo around the world three

stone and hardly had the strength to lift the sail. For

times during the 1970s and 1980s, writes Barry

this extraordinary feat, Powles won the British

Pickthall.

Yachtsman of the Year award

A land-based engineer from Liverpool,

Lymington Yacht Haven, on England’s south

Powles began to crave the freedom of the seas

coast, gave Powles a free berth for life and until

during the early 1970s and spent his £7,000 life

very recently he was still living aboard Solitaire.

savings self-building his 34ft Bruce Roberts

Following the publication of his book, Solitaire

designed yacht Solitaire. Somewhat recklessly,

Spirit, published by Bloomsbury, telling his life story

he set out to cross the Atlantic in 1975 with

and circumnavigations, Powles received unsolicited

only eight hours’ sailing experience. He was

letters from all over the world congratulating him

heading for the Caribbean on the first stage of

for his unpretentious pioneering spirit and the

an around the world cruise, but poor navigation

inspiration he provided. It remains required reading

led him to land in Brazil. “I didn’t have GPS in

for any who have the inclination to cock a snook at

those days,” he lamented. “There is no excuse

convention. “I’m glad I did it the way I did. Some

now for getting it so wrong.”

Les also recalled some of the scariest moments, including a week of storms: “There were times when I was aware the waves could kill me. I had no control; I just had to hope we wouldn’t roll over.”

Sailing always on a shoestring budget, he set out on his first non-stop circumnavigation without a radio transmitter and did not

18

people thought I was an idiot, but I couldn’t care less. It’s what I wanted to do,” he recalled.

Once his sailing days were over, Powles was asked: “Do you miss the open sea?” The 96-year-old answered: “I’m completely satisfied with what I’ve got.”

Jonathan Cook, from Lymington Yacht Haven said: “Les was an

speak to another person for 329 days. Towards the end of his

extremely popular character around Lymington and for over five

second, non-stop voyage in 1980-81, Les struggled with hunger and

decades he has truly been a part of the Yacht Haven family. His

survived only on rainwater, a few spoons of rice and a third of a tin of

story resonated around the world and he continued to receive post

mince per day. At the end, he was down to eating just rice mixed

from those he has inspired to discover a life of sailing and

with curry powder, which he called “a horrible recipe”!

adventure.”

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TELL TALES

2021 OVERALL WINNER Thames Sailing Barges

by Fraser Gray

National Historic Ships UK

Photography competition 2022 In partnership with Classic Boat, National Historic Ships UK is running its popular annual photography competition for the 13th year. Following on from last year’s theme of ‘Back to the Water,’ we are looking for images that celebrate the theme of “Journeys”.

How you interpret this theme is entirely up to you. You could capture the physical voyage of an operational vessel on our seas, lakes, rivers or inland waterways – a fishing boat setting off at dawn, a lazy sunny afternoon on a pleasure boat, or a lifeboat returning from a late-night call. It could be a vessel’s conservation journey; an owner or volunteer hard at work on their boat or celebrating a milestone in the long life of their craft. We’re hoping for photos showcasing a wide range of vessel types, whether big or small, afloat or ashore. We’d love to see images featuring people as well – enjoying a day trip to a museum ship or simply messing about on the water at a Jubilee Regatta.

Wherever or however you engage with the water this summer on your own personal journey, don’t forget to share it with us!

Great prizes to be won, including a Go-Pro camera and £500 of vouchers

THE JUDGES

Paul Atterbury Antiques expert

Tracey ClarkeSullivan Event producer

Tim Beckett Director, Beckett Rankine

Fraser Gray 2021 Photo Competition Winner

Steffan Meyric Hughes Editor, Classic Boat

Simon Stephens Curator, Royal Museums Greenwich

THE SPONSORS

20

CLASSIC BOAT MAY 2022

Christian Topf Creative designer

Overall prize £500 of vouchers of your choice + Yarmouth Oilskins Classic Smock Highly Commended: The Sea Chart book by John Blake + Yarmouth Oilskins Classic Smock Classic Boat Award Winner: Trophy & two-year subscription Highly Commended: The Sea Chart book by John Blake People’s Choice Award Voting on Instagram throughout the summer Winner: Go-Pro camera Monthly prizes: Farewell Mr Puffin book by Paul Heiney or Uncommon Courage book by Julia Jones Newcomer of the Year Award: £250 of vouchers of your choice

Competition Rules and Guidelines The competition runs from 1 April – 31 August 2022. For terms & conditions, and to enter, go tonationalhistoricships.org.uk/ PhotoCompetition

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Winners THE

After a huge voting turn-out, here are the winners of the 2022 Classic Boat Awards

Awards 2022

IN ASSOCIATION WITH

RESTORED SAILING VESSEL OVER 40FT

VIVEKA

Restored by Rutherford’s Boatshop, Designed by Frank C Paine, Built by Fred Lawley, 1930, LOD 72ft 9in (22.2m), Rig bermudan schooner Everything about Viveka is distinctive, from her first owner, JP Morgan, to her double-carvel hull construction, but most of all in her rig. Viveka is the only schooner-rigged yacht built to the International 12-M rule that we have ever come across. Her restoration, which was completed at the very tail end of 2020 for an English owner, was pretty much the complete works, and a very significant project even for someone of the standing of California boatbuilder Jeff Rutherford, the conservator who, over the years, has been behind the restorations of the Universal P-Class yacht Joyant, the 126ft (38m) steam yacht Cangarda and the ongoing job on the mind-blowing schooner Coronet.

RESTORED SAILING VESEEL UNDER 40FT AWARDS SPONSORS

BARBARA

Restored Marcus Lewis, Des/built Archie Watty, 1947, LOD 18ft (5.5m), Rig bermudan sloop On 20 January 1947, Olive Bate of Polruan, Cornwall, gave birth to a baby girl, Barbara. This was also the day that she and husband Arthur were set to put down their deposit on a house.

Her reaction at discovering, the same day, that Arthur had instead spent the money on a Fowey One-Design, can only be imagined, even with the boat named after the girl. By the 1990s, Barbara (the boat) was in pieces in the Hebrides, but class sailor Richard Kitson and boatbuilder Marcus Lewis brought her back home to Cornwall and performed a rebuild that makes her today, effectively, a brand-new boat, albeit on her original ballast keel.

22

CLASSIC BOAT MAY 2022

C/O ROLEX

HIGHLY COMMENDED RESTORED SAILING VESSEL OVER 40FT

STORMVOGEL Restored by Metur Yacht, Designed by Ericus van de Stadt, Laurent Giles and John Illingworth, Built Cornelius Bruynzeel, 1961, LOD 74ft 6in (22.7m), Rig berm ketch The story of Stormvogel is a fable of glory and reincarnation. She’s effectively the world’s first maxi yacht, and she was built by and for the Dutch plywood king Cornelius Bruynzeel, in solid carvel planking. He campaigned her to line honours in the 1961 Fastnet. After a thorough rebuild at the Metur Yachts yard in Turkey, Stormvogel took on the same race again in 2021, six decades on. While lesser (read ‘modern’!) vessels retired in the harsh conditions, the storm bird

C/O WOODBRIDGE BOATYARD

flew home in seventh place, in the very fast time of just 3 days and 19 hours.

HIGHLY COMMENDED RESTORED SAILING VESSEL UNDER 40FT

NIGEL SHARP

FALCON

Restored by Woodbridge Boatyard, Designed by Bjarne Aas, Built 1956, LOD 33ft (10m), Rig bermudan sloop When Sir Michael Harrison died in 2019, aged 83, he’d owned and sailed his wooden International One Design on Suffolk’s rivers for 35 years. After a thorough refit, including new transom, replacement of many ribs and frames, all of her deck beams, both shear planks, a new Lignia deck and new wooden spars to replace the old aluminium ones, his son Edwin will continue the tradition.

CLASSIC BOAT MAY 2022

23

sdaw awegawert serg

Awards 2022

KEES STUIP

Winner NEW SAILING VESSEL ALL SIZES

DUBLIN BAY 21 FLEET

Built by Steve Morris of Kilrush Boatyard, Designed by Alfred Mylne, LOD 36ft 5in (11.1m), Rig gaff cutter The Dublin Bay 21s were drawn by Alfred Mylne in 1902, at the invitation of the Dublin Bay Sailing Club. The next year, five boats had been built and two more soon after that. Amazingly, all lived to see the present day, when class aficionado Fionan de Barra and yachting historian Hal Sisk came up with a plan to rebuild the entire fleet of seven, all on their original ballast keels, but in strip plank. As a concept, its audacity is perhaps unparalleled, but by 2021, Naneen, Garavogue and Estelle were racing in Dublin Bay under collective ownership. The other four will follow soon.

24

CLASSIC BOAT MAY 2022

WATERLINE MEDIA

THE

HIGHLY COMMENDED NEW SAILING VESSEL ALL SIZES

SPIRIT 30 Built by Spirit Yachts, 2021, Design by Sean McMillan, LOD 30ft (9.2m), Rig bermudan sloop She’s the first open day-sailer from the world’s leading Spirit-of-Tradition builder, whose yachts have featured twice in the Bond films. The Spirit 30 is a fast, opulent, modern flyer, with a skimming dish hull, fin-and-bulb keel, carbon spars, rod rigging and moulded sails. Above the water, she’s pure 1930s gent’s keel boat, though quite a bit faster in practice, as we discovered.

Best of all – she’s all wood, built in 15mm Alaskan cedar.

Cynara Winner of the Classic Boat Restored Vessel of the Year Award (over 40 ft)

NEW SAILING VESSEL, ALL SIZES • Winner: Dublin Bay 21 Fleet — Built by Steve Morris • Highly Commended: Spirit 30 — Built by Spirit Yachts RESTORED SAILING VESSEL, UNDER 40ft • Winner: Troy “Barbara” — Restored by Marcus Lewis NEW POWERED VESSEL, ALL SIZES • Highly Commended: “Tenacity” — Built by John McShea

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2022 Awards

Winner JOE MCCARTHY

THE

RESTORED POWERED VESSEL ALL SIZES

FLOWER POWER

Restored by Josh Major/Suffolk Yacht Harbour, Designed by Alan Burnard, Built Fairey Marine, 1967, LOD 28ft (8.5m) Power: twin diesel As a marque, Fairey Marine is so soaked in glamour, it could be Britain’s answer to Riva. The company’s quintessential motorboat was the hot-moulded timber, twin-engined Fairey Huntsman 28, as featured in From Russia with Love. This one was built as a 21st birthday present for model Penny Carter, who raced her in three Cowes-Torquay races. She now belongs to Josh Major, shipyard director at Suffolk Yacht Harbour. After a thorough restoration and re-engine, Flower Power is better and faster than ever; her two 215hp diesels give her a thrilling 37.8 knots.

HIGHLY COMMENDED RESTORED POWERED VESSEL ALL SIZES

C/O HMS

LAZY DAYS

26

CLASSIC BOAT MAY 2022

Restored by Harbour Marine Services, Designed and built by Cliff and Jones of Castleford, 1930, LOD 34ft 2in (10.4m) Power: twin diesel Lazy Days might have been rather optimistically named, given the wartime service this little river cruiser saw, not least at Dunkirk, where she spent three days ferrying troops in Operation Dynamo, breaking most of her ribs in the process. She was rebuilt as a yacht in 1952, and her most recent stint of work at Harbour Marine has seen 50 to 75 per cent of the hull re-planked due to rot on the port side, and an engine refit to give a flat cockpit sole. Now, nearly a century after she was launched, she’s ready to live up to the promise of her name.

2 Southford Road, Dartmouth, South Devon TQ6 9QS Tel/Fax: (01803) 833899 – info@woodenships.co.uk – www.woodenships.co.uk

40’ Millers MFV built by James Miller and Sons of St Monance in 1953 for George Clark of Clarks Shoes. Refitted to current standards in present ownership with a nicely proportioned gaff ketch rig with new rigging and sails in 2011. Gardner 6LX 110hp diesel in lovely condition. 5 berths with double cabin forward and large wheelhouse. Tidy yacht, well equipped and fit to put to sea this season. Isle of Man £75,000

49’ Danish gaff ketch built as a fishing vessel in 1918. Worked until 1995 when she was converted to a yacht. Oak on oak hull with very sweet lines. New sails 2019. 155hp Volvo diesel, 9 berths with separate aft cabin. A very nice example of her type, small enough to be sailed by two crew but with lots of deck space and comfortable interior. Germany €100,000

41’ Bristol Channel Pilot Cutter replica built by RB Boatbuilding, Bristol, in 2017. Traditionally built boat with all non-ferrous fastenings, pine planking on grown oak fames. 6 berths including aft double cabin and 4 singles. 6’3” headroom in the saloon. Used as a private sailing yacht since her launch, not for commercial sailing. 2021 survey available. France €220,000

Iain Oughtred Guillemot sailing dinghy professionally built by Jamie Clay in 2014. Gabon marine plywood glued with epoxy for a light low maintenance hull. Beautifully finished with all bronze fittings and hard wood thwarts. Balanced lug rig. Oars and bronze rowlocks. Comes with cover and launching trolley. A truly immaculate dinghy finished to a very high standard. Oxfordshire £5,750

North Quay 19 built by North Quay Marine in 2008. A well respected design with great performance and sweet lines, perfect for day sailing and coastal exploration.

Epoxy strip plank Cedar hull, the complete boat weighs only 975kg. On a 2016 road trailer, easily towed behind a moderate car. complete with camping awning giving 4 berths. Very smart fun family boat. Cornwall £16,950

33’ Miller Fifer motor sailer ketch built by Millers in 1961. Usual heavy construction giving a capable vessel with lots of internal volume. Easily handled Bermudan ketch rig with a Lister Blackstone 36hp diesel. 4 berths with separate heads and galley. Large wheelhouse for comfortable passage making. Good maintenance history over recent years, a very clean and tidy yacht.

Cornwall £35,000

41’ Woodnutts Bermudan cutter designed and built

by Woodnutts & Co. in 1938. In the same family ownership for over 45 years, she is professionally maintained regardless of cost. Pitch pine planking on oak timbers. Large volume interior with 6 berths and good headroom. A smart, substantial and capable yacht.

Sussex £50,000

28’ Quarter Tonner designed by David Thomas and built by Frank Hoare in 1975. Cold moulded mahogany hull with laid teak decks. Very favourable IRC rating of 0.866 making her a very competitive yacht. Complete with double axle road trailer and outboard engine. Cost effective and exciting racing with a boat that will stand out from the crowd. Hants £15,000

Another fascinating selection of traditional and classic yachts only from Wooden Ships. Call for true descriptions, genuine honest values and a service from people who know their boats.

NEW

2022 Awards

C/O EAST PASSAGE BOATWRIGHTS

Winner EAST PASSAGE 24 Built East Passage Boatwrights, 2021, Designed Walt Ansel, LOD 24ft (7.3m), Power: single diesel At around two tonnes, this is a substantial Down East style picnic launch, built to a very high standard in traditional American double carvel timber, which gives great strength and the stability to hold paint finishes without cracking. This first one has been in development for some time, but by the looks, it’s been worth the wait. The 150hp Yanmar gives 15 knots cruising, 20 tops.

28

CLASSIC BOAT MAY 2022

HIGHLY COMMENDED NEW POWERED VESSEL ALL SIZES

TENACITY Designed/Built John McShea, 2021, LOD 19ft 6in (5.9m), Power: single diesel We visited John Shea’s yard in 2021, but here is one of his creations afloat in all her glory. Tenacity was built for David Cheesman, in mahogany planks on an oak keel and timbers, with teak decks, and styled after the Salcombe launch, but with a glowing varnished finish to suit her role as a stylish, traditional gent’s day launch. Tiller steering and a 14hp Yanmar complete the very traditional picture.

RICHARD JOHNSTONE-BRYDEN

NEW POWERED VESSEL ALL SIZES

C/O CW HOOD

THE

FOR SALE

Beauty and elegance, restored to mint condition.

A masterpiece designed by Johan Anker in 1912 Flirt IV is a wonderful 9mR, 47 feet long. She is restored to perfection in Norway. The boat was built

by Anker & Jensen for the Norwegian yachts man Alf Rasmussen. She has a long successful history in both Norway, under the name Flirt IV, and in Scotland under the name Torridon.

For a period of time, the boat was owned by the wellknown yachtsman John Illingworth who later founded the famous Sidney Hobart race, and also designed several yachts himself. A full history and detailed information is available in her website seile-flirt.no or scan the QR code.

For more information visit: www.houseofyachts.no • Email: jeanette@h-y.no • Tel: +47 909 39 610

2022 Awards WINNER Classic Boat 2022 awards logo.indd 4

28/03/2022 11:10

@woodbridge_boatyard @WoodbridgeBoatyard

CLASSIC BOAT MAY 2022

29

GILL MOON

2022 Awards

HIGHLY COMMENDED GSTAAD YACHT CLUB CENTENARIAN OF THE YEAR

SUMURUN

Winner THE

This heavy-weather legend was designed and built by William Fife III in 1914 as a cruising 19-M yacht, but the 94ft (28.7m) ketch would still beat everything in sight when it blew hard. She was restored at Chantier Guip from 2017-19 and today, Sumurun is as active as ever in classic racing.

Sumurun sailing is simply one of the great sights in the world of traditional vessels.

GSTAAD YACHT CLUB CENTENARIAN OF THE YEAR

FIREFLY

The 34ft 6in (10.5m) Albert Strange yawl Firefly reaches her centenary this year with a near-unblemished record.

She entered Clay family ownership in 1934 and now belongs to the grandson, boatbuilder Jamie Clay. She’s never needed rebuilding and is almost all original. Aside from the war, she has only missed a single sailing season.

Firefly was a runaway victor in this year’s voting, proving that in terms of appeal, a Strange-designed yacht is the equal of anything.

30

CLASSIC BOAT MAY 2022

The Gstaad Yacht Club was formed in 1998 by a group of sailors with the vision to “create a unique global yacht club away from water”. The Centenarian of the Year trophy ties in with the club’s annual Centenary Trophy race, at Les Voiles de Saint-Tropez, attracting some of the oldest yachts afloat. The Centenarian of the Year silver bowl and silver champagne flute (above) are made and donated by Robbe & Berking.

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CLASSIC BOAT MAY 2022

31

Winner THE

2022 Awards

YOUNG CLASSIC BOATER OF THE YEAR

KATIE MCCABE

For anyone despairing at the state of young people today, we give you our first Young Classic Boater of the Year: Katie McCabe. Her incredible round-Britain voyage at the record-breaking age of just 14 was undertaken on her 1952 West Channel One Design, bought by Katie for £800 made by doing weekend jobs. Falanda, imprisoned on dry land for a decade, was a mess, but Katie brought it back to life with advice from her boatbuilder father and woodcarver mother. The slog, however, was all hers. In June 2021, she set off to sail around Britain. Experienced global circumnavigators often refer to this as one of the most challenging voyages. Katie had no paper qualifications and was just 14, but a lifetime of living afloat had prepared her perfectly.

CLASSIC BOATER OF THE YEAR

NIGEL SHARP

HAL SISK

32

CLASSIC BOAT MAY 2022

The award goes to a man who’s probably the only person toBY SPONSORED have restored yachts by the three great Scottish designers Fife, Watson and Mylne. He’s a retired engineer with a doctoral degree in coastal engineering and he’s lectured on yachting history in five continents. His early years were spent racing Cadets and Enterprise dinghies from Crosshaven in Ireland.

Later he raced successfully offshore with brothers George and John, and he was the co-founder Irish Sea Offshore Racing Association in early 1970s.

Moving into smaller boats, he kickstarted a revival of the Water Wag class, the world’s oldest one design, by building first new Water Wag in 20 years in 1977. He proudly declares he’s campaigned it for more than 40 seasons!

We give him the award this year for his stunningly ambitious ongoing project to restore all seven of the still-extant Dublin Bay 21s, but it’s just the tip of an iceberg. In 1983, he restored the 1884 Fife III-designed 22ft gaff cutter Vagrant, then re-enacted her maiden voyage from Scotland to Dublin. In 1992, he built a replica of Simon & Jude, a 30ft catamaran designed and built for Sir William Petty in Dublin in 1662.

There were more, but in 2005 came Peggy Bawn, a 35ft GL Watson-designed gaff cutter built in 1894. It redefined the bar in terms of small-yacht restorations and became the first boat we devoted a series to the restoration of, written by our late, great technical editor Theo Rye. Hal’s specialist publishing house was behind Martin Black’s acclaimed GL Watson biography. If that weren’t enough, he’s chairman Association of Yachting Historians and was key to the scanning the Lloyd’s Register of Yachts as well as The Yachtsman magazine and more to come. There is perhaps no one in the world who puts as much into the history of small-boat sailing, and probably no one who has spent as much, yet failed to walk away with a 100ft yacht or a J Class. That failure is his greatest success.

Winner THE

2022 Awards

LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT

BARRY PICKTHALL/PPL

HALSEY CHASE HERRESHOFF

He was born in Bristol Rhode Island in 1933 and learned to sail at the age of five in a dinghy designed and built by his grandad. In this case the dinghy was a Herreshoff 12.5 and the grandad was Nathanael Herreshoff. After reading naval architecture then mechanical engineering at MIT, Halsey’s yacht design career saw more than 10,000 boats launched to his designs. He was instrumental in founding the Herreshoff Museum in his home town of Bristol, then founded the America’s Cup Hall of Fame, with the benefit of considerable experience, having crewed in no fewer than four cups, from 1958 to 1983.

From birth, Halsey has been steeped in the heyday of wooden yacht sailing and later in life, in its preservation and revival.

Where many today will feel pride at having attended the seminal 2001 America’s Cup Jubilee in the Solent, Halsey actually won the event, aboard his New York 40 Rugosa. He followed it up by a grand cruise that took in much of northern and southern Europe, then the Caribbean.

These days, Halsey is not only a grandee of sailing, but a decorated public servant to the town of Bristol: the green sward behind the waterfront was named after him in 2018, for his “tireless, unprecedented” advocacy of its improvement.

He went back to yacht designing in 2018, at the age of 85. We could award Halsey our lifetime award on his sailing career or Charliecareer, Barr’s grave, which Bob raised hisAtdesign or his advocacy, campaigning and stewardship of American sailing history and the Herreshoff legacy. He’s to restore and maintain in perpetuity all funds of those, but more than that, he is simply one of the nicest, humblest people you could ever hope to meet.

CLASSIC BOAT MAY 2022 2021

33 33

By Dave Selby

BONHAMS

Saleroom

BONHAMS

When Britannia waived the rules The pert and pacey British-built Albatross sports boats, which did

a fixture on the Royal Yacht Britannia. Like his earlier Albatross, the

much to popularise waterskiing in the UK, became playthings for the

new boat also featured a hull liveried in matching Britannia Blue. In

rich and famous in their 1950s heyday.

the 1960s the Albatross was moved to Balmoral Castle, and

Aristotle Onassis owned one of the lightweight aluminium flyers, Prince Rainier of Monaco had no fewer than six at one time, and HRH Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, was also a valued ‘customer,’

enjoyed for waterskiing before being decommissioned and passed on in the 1980s.

In highly original condition and accompanied by royal

to the extent that when he returned his Albatross for a service, the

correspondence, the Prince’s Albatross is estimated at £20,000-

directors of Albatross wrote to Buckingham Palace with the

40,000 when it comes under the hammer on 10 April.

following proposal: “Would it be in order to sell the current boat and supply one of the latest type? There would be no expense involved.”

Photos above left to right: In time-warp condition, Prince Philip’s very

In those less censorious days the Duke graciously accepted the

well preserved Albatross still has its original Ford Anglia engine; 1957

free upgrade, and his 1956 Albatross MkIII with the latest Ford

photo shows eight-year-old Prince Charles enjoying – or possibly

Anglia 1,172cc engine, which gave it a top speed of 34mph, became

enduring – a day on the water at Cowes in his dad’s Albatross MkIII

ELDRED’S, USA

Herreshoff boat jewellery Much like varnish, we’d caution against using

CHARLES MILLER LTD

One piece at a time From a quartet of Stuart Turner engines optimistically described as “understood to be in good running order” – a bold claim if ever there was one – to ventilator cowls, antique deck lights, compass binnacles, blocks, chronometers and shipwrighting tools, Charles Miller Ltd’s next marine sale on 26 April has everything you’d need to build a vessel every bit as eccentric as the Cadillac assembled one piece at time in Johnny Cash’s famous novelty song.

anchors in any marine environment, and here’s one I certainly wouldn’t want to get wet. As well as drafting the fastest yachts in the world, Nathanael Greene Herreshoff (1848-1938) also applied himself to reengineering the humble admiralty-type anchor into an object of desire.

Produced in lustrous and

CHARLES MILLER LTD

costly bronze, you’d be devastated if you lost this early-20th-century 26in (63cm) Herreshoff stockless as it was bought for a fairly Clockwise from top left: Circa 1900 Admiralty-pattern brass tiller yoke, estimated at £300-500; 43in (109cm)

hefty $812.

brass helm, £300-500; c1920 double bridge telegraph, £600-800; 1940s cork life ring from Manx Ferry King

Eldred’s next

Orry, £150-250; Brass ventilator cowls, £150-250; Copper and brass navigation lamps, £600-800

marine sale: 4-5 August

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ELDRED’S

folding anchor, particularly

info@firstclasssailing.com

®

CLASSIC BOAT MAY 2022

33

Objects of desire WUZZOS SHIP’S LOG Wuzzos started with deck shoes and now do a range of products including these smart logbooks, emblazoned with the name of your yacht on the cover. Wuzzos say: “Every seafarer knows it is best practice to keep a logbook as record of your vessel’s position, and activities. Wuzzos Personalised Ships Log has been developed to allow customers to add

CHAIN PIPE

their boats name onto the book in a

A bronze chain pipe to give a very high class

Manufactured from sustainably

feel to your anchoring activities, available

sourced Forest Stewardship Council

from Classic Marine, the title sponsor of our

paper, the 240-page logbook is

Classic Boat Awards this month. Classic

available in two sizes (A4 & A5), six

Marine, which operates online and through a

colours and delivered in a beautiful

shop at Suffolk Yacht Harbour in Suffolk on

presentation box.”

England’s east coast, offers a vast range of

You can preview your design on the

classic boat-specific chandlery. Available in

Wuzzos website before purchase.

various diameters.£97–£242

A5, £25, and A4, £35, with free shipping for Club Wuzzos members

classic-marine.co.uk

premium gold or silver colour foil.

wuzzos.com/product/ships-log

THORNYCROFT CUTAWAY A cutaway of a 1952 Thornycroft Standard Cruiser, one of myriad fascinating nautical items for sale through The Motorboat Gallery. In period style, here we see Mrs at work in the galley, in a dress, while her husband and son enjoy life in the cockpit. We can’t help wondering if the scene is less outdated than it looks, but the work itself is wonderful and the boat magnificent. The Motorboat Gallery sells all manner of nautical memorabilia from bronze cleats, to travel posters, to half models. £115

themotorboat.co.uk

NEW LIFE FOR CHARTS Hannah Wisdom sews recycled fabrics onto old Admiralty sea charts to create nautical designs which she then translates onto fine art prints, coasters, placemats, greetings cards, postcards, mirrors, notebooks, tea towels, cushions, clocks, bags, hangers and more. She is based in Plymouth, so some of the images relate to the area, while some are more general, such as the depiction of Sir Francis Chichester’s Gipsy Moth IV, approx 15in (37cm) square. The original artwork is available. £5 for a coaster; £69 for the Gipsy Moth print.

hannahwisdomtextiles.com 36

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Yacht Restorers

© Emily Harris Photography 2021

Harbour Marine

Telephone +44 (0)1502 724721 Email info@harbourmarine.co.uk www.harbourmarine.co.uk HMS_DAVEY_CBNov21.indd 1

DAVEY & Co

16/09/2021 15:37

LO NDO N L I M I T E D ˚ E s t . 1 8 8 5

TRADITIONAL BOATBUILDING FITTINGS, TOOLS & MATERIALS T R AD E

M AR K

Telephone +44 (0)1206 500945 ˚ Email info@davey.co.uk ˚ www.davey.co.uk HMS_DAVEY_CBNov21.indd 2

16/09/2021 15:37

CLASSIC BOAT MAY 2022

37

BOSUN’S BAG PRACTICAL TIPS FOR THE TRADITIONAL BOATER

WORDS TOM CUNLIFFE ILLUSTRATION MARTYN MACKRILL

A sail cover can hide a multitude of sins, with the front runner a poorly stowed main. On a modern yacht with a stack pack and lazy jacks, a tidy stow is nigh-on impossible, so zipping up the bag when the shorelines go on is the decent thing to do.

For the classic sailor, gaff or bermudan, the neatly rolled, crease-free alternative is a thing of beauty. There should be no rush to cover it therefore, unless it’s to be left soaking up UV from the sun for a day or squadrons of incontinent herring gulls are out in force.

I learned how to stow a mainsail on an American schooner in the days when ‘Dacron’ cloth (known as Terylene in the UK) was in its infancy. Back then, what we now know as polyester canvas didn’t come stuffed with today’s fillers. It is these that make new sails the stiff and slippery nightmare to fold away that we all now suffer. The sails set beautifully, so maybe the price is worth paying, and even on the stowage front there’s hope for the future. As the filler degrades, or falls out, or whatever else happens to it with time, the fabric becomes more pliable. It grows ever more friendly with passing years until, at the last hour, it is as kind as the dry cotton or flax that our grandparents could stow to perfection – as long as it was bone dry.

If a sail is still crackly with filler, the only way to stow it is to flake it onto the boom. This is best achieved by lowering it slowly while the bosun heaves the leech out hard, keeping the foot flat while flaking it down. Any spare crew will assist along the bunt, clapping ties on as necessary to keep the whole slippery horror from sliding onto the deck. There is no pleasure in this job on a windy day, especially if there is a sea running.

However hard we try, it’s never going to approach the beauty of an old-fashioned harbour stow.

Gaff is easier to flake than bermudan, because the leech is more vertical and the final stow is tied up to the gaff with no chance of sliding off the boom. The sail is lowered on both halyards, keeping the gaff more or less at its sailing angle until the throat hits the gooseneck. The peak is then lowered steadily while the flakes keep piling up.

When the sail is more pliable, either because it is of natural fibre or through the passage of time, the misery of flaking becomes history. A neat, tight stow is now readily achievable.

Different boats have different methods, but here’s one that works on small sails, and is fine at least as far up as 1,000sqft (93m2). If the boom’s normal resting height makes reaching it a

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stretch, lower it with the topping lifts until you can reach the sail easily, taking up slack on the sheet. Gaffers will have to ease the peak halyards as well to keep the gaff handy to the boom. Once the sail is stowed, you can top the boom back up.

This time, the sail is not stowed while it’s being lowered, it is dropped smartly onto one side of the boom. The ship’s rugby player now grabs the leech. Starting at the peak of the gaff, or the head if the sail is triangular, he or she works down to the clew, hauling aft all the way, assisted by more of the crew if necessary. This removes any bunch-ups of canvas. The leech is now hauled hard aft from a point two or three feet above the clew depending on the size of the sail, forming a sort of bag between the fold created and the boom. The person on the leech now works towards the head or the peak, hauling aft all the time while bundling the sail into the ‘bag’. The rest of the team follow suit along the bunt, or body of the sail. When it’s all in, the crew shake the bag together to tighten the contents before working it up onto the boom in a neat, crease-free roll.

If the sail is loose-footed you may have to miss out the shaking phase to prevent the stow from tumbling out under the foot.

The ties should be ready rove between the foot of the sail and the boom so there’s no scrabbling for them while trying to hold the beast in place. The whole job can be done single-handed on a thirty-footer. As sails get bigger, the more hands the merrier.

On a gaffer, ties are led over the gaff and under the foot of the sail, but never around the boom. Leading ties between the gaff and the head of the sail is a bad idea. Not only does it look awful, it stretches the head-rope into bights.

The best ties are of broad webbing with a loop stitched into one end. If these are not available, stout rope ties will do, whipped at one end with an eye spliced into the other. By passing the end through the eye after it has gone round the sail, a whip purchase can be achieved for sweating up a tight stow, and the tie can be secured with a slippery hitch.

When the stow is complete, the boom is topped up to a perfect angle and gaffers can set the peak to suit personal taste.

I like to see it parallel, or slightly up at the throat.

Scandinavians keep their peaks well up, but in all cases, that tight roll sheds any rain. Water affected the lifespan of sails cut from natural fibre prone to rot with damp. The sailors of old prevented this with a proper stow and, as is so often true, what working people developed for pragmatic reasons still pleases the eye today.

Squadron. His depictions of classic boats, from clinker rowing boats to Edwardian schooners, have made him one of the most sought-after marine artists, and his work forms part of major collections worldwide. He and his wife, Bryony, sail the restored 1910 gaff cutter Nightfall (CB328).

CLASSIC BOAT MAY 2022

FOR THE WORK OF MARTYN MACKRILL, VISIT MARTYNMACKRILL.CO.UK OR MESSUM’S GALLERY, MAYFAIR, LONDON MESSUMS.COM

MARTYN MACKRILL Son of a marine engineer and grandson of a trawlerman, Martyn is Honorary Painter of the Royal Thames Yacht Club and the Royal Yacht

39

ROBERT SIMPER

A life by the Deben Robert Simper has spent his life writing about boats, from the very first issue of this magazine, and saving working vessels of the Thames Estuary WORDS CATHERINE LARNER

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PHOTO C/O ROBERT SIMPER

T

he River Deben meandering through rural Suffolk often accompanied him with her portable typewriter, turning his from Woodbridge to Felixstowe has changed little in scribbled longhand into the neat copy required by the editors. his lifetime, but retired farmer, sailor and writer Robert The subject matter continued to be an issue, though. “These Simper says the people using the water are different now. magazines had lots of pieces about Saint-Tropez and the really big From his seat at the polished mahogany dining table, in his yachts, with them all dressed in the white, having champagne.

Suffolk-pink cottage, he can look out across the garden to rowers That isn’t my scene at all. If you find some grotty old boat up a in their sleek sculls, wild swimmers in brightly-coloured caps, fleets creek with some chap leaning on a pub bar, that’s more what I did.” of dinghies racing from the club on the other bank, and of course Deciding to focus on the topics that most interested him, Robert the vast ‘gin palaces’, speed boats and occasional waterskiers. took to writing books, starting in 1967 with Over Snape Bridge: He grimaces slightly at the thought. There are many more people The story of Snape Maltings. When he wrote East Coast Sail in in the area now with their different interests, he says. His love is 1972, he was taken up by a publisher who commissioned five old boats: he has spent his life writing about them renovating them. more books about the coast round the British Isles.

Robert, 84, has lived in this isolated corner of Suffolk all his But, whether it was working for editors or publishers, Robert life. An only child, he grew up in the coastal hamlet of Bawdsey became tired of being told what to write about, so he formed during the war, so didn’t stray onto the beach there until he was Creekside Publishing, which he has run for the past 22 years. nine. “Then there was a long period when they cleared all the “I always thought publishing was a specialist thing that only mines,” he says. After boarding school, very clever people did, but I would fill he worked the family farm at nearby the car up with books and Pearl and I Ramsholt and, apart from extensive would travel around selling them.” travels (usually afloat), he’s never left.

He’s written 42 books and there are He was 11 when he first started more to come. “I used to write a book going out on the Lassie, a 1924 Shingle each winter,” he says. “I was too busy Street fishing boat, owned by his uncle. sailing or farming in the summer. I’ve “My parents said ‘you’re not having possibly done more since my son has a boat until you can swim’. I hate taken over running the farm, about 22 swimming! My mother told me I had to years ago.” swim between two breakwaters, so I Having sailed throughout Europe did. They said, ‘Robert you had one and Scandinavia as well as all along the “You can’t let them foot on the bottom!’. But I got the boat.

East Coast and for 10 years in Cornwall Once on the water I felt terribly at home.” in his own Cornish lugger, the 22ft rot away. They all have His parents weren’t convinced of his Silver Stream, Robert delights in being stories to tell” interest in the river but thought he at home in Ramsholt, by the Deben. might meet the ‘right’ people if he The cottage is down a long lane, Robert Simper sailed at nearby Waldringfield, so got perched on the river’s edge with a small him a Dragonfly 14 called Lucky. “I barn alongside. Here he houses his was absolutely useless at racing,” Robert says, “and I couldn’t projects awaiting renovation, though acknowledges that he can’t get on with the people because they were all town people, working work on the boats himself. “So I pay somebody to do it. Which is in offices. So I started going for trips on barges, up the Thames, becoming increasingly difficult because there are not so many hearing all the swearing of the dockers and the bargemen.” people who can work with wood.”

He loved listening to the stories of boatmen. “There used to He has saved several clinker open boats: the 15ft 1922 lobster be an old fisherman called Arthur Hunt,” says Robert. “He was boat Pet; then the 18ft Three Sisters (of 1888). There was the my great hero. He’d sit in the cabin of his boat on Ramsholt 1954 Tollesbury smack’s boat Mussett and most recently the Dock, making nets. He’d been a barge skipper in the First World Faversham barge boat Atlas. He is particularly fond of the 12ft, War. I reckon I actually went to sea before the First World War 1879 Woodbridge pilot boat Teddy which he had to negotiate because I lived the stories he told me.” from local shipwright Frank Knights of Woodbridge.

Robert started writing down all these stories and experiences “I used to enjoy listening to Frank’s stories of the river,” says when his doctor told him that a back injury from farming was Robert. “One day we were looking for something in the cellar. always going to be a problem. He left the heavy lifting to others There was an old boat lying there. ‘How long have you had it?’ I and spent his evenings writing farming columns for the local paper. asked him. ‘Well, I put it in there just after the war,’ he said. He The editor at the time told him: “Your spelling is appalling, your eventually let me have it for a copy of my book The Deben River!” grammar even worse, but you know how to put a story together.”

After having her rebuilt, Robert lent Teddy to Woodbridge The agricultural subject matter was “too much like the day Museum. He continues to support other maritime heritage job” though, so Robert switched to articles on boats and sailing enterprises. He’s chaired two barge trusts and has recently formed for the yachting magazines. When the editors started asking for a trust to save the Four Daughters, an Aldeburgh beach fishing boat. photos with the articles, he bought a camera and took them too.

The passion for boats has passed onto the next two generations.

There were lots of jaunts around the coast and up rivers, but The family business has expanded to include a fishing fleet, and he was also invited by Windjammer Barefoot Cruises on their Robert’s son and grandson are also obsessed with retrieving old four-masted schooner Fantome in the West Indies and a trip on a boats from gardens, sheds and riverbanks. “You can’t let them rot five-masted square-rigger around the Italian coast. His wife Pearl away,” Robert says. “They all have stories to tell.”

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THE MUSKETEERS After a modest debut in 1957, Giacomo Colombo launched his boatyard like a rocket in 1960 with a small series of four racing V8 ‘speedsters’ WORDS GERALD GUETAT PHOTORAPHY HENRI THIBAULT ARCHIVES MUSEO DELLA BARCA LARIANA AND PRIVATE COLLECTIONS

L

Right: Pucci II and Pucci III running together

ike Alexandre Dumas’ The Three Musketeers, the first-series Colombo were in fact four: four extreme and overpowering mounts destined for competition more than for Gran Turismo. The creation of these exceptional runabouts from 1960 owed nothing to chance and everything to local circumstance.

At the time, the Centomiglia del Lario endurance race founded in Como in 1949 triggered the creation of new projects and year after year stimulated the spirit of competition over the region. It last took place in 2020 despite the pandemic, proving that in Italy at least, speedboat racing is still alive and in rude health. Since the beginning, the event has fuelled the ambitions of gentleman drivers, often major industrialists or local luminaries with the money to have new boats capable of winning built nearly every year. In that context, in 1959, Giacomo Colombo received a first commission from Achille Roncoroni, a renown industrialist of Como.

A sailor and a member of the Italian ‘Azzuro’ sailing team at the 1948 Olympics, Roncoroni had the privilege to obtain in 1959 from Carlo Riva the extremely rare agreement to have a unique Tritone Speciale Cadillac made specially for him, longer and more powerful than all the series examples. In the meantime, he also greatly promoted the establishment of a Riva service yard in Menaggio, on Lake Como, in 1960, an ultra-modern facility entrusted to Giacomo Colombo as manager.

On 26 July 2021, Bruno Huber, a Swiss architect living in Lugano and the present-day owner of Pucci I, met Giacomo Colombo to ask him a few questions. The retired boatbuilder clearly understood the crucial importance of Roncoroni and Riva in the orientation of his career: “Signor Roncoroni helped me in putting me in touch with Carlo Riva to be recruited as woodworker in his boatyard in Sarnico, becoming there a master shipwright. As a consistent Riva client, Roncoroni also was instrumental in the foundation of Menaggio’s Riva Boat Service that I had the privilege to manage from its grand opening. But I have always designed the hulls and general lines of my boats myself.”

Achille Roncoroni was also well aware of Carlo Riva’s aversion to racing while Colombo had all the skills needed to build a unit that could claim the honours at Centomiglia. Colombo designed Pucci I, the first of its kind, with a hull inspired by that of the Riva Super Florida, giving birth to a 20ft (6.2m) long. Above the waterline, Colombo opted for an American ‘speedster’ configuration, with a central engine and a two-seat rear cockpit that was almost back to the transom. The idea was to obtain a craft capable of flying over the water projected by the rotation of its propeller while staying as horizontal as possible. With 280hp from a standard V8 Ford Interceptor, Pucci I’s performance quickly proved satisfactory and Roncoroni climbed onto the Centomiglia race podium, third in the 1961 race. That was more than enough to have this wealthy driver moving to a faster boat, ordering from Colombo the Pucci II for which he obtained, by personal connections, the direct import from the United States of a 400 hp Interceptor Ford V8.

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Clockwise from top left: Giacomo Colombo at the Pianello del Lario Museum; the dashboard of a Pucci model; Pucci III at speed; 007 on show at the museum

In 1962, this 7-litre V8 was in fact the engine block that would soon be used by Ford to campaign in the 24 Hours of Le Mans races with the Carroll Shelby’s famous Cobras… For Roncoroni, a second place in the Centomiglia the same year fully justified the risks taken at the wheel of Pucci II trying to tame this bestial V8.

The boat could have won if, believing that he had already won the race while not yet in sight of the finish line, Roncoroni had not eased the throttle, leaving victory to a competitor he had not seen in front of him and closer to the finish line.

At the beginning of the 1960s, the word “rocket” was much in the mood of the times and Colombo coined this model name for its ‘speedster’: Super Rocket reflected the sage of the Moon race that was then still in its infancy. After his success, Colombo designed a new hull to give birth to the following two boats, Pucci III (1963) and 007 in 1964.

The latter obviously took its name from James Bond’s first films, while Pucci III continued the small series begun by Roncoroni in 1960. The development of these two Super Rockets was not without difficulties and their hulls had to be modified several times to better take advantage of the engine power, a 400hp Interceptor for 007 and a brand-new Italian V8, the 44

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famous BPM Vulcano of 8 litres and more than 400hp for Pucci III. But the Vulcano, still in development, was quite fragile and from 1966 was replaced by a 250hp Chrysler engine.

The years passed on and the Super Rockets, legendary boats on their home waters, changed hands to become the pride of new owners still as passionate about these true water-borne Cobras. In the early 1970s, Pucci II was equipped with a backed-up rudder mounting designed by the famous Renato “Sonny” Levi, who also broke a speed record with another Colombo hull. Today, Pucci II is still in the family of its original sponsor, Roncoroni.

In 1975, Pucci III entered into the collection of GianAlberto Zanoletti, founder of the Museo della Barca Lariana.

Soon after that date, 007, still equipped with its 400hp Ford Interceptor, also became the pride of Zanoletti’s unique museum to be preserved forever, as is, unrestored. Thus, the four musketeers of Giacomo Colombo have gone through all kinds of adventures for 60 years to testify to a bygone era, that of the gentlemen-drivers of a local race. But, the Super Rocket also marked the fanfare debut of a new boatyard that has prospered to this day.

The UK’s leading classic yacht refit and repair facility 95 years of experience in traditional yacht refit & restoration

The complete service for all motor and sailing yachts under one roof Teak decking & joinery Spray & hand finishing in paint & varnish Traditional rigging, ropes & splicing Timber masts & spars Marine engineering & electronics Bronze & stainless fabrication Race preparation & support Fox’s Marina & Boatyard, Ipswich, Suffolk, IP2 8SA +44 (0) 1473 689111 foxs@foxsmarina.com

foxsmarina.com Fox's Classic Boat ad - May22.indd 1

09/03/2022 17:07

CLASSIC BOAT MAY 2022

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COLUMBO

MORE THAN 60 YEARS OF PRESTIGE After its first prototype in 1957, Giacomo Colombo made himself a name in boatbuilding with a timeless small production known for its constant quality. From early childhood, he dreamed about woodworking and hull construction at the Cranchi boatyard. While also witnessing the racing success of another illustrious neighbour, Guido Abbate, Colombo did his Master Builder classes at a certain Carlo Riva, opening the way towards a boatbuilding career. In this sense, Giacomo Colombo’s destiny seems to have been crystal clear from his modest beginnings in his own name from 1956 onwards, then as a full-fledged shipyard four years later under the prestigious banner of Riva Boat Service on Lake Como. Like an Arcangeli on Lake Garda, Colombo knew how to honour the confidence of Carlo Riva to build a reputation as a producer of his own models.

These days, the Colombos should be considered unique in that, since the 1960s, they have shown a retro style long before it became a fashion among boat designers. This style makes them timeless and allows

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Above: A rare moment where the three Pucci boats run together. 007 is an the museum Below: Pucci II at speed on the lake

them to keep their value. To acquire a Colombo is to display a discreet disregard for fashions and the passing of time, a bit like some boatyards in New England for which the lobster boat style has never been a simple fashion affectation, but a true philosophy. After the end of the production of his last wooden hulls in 1969, Colombo embarked on a small series of GRP boats.

Fifty years and about 20 models later, Colombo managed to weather the global oil and financial crises by establishing a solid and respected name. The Menaggio yard may have fallen silent in the early 2000s, but having become a brand under the control of the Gruppo Sarnico (Cantieri di Sarnico) in 2007, then re-launched in 2012 with new ambitions, Colombo remains a quality label in the context of a very limited production while the pre-used units, from the 1960s to today, hold their value well.

The authors would like to thank Bruno Huber and Marco Stoppani for their invaluable help on Lake Como.

Zenita • £130,000

Brown Owl • £155,000

Zenita is a 30ft Thornycroft built in 1929 and recently expertly restored. She has a fully equipped galley, an electric toilet and shower. The main saloon features a drop leaf table with storage and wine rack and provides a comfortable dining area. The main saloon also comfortably sleeps 2 and there is a spacious bunk in the fore cabin. She is offered for sale with her highly desirable mooring at Harleyford Marina, Marlow where she is available for immediate viewing.

Dunkirk Little Ship ‘Brown Owl’ is a 42ft John Bain design, built in 1928 by J A Silver of Rosneath. She has been maintained to a high standard and has attended the ‘Dunkirk Returns’ since 1980. Brown Owl can sleep up to six and benefits from a warm air heating system throughout. She is equipped with full navigation equipment and her sale includes her flags issued during WW2. Available for viewing Teddington.

For further information visit: www.cymltd.co.uk • Email: captainhook@cymltd.co.uk • Tel: 07966 578825

ARTISAN BOATWORKS CUSTOM YACHT BUILDERS

CLASSIC BOAT MAY 2022

47

NORTH BY NORTHWEST Buying a classic motor sailer in Dover meant a long, solo delivery trip home to Scotland for her new owner – whose last boat was a Drascombe WORDS AND PHOTOGRAPHS TOM COLVILLE

D

awn mist hung across the gentle sea. In the half-light a dark fin sliced the bow wave.

Then, just as mysterious, it vanished. I watched intently for some minutes. Of a sudden, alongside and astern, the grey waters thronged with uncountable others, converging from all sides.

South west Wales lay 20 miles to starboard. Half a century before, this Sole Bay ketch had frequented Welsh and Irish waters. Now, with schools of dolphins as escort, Vega of Garth had returned.

Designed by J Francis Jones (see our feature on page 54) and built in Scarborough during 1965, Vega is a survivor of the Sole Bay class of motor-sailing ketches: small wooden yachts with enclosed wheelhouses, real power for longer periods under motor, and a traditional rig to give reliable sailing ability. Scantlings and lines were derived from all-weather commercial craft and naval traditions. They sold well. Around 40 boats were built by notable boatyards during the 1960s. Much admired back then, today few ever reappear for sale.

Through 2020, travel became so difficult, the idea of family voyages nearer to home, taking grandchildren on

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Above: Vega in her new home

a classic yacht, held out great promise. Hours became devoted to online research.

Online, many elegant yachts grace the Wooden Ships brokerage. Powerful sheer lines and mirror coats of varnish inspire dreams. Old sailing friends were inspired also, but muttered: “Perhaps he will learn a lesson – he must know wooden boats are unaffordable?”

In April 2021, Vega of Garth appeared for sale. I already knew of her. Channel crossings connect our family. In Dover’s Wellington dock, Vega had often caught my eye. On request, hundreds of ‘intimate’ new images were emailed through. A conditional offer was made. With gear packed up in readiness for a month away, one small snag remained – Vega was moored 500 miles from our West Highland home.

Built originally for a Liverpool-based lawyer, and kept at Garth, by Bangor in north Wales, 30 years later she was rescued from a sorry decline on the south coast of England. Re-decked and totally refitted in South Wales, her experienced new owner moved aboard, voyaging the coasts and inland waterways of northern Europe.

The many formalities of lifted survey, insurance, and ownership transfer were completed in one busy week, once we reached Dover. It became a valuable time, living aboard, getting familiar with the boat. Vega came fully equipped and seaworthy. Tanks were full, all stood ready.

Early one Friday evening, Port control authorised departure: outward bound for Scotland – a huge semicircle voyage of 850 miles – either way! So many dire warnings abound: oil industry construction traffic, small vessels unnoticed in summer haze and mist, also strobe lighting around vast wind farm towers being assembled off the English coast.

The clockwise route west offered many sheltered ports to head towards should things go wrong.

Meanwhile at home, birth of a new grandchild was imminent! Due to Covid quarantine periods, a Dutch sailing friend could no longer crew, so I was on my own.

At 800-900rpm, the powerful Iveco engine drives Vega through smooth seas easily at six knots. Lowstressed, and very well serviced, this reliable commercial engine gave huge confidence. As Dover fell astern,

Top: Fuelling up in Dover Above: Helm station

transits off Navionics were dialled up on the autopilot.

Getting past Land’s End would be some test for this 55- year-old wooden boat, if quiet midsummer weather were to end.

Owners had each equipped Vega well. A veteran electro/hydraulic autopilot – state-of-the-art in its day – still performed as if new. Wheelhouse displays included depth sounders, wind and water speed, GPS, VHF, even an obsolete Koden radar system. A sturdy electro-hydraulic windlass occupied the foredeck; lashings held two massive anchors and a properly serviced liferaft. Below decks I found a veritable treasure chest: fathoms of chain, spare lines, sails and fenders even an Avon dinghy. Lockers held neat boxes full of spares, also instruction books. This superb bosun’s store all belonged with Vega.

The gaff mainsail with double reefing points proved to be a gentle giant. Working jib, low-cut staysail, No 1 jib and larger genoa were neatly bagged up, and I knew the small mizzen would aid steerage. As we departed, the seller had remembered to fetch a multicolour topsail on its carbon fibre spar. There was so much to learn.

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VEGA OF GARTH

Motor-sailing far from land, slightly heeled all night, it felt like Vega knew her own way: the dolphins surely did! Perhaps they detected dull noises as the old wooden vessel parted the seas far offshore? A ‘cheerfilled’ welcome frolicked all around, the enthusiasm opened that crystal, sun-filled day.

Midnight again: only the throbbing engine untiring as rain fell. Off the Llyn peninsular, Bardsey island divides powerful tides. After dark, the cross-current approach to Aberdaron Bay became confusing. Soon, with no hint of impending misrule, only the anchor chain was grumbling. Slight swells disturbed the sheltered bay. By 2am, cosy in the saloon, I slept.

LOSS OF STEERAGE

Favourable tides lifted us off towards Dungeness. As clusters of light and cliff silhouettes passed to starboard, north of shipping lanes, we cleared Beachy Head.

Driving any long-keeled, 10.5-tonne hull to windward under small sails has to be slow work. Yet, off the wind, or plugging along with motor to assist, Vega rode the seas as powerfully as ever, covering distance well. Some 24 hours later, well inshore of the Portland race, Vega was speeding downwind, through confused seas towards idle cruise ships off Weymouth, and nearby Portland Harbour.

Bouncing through Portland’s north entrance, spray thrown high, we escaped chaotic breaking seas. It was time to stop. Half the distance to Penzance lay astern, and Castle Cove anchorage offered sanctuary.

In hot sunshine next morning I relaxed, watching dinghies race nearby. Memories drifted back: 35 years before I had lived nearby. Dorset coasts and this huge naval harbour had been a frequent playground for a sea kayak.

Vivid days followed: dawn off Dartmouth, heading inshore over tumbling seas for a hearty breakfast at anchor in the rain; rounding Start point at hull speed, Vega untroubled, cresting high waves, shoved hard by wind and tide; later that afternoon – some 45 years too late for my abandoned OSTAR entry- sailing in to anchor off Plymouth; favourable tides across Mounts bay to reach Falmouth for diesel. Vega had covered 283 miles in 55 hours, (41 of them engine assisted).The anchor rattled down.

I dared not linger. Cornish places so familiar from a lifetime of sea stories became bypassed. Such tranquil days as these could not last.

From the Lizard light, we aimed well offshore, hoping to round Land’s End on the tide. It was a cracking sail. By late afternoon Longships rocks came abeam. Tides held us. Slowly the light NE wind veered west. Hours passed before the loom of Cornish lights finally slipped below the horizon.

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Above: Portland Bill Below: Offshore wind approaching Falmouth, Cornwall Facing page: Vega following her survey

The rhythmic rumbling stopped. Something had changed. Lights in the distant village were gone. Gale force gusts were driving Vega out to sea.

A mass of derelict crab pots and weed-encrusted lines came up on the windlass. Getting this mess secured so the anchor might drop clear took time. Then I selected reverse. In that split-second, the wheel spun free. The upper helm also spun – nothing. Jammed hard to port, the transom-hung rudder was useless. With the huge tangle weighing her bows, Vega was adrift.

Soundings increased: now 20, then 25 meters. I let the anchor drop far down, and waited. Thankfully, it held.

Vega’s steel tiller is moved by hydraulics. A vital weld to the rudder bracket had failed. Among the equipment below decks lay a jury tiller. Once rigged with lines through wheelhouse doors, I had control again. Sheets of spray lifted in Force 7 gusts as we powered back to shelter. The sorry tangle was jettisoned in the shallows. Nearby, the anchor held firm.

Holyhead was 25 miles to the north. I needed a workshop, but it was the weekend. Helpful staff authorised Vega’s approach to the congested visitors’ pontoon. Bits of spare metal usually litter boatyards, so I hunted about, quizzing owners working on their yachts. Pointing to some scrap, one boat owner

Main image: With a distinct stepped bulwark at the stem, Tide is a powerful machine upwind Inset: Beau Van Metre, a spitting image of his father at the helm

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VEGA OF GARTH

volunteered the use of his arc welder. We were in business!

Soon a new tiller clamp was fabricated. Next day, with off-duty marina staff helping, we secured this clamp to the rudder bracket. It worked again, strong and good.

Funding marinas instead of sailing is really not my thing: ‘beer tokens’ show gratitude with a universal appeal! Gentle west winds with the evening tide had promise to carry us on north, so on we went.

Mariners accept that King Neptune has a game: “The rule of three”. It can be played at any hour.

After a period in lumpy seas, the new rudder clamp slowly loosened. For the coming night I chose to re-rig the jury tiller.

Suddenly, the engine stopped. Large diesel engines seldom stop so abruptly. Lifting insulated wheelhouse floor panels far out to sea was not easy. I peered down.

Something odd caught my eye – a bare terminal on the injector pump gleamed in my head-torch. A rogue bit of shredded alternator belt was draped over fuel pipes.

The ignition cable had been knocked off.

Working next to a hot engine in dark unfamiliar spaces, while Vega wallowed in moderate seas, I leave to your imagination. Suddenly the toolbox tipped over, its contents vanishing into the bilges. My misery was complete! Dawn light streaked the eastern sky before two new belts were tight. The great motor restarted.

Through half-light, Vega powered on north. What else had Neptune in mind?

Lights on the Calve of Man glimmered in the distance.

Against the steady throb of the engine, a piercing alarm sounded. The GPS screen went blank. Close astern, its lights now dim against dawn skies, a small cargo ship was ploughing directly towards Vega. Heaving tiller lines hard across, we turned due west. A minute later, 50m away, MS Magdelena slid past; I saw no sign of crew.

Some 18 miles from where Vega bashed northwards through heavy seas, there is a sheltered bay. Maybe with Neptune’s ‘proficiency tests’ over 600 miles from

Above: Sound of Mull approaching Tobermory Below: Radar helps foggy morning off Kerrara near Oban

Dover, a rest day had been earned? Sun, summer breezes and smells of good food filled the cabins for our holiday.

All next day, cabin handholds were vital as Vega rolled north, close-hauled in strengthening winds.

Crashing surf on the jagged lee shore of Galloway rebounded, uncomfortably close. Vega never faltered.

Tranquil Loch Ryan offered respite.

Through mirror-calm mist, a vee-shaped wake arrowed towards Campbelltown. We needed diesel. In any case, until noon, severe tides by Sanda Island ran east. Tanks full, we idled south in light airs. Even after the tide turned, the slight breeze came round to head us. Eventually, tight below the sentinel lighthouse, completely dwarfed by majestic lonely Kintyre cliffs, we turned north. Vega never reached the beautiful Isle of Gigha – the tranquil MacCormaig Isles lay 5 hours further north. By midnight she was snugly anchored in the tiny inlet at Eilean Mòr.

Meandering slowly north the next day, through tidal-gate challenges, warm breezes filled Vega’s sails. The flood stream delivered us to deserted Ardencaple Bay. For this Drascombe sailor – now turned classic yacht owner – reliance on radar and Navionics to pierce the murk towards Mull, was a novel experience. As mists cleared, spy holes through battlements of Duart Castle, high above, bore witness. Under full sail Vega stole away up the sound of Mull, and entered new home waters. Off Kilchoan the wind died.

Relentless tides would soon turn south once more. In bright sun, motor pushing gently, Ardnamurchan Lighthouse came abeam. Gentle zephyrs ruffled the sails. That Friday so near home, there was no rush.

The awesome wake left by Vega of Garth fell silent.

Exactly 14 days out from Dover, the chain rattled down. Our new grandson had arrived first… four days quicker!

See page 54 for the story of Vega of Garth’s designer, Jack Francis Jones

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CLASSIC BOAT MAY 2022

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CLASSIC BOAT MAY 2022

53

JACK FRANCIS JONES We trace the diverse career of the sometimes-forgotten post-war English yacht designer Jack Francis Jones

C/O WOODEN SHIPS

WORDS PETER POLAND

Julia recently wrote in Yachting Monthly of her Uncle Jack: “I am beginning to regret that it’s taken me 60 years to show any real interest in his work. Jack drew 110 individual designs from which more than 1,000 boats were built. I’d loved him as a person – flamboyant, opinionated, touchy – but it wasn’t until I met the designer Alan Gurney that I began to realise what I’d been missing by taking so little notice of his work.”

Along with Kim Holman and Peter Brown, Alan Gurney honed his designing skills working for Francis Jones. All three of these ‘apprentices’ obviously learned a lot from their boss; and all three went on to become successful designers in their own right, Peter Brown eventually going into partnership with Francis Jones.

Among many great yachts, Alan Gurney’s masterpieces included the 73ft (22.3m) Windward Passage (1967) and Chay Blyth’s Great Britain II. Meanwhile Kim Holman’s cruiser-racer designs dominated East Anglian and RORC races for many years.

Julia Jones often wonders whether her uncle Jack’s lack of involvement in offshore racing – unlike Holman – might have held back his career. Those were the days when many yacht designers made their names with race-winning cruiser-racers and later cashed in on the recurring royalties earned from GRP production

Facing page: Sole Bay 35 Vega of Garth, believed to be one of the last gaff-rigged examples Above: Jack Francis Jones (left) and Mr & Mrs Whisstock Below: The Kestrel 22 was a top-selling Francis Jones design, made in wood and later in GRP

models. With the exception of his later Kestrel 22 design, Francis Jones never had any truck with GRP. Julia summed up her uncle’s designs well, saying “Balance, seaworthiness and sailing ability are features of Jack’s cruising yachts and owners have taken them all over the world. As Brian Hammett, owner of Jack’s 1965 gaff cutter Avola and former vice president of the Cruising Association said “You sit in his boats, not on them. He designed his boats to look after their owners.”

Some have said that an unusual side to Francis Jones’s designs is that he did not have a ‘house style’.

No immediately obvious style could ever have covered the broad spectrum of his work, which included designs like Fleur de Lys motor yachts, Sole Bay motor sailers, Otter 40 motor yachts and sleek offshore cruising yachts, as well as the occasional beautiful gaffer like Corista, Avola and Celandine or the popular Kestrel 22 weekend cruiser.

SEAKINDLY AND COMFORTABLE Many Francis Jones craft now pass through the hands of Peter and Richard Gregson of Wooden Ships yacht brokers in Dartmouth. Richard Gregson kindly passed on Wooden Ships’ valuable first-hand knowledge based on 30 years’ experience, telling me that Francis Jones

C/O JULIA JONES

UNCLE JACK

C/O SUE WHISSTOCK

J

ack Francis Jones made his name as a prolific designer of a wide variety of craft. These designs included dayboats, cruising yachts, motor-sailers, workboats and motor yachts designed between the years just before the war (he was called up to join the RNVR in 1941) and his death in 1990.

He grew up in Suffolk and fell in love with the river Deben at an early age. Whenever possible, he and his younger brother George Jones would cycle from their father’s farm to the banks of the Deben at Waldringfield where they learned to sail. After his father’s untimely death in 1933, Francis Jones went to Birmingham to work in engineering design and also fell under the spell of Yachting Monthly, whose editor Maurice Griffiths published his first two designs; a 15ft and 17ft dinghy. Francis Jones also wrote regularly for the ‘Canvas’ column before his call-up in 1941.

After an eventful war with the RNVR (during which he was seriously wounded on two occasions) Francis Jones bought a house in Waldringfield on the banks of the river that he had always loved. There he set up shop as an AINA (Associate of the Institution of Naval Architects), a title he preferred to ‘yacht designer’.

Later in his career Francis Jones moved his design studio from Waldringfield to the Ferry Dock in Woodbridge. His brother George Jones also ran his yacht brokerage business there and for many years wrote the East Coast section of Yachting Monthly’s regular feature ‘Around the Coast.’ At that time George had become owner of Arthur Ransome’s Giles-designed ketch Peter Duck. Keeping her in the family, George’s daughter Julia Jones – an accomplished author and co-owner with her husband Francis Wheen of publishers Golden Duck – later bought Peter Duck.

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C/O WOODEN SHIPS

C/O WOODEN SHIPS

JACK FRANCIS JONES

designs are always very purposeful and practical yachts and designed to be seakindly. He explained how the Fleur de Lys motor yacht range was a huge success, encompassing the post-war design evolution that encompassed greater beam and stiffer bilges, creating more spacious and comfortable motor yachts. The elegant Fleur de Lys 52 was the most popular model for good reason: it offered lots of deck space, three or four sleeping cabins and a spacious deck saloon in a motor yacht of a size that amateur yachtsmen could handle.

The Otter 40 and 36 were also successful, attractive twin-screw motor yachts with a central wheelhouse and raised sheer aft to accommodate the stern cabin.

These were built by famous yards like Landamores and Priors. Several had a mizzen mast to take a steadying sail.

SOLE BAY MOTOR-SAILERS

C/O SANDEMAN YACHT COMPANY

Francis Jones’s Sole Bay motor-sailers are excellent, underrated designs, with a sheltered amidships wheelhouse to extend the UK sailing season. A sensible ketch rig is not too big to handle while a large engine makes these boats easy for a couple to cruise. Sole Bays offer a lot of space for their length. The larger 40ft (12.2m) version has two good-sized sleeping cabins and a saloon, while the more numerous 35ft (10.7) version has a comfortable aft cabin and berths in the saloon. Both make great family cruising boats.

Wooden Ships put me in touch with Jim Noble who has owned his Sole Bay 40 Simandy for 27 years, proof

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Above left: Almerie, a 58ft Fleur de Lys Above right: Octavia ll, a Francis Jones designed 38ft motor sailer Bottom: The Otter 40 was one of Francis Jones’s most successful motor yachts

that these yachts give owners great satisfaction. She was built in 1964 by Gordon Armstrong Marine and now lives in Granton. “I was familiar with the Sole Bay 35 class which I had sailed and liked very much,” says Jim. “When Simandy came on the market I was impressed by her specifications and felt she was an improvement on the 35s. Having owned her for 27 years my views have not changed. She sails very well, as you would expect from looking at her underwater profile. In the past my wife and I have frequently sailed her on our own; at other times often with only two or three. She does require a fair breeze under sail; under power she has a very efficient and economical engine that gives her exceptional manoeuvrability.” Her engine is a sixcylinder, 115hp Perkins (not original). “The Perkins is a superb engine and spares are readily available.”

As an ex-builder of GRP cruising and racing yachts, I asked if maintenance on an old, wooden 40-footer was ever a problem. Jim replied “Being built in copper-sheathed iroko and lifted out every winter, all that’s required is annual painting and varnishing and the usual care. I have never had a major problem with machinery or hull. Her last survey was excellent, with only minor points reported. Simandy is a much loved member of our family and very much admired wherever she goes. Properly maintained, she should survive for many more years.”

I spoke to a sailor who recently bought a Sole Bay 35, after spending around 25 years cruising a Drascombe Coaster around Scotland’s West Coast and

C/O WOODEN SHIPS

C/O WOODEN SHIPS

abroad. Tom Colville bought the Sole Bay 35, saying that the design “always struck me as a no-nonsense practical solution for a small family or a couple with guests who wish to cruise the northern part of Britain comfortably in all weathers.”

Tom reckons that around 35 examples of the Sole Bay 35 and the later 36 were built. His 1961 Sole Bay 35 Vega of Garth was – like the 40ft (12.2m) Simandy – built by Gordon Alexander in Scarborough and is believed to be one of the last gaff-rigged examples.

Back in the 1960s, a lot of yards had been building wooden fishing boats over many generations. Tom said that some, like the Gordon Armstrong yard, decided to apply their shipwrights’ skills to building yachts and dinghies. He added that “it is now clear, almost 60 years on, that the best preserved Sole Bay examples were indeed constructed using time-honoured light fishing craft techniques by shipwrights who had generations of experience of meeting the requirements of fishermen.”

When I asked Tom why he was so attracted to a Sole Bay 35, he said “I am a hands-on person and enjoy passing on the experience, knowledge and skills I have learned down the decades. Not for me the cloned GRP yachts that now clog up marinas. I wished to

Above left and right: The Sole Bay 40 Simandy has the luxury of a spacious wheel house Below: Sole Bay 35 Vega of Garth before Tom Colville sailed her to her new home in Scotland

show my grandchildren, wider family and friends how cruising a yacht used to be.

“Where I sail [on the west Scotland coast] we estimate that through a normal summer, three or four days out of every seven are likely to offer pleasant sailing weather. Long days at anchor while unseasonable weather systems blow past are commonplace. The Sole Bay is ideal. With her powerful motor installed to workboat standards, she can proceed in almost any sea conditions... as my recent 850-mile delivery trip from Dover up to the west coast of Scotland [often singlehanded] with adverse winds up the Irish sea ably demonstrated to me.”

A second feature that appealed to Tom was Vega’s ability to take the ground. Built on the Yorkshire east coast, her hull is designed to use ‘legs’ on a drying mooring. With shallow draught, a long iron keel, keelson and a sternpost carefully profiled to offer protection to the skeg and rudder, these hulls were designed to be very robust when put ashore. So Tom says the shallow draught “permits access to the most sheltered corner of our inner loch [to dry out] on a slope used for centuries by local craft ... until this generation at least!”

C/O TOM COLVILLE

INCHCAPE MOTOR-SAILERS The Inchcape range of motor-sailers is another example of Francis Jones’s ability to come up with practical and seakindly hull shapes. The Inchcape designs resulted from the collaboration between Francis Jones and James Evans of the Eyemouth Boatbuilding Company, who built the range in his yard in Berwickshire.

Richard Gregson of yacht brokers Wooden Ships told me that the canoe-sterned Inchcape hulls were inspired by Scottish fishing boats. These were built to be strong, powerful and seaworthy vessels capable of working in the North Sea and north Atlantic all year round. Evans wanted to replicate these virtues in a cruising yacht, giving owners a high degree of comfort combined with the strength and peace of mind of a fishing boat. Evans achieved this blend and came up CLASSIC BOAT MAY 2022

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C/O WOODEN SHIPS

C/O WOODEN SHIPS

JACK FRANCIS JONES

SEPHINE By way of a total contrast, I was much taken by Francis Jones’s design of the yacht Sephine; a graceful 50-footer (15.1m) with elegant overhangs, a 36ft (11m) waterline length, beam of 14ft 1in (14.3m) and draught of 6ft 9in (2.1m). It’s hard to grasp that this sleek yacht came from the same hand that drew the Sole Bay motor-sailers and Fleur de Lys motor yachts.

It illustrates the eclectic versatility of Francis Jones and the extraordinary variety of the boats that he designed.

Beautifully built by Staniland in 1966, Sephine has ample space for a large crew, yet can be easily handled by just two. David Stembridge bought her in 1995 from her original owner and told me that “apart from her stunning appearance, we were impressed by the large cockpit, wide side decks and her stability in a big sea. The easy companionway, enormous headroom below decks and the shower room were great assets.

“Sephine took care of us on many rough trips and with a reefed main and staysail she was very comfortable in a Force 8 at eight knots. Our cruising took us across Biscay to Spain several times. We also cruised round Brittany, the Scillies and Eire. Our last cruising ground was the West Coast and islands of Scotland before returning to the Yealm from where our son Philip acquired her to base her in Largs.” David’s son Philip Stembridge duly took up the baton saying 58

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Above left: Halcyon of Eyemouth, a 45ft Inchcape class, shows off her elegant sheer and canoe stern and (above right) her splendidly spacious saloon Below: Sephine, an elegant Francis Jones-designed 50-footer

“While I had a share in Sephine from the outset, there was a choice in around 2008 whether to take her on. I had in mind a Swan 43 and was conscious of the amount of work with a wooden yacht. However, having had the family grow up on Sephine, I knew there would be howls of dismay if we ended up with a smaller yacht... particularly the cockpit.”

As is often the case, classic yachts can become members of the family and be passed down the generations. Philip covered many miles in her, saying “There were plenty of memorable voyages; crossing Biscay (Dublin – Bayona) in 2013 with two of my sons and a friend from Scotland then re-crossing Biscay from La Coruna to Newton Ferrers in 2017 with two sons. Another was sailing non-stop with my wife from Valencia along the South Coast of Spain, past Gibraltar and then up to Portimao, Algarve.”

Giving a third generation’s opinion of this great Francis Jones design, Philip’s son Andrew told me “She was a brilliant boat to have learned to sail on from a very young age. I shall never forget any of the trips on her; especially the mission to the Med and crossing the Bay of Biscay.” And now Sephine has moved on to new owners. With luck, they’ll have the same fun and keep her for around a quarter of a century like her previous family owners.

C/O STEMBRIDGE FAMILY

with a variety of sizes, the Inchcape 45 being one of the most popular of the range. Several were built over the years, the last example going down the slip in Eyemouth in 1990.

The Inchcape 45 weighs in at a substantial 29 tonnes, has a beam of 15ft 9in (4.8m) and draws 5ft 9in (1.8m). Sleeping accommodation for six is situated in the fore and aft cabins and there’s a pilot berth outboard in the voluminous saloon. The space below is amazing for a 45ft (13.7m) motor-sailer, largely thanks to Francis Jones’s hull lines. The crowning glory is a splendid wheelhouse amidships giving loads of space and ample protection for the helmsman and crew.

A well equipped and maintained example can be found on the broker’s website today (woodenships.co.uk).

BEKEN

CORISTA AND CELANDINE Above: The fabulous Corista, built by Whisstocks in Woodbridge Below left: Celandine on a mooring in Pyefleet. Maurice Griffiths described her as Jones’s prettiest design Below right: Cappelle, 34ft

The History of Whisstock’s Boatyard covers some Francis Jones designs.

Celandine was another Francis Jones design of outstanding beauty. She was built in 1967 for Stewart Platt by Ian Brown’s yard in Rowhedge. Yachting Monthly’s editor Maurice Griffiths had employed Francis Jones as a regular writer for the magazine and often published the lines and plans of his designs.

Griffiths described this 37ft (11.3m) gaff-rigged ketch as perhaps the ‘prettiest’ to date, praise indeed from a much respected editor and yacht designer.

All Francis Jones-designed boats – apart from later, GRP, versions of the Kestrel 22 – have wooden hulls, decks and interiors. So considerable maintenance could well be involved from time to time. But there are plenty around who will be happy to accept this in return for the pleasure and satisfaction of owning a Francis Jones-designed classic.

Francis Jones design listed for Yacht Brokerage

See page 48 for Tom Colville’s account of his voyage aboard the Francis Jones-designed motor-sailer Vega of Garth. And look out for our article on the yachtsman volunteers of the RNVR in World War Two, among whom served Francis Jones. Coming soon

C/O CLASSIC YACHT BROKERAGE

sale with Classic

C/O JULIA JONES

Francis Jones also produced some fascinating designs that were built by Whisstocks in Woodbridge on the river Deben in Suffolk. Perhaps the most famous of these was Corista, built by Whisstocks in 1952 for Philip Allen. After the end of the war, the Allens wanted a bigger boat to replace their William Maxwell Blake-designed Mirelle, in which they had cruised thousands of miles in the 1930s. Philip Allen presented his design requirements to Francis Jones who then drew the beautiful 27-tonne 46ft (134m) gaff cutter that was duly named Corista (an anagram of Allen’s company Aristoc).

Allen wanted a yacht for extended cruising when just he and his wife would often be handling her alone.

So he prescribed the gaff rig to split the sail plan aft of the mast into convenient areas. He also set out the accommodation plan he wanted. Some said Corista resembled the famous Dyarchy designed by Giles; but she drew less and was 1ft (30cm) wider in the beam.

During the Allen’s ownership, she cropped up in several Royal Cruising Club journals. But according to a sad entry in the WoodenBoat Forum “she was sailed to Canada by her second owner then – alas – she had a fire on board and was burned.” Sue Whisstock’s book

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CRAFTSMANSHIP

ATKINS KETCH A YEAR FROM COMPLETION Progress on the Acorn to Arabella project in Granby, Massachusetts

T

he Acorn to Arabella boatbuilding project has

eliminating the need for a blackwater holding tank. Denette

announced that they will launch Arabella in

Facing page,

is an avid hunter and fisherman, so he built a good-sized

2023, with an exact date and location coming

clockwise from

custom refrigerator that will have a remotely mounted

soon. The last open house will be 7-8 May 2022,

top left: Arabella

condenser unit with quick-disconnect hoses to make for

and installation of the whiskey plank will be live-streamed

in build; Wash

easy engine access.

via YouTube on 28 May this year.

basin in the heads;

The builder, Steve Denette, is the fifth generation of his

For the electrics, romex-style marine-grade Ancor wiring

The forepeak and

has been run through conduit to bus bars, which will make

family to live at Pinetum Farm in Granby, Massachusetts,

main cabin;

maintenance and future additions to the system easier. The

where he is building Arabella and where he harvested,

Composting

plan is to install LED lighting and plenty of charging ports

dried, and milled a lion’s share of the wood used in her

head; General

for devices throughout the saloon.

construction. He climbed the maple that now makes his

view of the

galley counter backsplash, and his great-grandfather

saloon; The galley

farm, milling the wood, and lofting from plans for the

planted the spruce that has now become the lumber for her

with diesel oven

‘Ingrid’ design, a 38ft (11.6m) William Atkin-designed

main mast. The popular YouTube channel, Acorn to

and Shipmate

double-ended ketch. The channel is perhaps best known for

Arabella, releases weekly videos documenting the project.

wood stove

pouring a 9,500lb (4.3-tonne) keel of lead collected from

Recent work has focused on accommodation and

In 2016, the project began with felling trees from the

unserviceable boats. A new full-time crew member, Kaylyn

systems. Arabella’s permanently-installed 7ft (2.1m)

Below left: The

‘KP’ Palella, who started in March and has extensive

workbench, which will double as a berth, has been

workbench

experience in restoration, building, rigging, and skippering,

instrumental for efficiency, and most recently, a three-

has begun work on the preparations to plank the deck.

burner Dickinson Mediterranean propane cook stove was

Below right: The

put into place, completing the main galley arrangements.

team. Builder

Fairing the deck beams and centerline blocking is up next.

Reclaimed Honduras mahongany from Victoria, which was

Steve is on the far

while learning seamanship with friends as they cruise on up

a 1926 William Atkin-designed donor boat, has been

left

to Maine and beyond. The boat is ultimately a vehicle to

After launch, Denette’s plan is to continue making videos

integrated into the interior furniture—lighting and other

bring him and his partner, Robin Agricola, to remote

fixtures from her will also find a new home in Arabella.

rock- climbing destinations and other adventures, mostly in

The approach to the interior has been driven by the

the high latitudes.

need for self-reliance and simplicity of maintenance. For example, a watermaker will be the boat’s sole source of water, but they’ve opted for foot pumps over pressurised.

A composting (desiccating) AirHead loo has been installed,

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CLASSIC BOAT MAY 2022

For more information or to support the documentation of this project, visit acorntoarabella.com. New videos are released every Friday

CRAFTSMANSHIP

CLASSIC BOAT MAY 2022

61

TOM CUNLIFFE

A MAN YOU WON’T MEET EVERY DAY A wooden boat is the passport to meeting miraculous souls ILLUSTRATION CLAUDIA MYATT

O

ut of respect for advancing years and the diminishing time I can set aside for scraping, caulking and painting, I sold my last wooden boat a while ago. Now, I sail a carefully chosen American bermudan cutter constructed out of GRP. She ticks every box for Roz and me, but we still yearn for the spiritual experience of living in an artefact carved from the forest, powered by hemp and flax grown in the fields and fastened by metals mined in the deep places of the earth.

These things are tangible, but what we miss most of all is the less definable human element of traditional seafaring. When I sit down to write this column, I often start by thinking about a particular boat, then find my mind wandering to the people who bring her to life. A boat on her own can be full of interest, but for the total experience we must meet the people who sail her. An outstanding feature of classic craft is that they attract the sort of characters you don’t meet every day.

Looking back over the years of voyaging, I realise I’ve been surrounded by colourful personalities entirely because of the boat I was operating at the time. If I turn up at Paimpol to enjoy the Sea Shanty festival in my current yacht the music won’t have changed much, but the boat won’t make friends like the old ones did. Sail in with a Galway hooker, a Yorkshire coble, a Dutch fishing botter or an Essex smack, however, and you’ve a ticket to a different world.

People of the sea seem to burst out from under tidal stones to

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CLASSIC BOAT MAY 2022

crowd around such vessels. The drinks flow, yarns are spun, home-made music sings and, in the words of Rudyard Kipling, “the wildest tales are true.”

All my wooden boats had this effect, but it probably peaked during the 15 years following 1982 when Roz, Hannah and I had the 1911 cutter Hirta. Back then nobody took special notice of a 35-tonne pilot cutter. The only ones anybody had heard of were those made famous by HW Tilman. The surviving examples still at sea were all unrestored but that didn’t stop them making some impressive passages. When we showed up at Douarnenez in 1986 for the first of the great French festivals, we’d just returned from the Caribbean following an outbound voyage taking in Norway, Greenland, Newfoundland and the United Sates. Our allotted berth for this and the magnificent 1988 event which followed was alongside the tidal wall in the old harbour of Rosmeur. We rafted up to Baroque, Peggy and

Madcap, all veterans of many a competitive beat down the Bristol Channel in search of business in days so long ago that people still imagined cavalry could charge machine guns.

The next raft to seaward of ours was Galway Hookers, with such memorable names as Con McCann’s Connacht and Johnny Healion’s Morning Star sporting fiddlers, a piper and Paddy Barry on guitar and vocals. When the rafts came together after the bars shut, the songs and the laughter were full throttle.

One person who stands out from those rare old times is the late Yvon le Corre, marine artist of Brittany, writer and extraordinary sailor who died two years ago. I first became aware of Yvon as the man who designed and painted the posters for those early events.

Just as Toulouse Lautrec’s depictions of 19th-century Paris are seen as fine art, Yvon’s for the Breton regattas must go the same way.

When I visited him in his home in the half-timbered streets of old Tréguier later that summer and found him surrounded by the trappings of a true Bohemian, I realised I was in the presence of someone special, but it is as a sailor that I shall remember him.

Some time previously, he had lost his first major vessel, an Essex smack which he single-handed around the seven seas and finally said goodbye to in Scotland.

He’d salvaged the dinghy and the mast, I recall, and had somehow transported them back to Tréguier where he installed the boat in the entrance lobby of another medieval house that backed onto the one where I met him in the late 1980s. The house was home to Azou, an old friend, and there he unrolled his bedding, sleeping in the boat downstairs while life went on around him. In due course their son was born and the 1988 poster had a painting of a little boy with a model boat under his arm gazing seawards at an armada of classic working craft. A Google search for ‘Le Chasse Marée Douarnenez 88’ will take you to see it. The boy is Yvon and Azou’s lad and the boat is a model of Eliboubane¸ the ‘chaloupe sardinière’ which I’ll tell you about.

In 1981, Le Corre approached Francois Vivier, a marine architect known for his accurate generation of traditionally inspired designs. He wanted a north Breton open sardine boat, lug rigged with a schooner configuration and no concessions to modern ‘improvements’. What he got was the definitive French lugger, 10m (33ft) long, 3m (10ft) wide, displacing 6½ tonnes.

Originally crewed by seven fishermen, Le Corre sailed her short-

handed, engineless, and often alone, coping somehow with the powerful, highly demanding rig and driving her hard on some remarkable voyages. My sharpest memory of the boat with her ‘over-plumb’ bow and black tarred sides is entering the Tréguier River in 1988 after the festival. I had visited her briefly in Douarnenez to make my number with Yvon and we’d left on the same tide, both bound for points north and east. You’d think, wouldn’t you, that a big pilot cutter with a keen crew would have sailed a short-handed 35-footer under the horizon after a hundred miles or so, but that’s not how it was. We’d lost sight of Eliboubane overnight and were coming into the Tréguier River with the dawn. The western approaches are a wasteland of drying rocks and shoals with a couple of islands. The main road in makes a dog-leg detour safely around these hazards, adding three well-marked miles or so to the trip. As we hardened up close-hauled to enter the river proper with the impossible piles of rock close to starboard, my mate pointed to the inside island. Above it, two mastheads were sailing along, bobbing slightly to the scend. We were just bearing away into the buoyed channel when the lugger popped out from behind the boulders, hauled her sheets and proceeded upstream in company.

There was, of course, no GPS in those days and I have to say that, as a hardened rock-hopper, trained in the knock-’em’-dead school of examining Yachtmaster Instructors, I wouldn’t have tried my luck in there in broad daylight, let alone in the grey before sunrise. I had never been so impressed with a piece of pilotage and I still haven’t. It was surreal. As he drew alongside, sailing home with both his near-black lugs drawing sweetly, he was drinking a mug of coffee and enjoying a morning smoke.

We spent a day or two with Yvon in the town, anchored in deep water, rowing up to the landing. Our paths didn’t cross again until, after 25 years, he came aboard another boat to catch up, once again in Tréguier. I asked what had become of Eliboubane and this is what he told me: He’d sailed the seas in the lugger as he always intended, going down to the Cabo Verde islands where he had made friends with the local fishing communities. He managed the long thrash home, then, having no further use for his boat, he’d reluctantly decided to let her go. He advertised her for sale at a knock-down price, hoping for a buyer who would see her for the magnificent creature she was. There were no takers, so he offered her to his local commune for nothing on the understanding that they would keep her up and use her for the general good. Again, nobody stirred. Saddened, he thought for a while, then he remembered the fishermen of the Cabo Verdes, so poor that many could not afford a decent vessel. He pointed her bow back to the islands where he had been befriended far from home as a sailor among sailors, and he gave them his boat.

A man you won’t meet every day.

CLASSIC BOAT MAY 2022

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Getting afloat

There are so many advantages to charter that it sometimes seems a wonder people own their own boats. Venture Sail has over two dozen vessels on its books, ranging from modern motor yachts to square-riggers, but the fleet is overwhelmingly traditional, featuring many of the sailing boats featured in these pages over the years. Destination wise, the classic cruising spots in Britain and Europe are all covered, and for trips further afield, there are boats working the Atlantic, from the Caribbean all the way down to Antarctica.

Activities include cargo-carrying, marine festivals, wild swimming and snorkelling, and wildlife spotting. Crewed charter means guests partake in the sailing as much or as little as they like, and passengers can generally book single berths or charter the whole vessel. We found an eight-day trip through the Aeolian islands in the peak of the school summer holidays in August on the tall ship Florette for £1,350, which includes roughly two meals a day. Other vessels on Venture Sail’s list include the stunning pilot cutter replica Pellew and the triple-masted lugger Grayhound.

See venturesailholidays.com for more info

To see boats for sale go to classicboat.co.uk 64

CLASSIC BOAT MAY 2022

For Sale

Call: +39 392 955 0983 or Scan here for more information!

CLASSIC YACHT BROKERAGE

ALL TYPES OF SAILING AND MOTOR YACHTS REQUIRED TO REPLACE THOSE RECENTLY SOLD.

www.classicyachtbrokerage.co.uk

41ft. CT41 BLUE-WATER KETCH William Garden design, built Ta Chaio Shipbuilding Co. 1976. GRP moulded hull, teak laid decks, Mahogany pilot-house. Traditional interior, seven berths.

Bermudian rig sets 792 sq.ft. Recent sail wardrobe. 50hp Volvo diesel (2019) bow thruster. Cruising inventory. Capable long-distance modern classic.

2019 Survey. £65,000 Lying: Brittany

42ft. SPIRIT FRACTIONAL RACING SLOOP Sean McMillan design, built Spirit Yachts, Ipswich 1998.

Epoxy Cedar hull, teak laid decks, mahogany coachroof, cockpit and brightwork.

Fin keel. Powerful rig. 18hp Yanmar diesel. Four berths in two cabins, galley, heads and heating. Outstanding craftsmanship, sparkling sailing performance.

Reduced guide price. £140,000 Lying: East Coast

42ft. CLASSIC MOTOR YACHT Warrington Smyth design, built Falmouth Boatbuilding Co. in 1957 to Lloyds 100A1. Honduras mahogany hull. Burma teak decks. Spacious interior, four plus berths, galley, heads/shower. Large deck saloon and aft cockpit. Pair 100hp Perkins diesels. Excellent weekend/holiday retreat or extended cruising. 2017 survey. Current ownership of 40 years. £65,000 Lying: River Thames

52ft. FLEUR DE LYS MOTOR-YACHT Francis Jones design, built Dagless Ltd. Wisbech 1964.

Iroko hull, teak laid decks, iroko superstructure. Generous interior volume, six berth in three cabins. Deck and lower saloons. Galley, two heads and showers.

Workshop. Webasto heating. 78hp Gardner 5LX diesel. Characterful and elegant, ideal liveaboard. Boat Safety Cert. £75,000 Lying: Somerset

76ft. CLASSIC OCEAN CRUISER Roberto Hossman design, built Astilleros Alianza, Argentina 1984.

Thyssen steel hull, GRP moulded superstructure. Teak laid decks and brightwork.

Eight guests in four cabins, plus three crew. Four heads/showers. Powerful cruising rig. 375hp Volvo diesel. High-end refit 2010. Surveyed 2021. Comfortable blue-water yacht. UK Flag. £270,000 Lying: Gibraltar

40ft. EAGLE CLASS MOTOR YACHT Osborne of Littlehampton designed and built 1939.

Carvel Oregon Pine hull, teak laid decks, mahogany superstructure and brightwork. Six berths in three cabins, original restored interior. Pair new 95hp Beta diesels. Interesting war history and extensive documentation. Fully restored in 2018

by Bristol Classic Boat Co. Boat Safety Cert. £68,000 Lying Somerset

INTERNATIONAL BROKERAGE, ESTABLISHED OVER 28 YEARS info@classicyachtbrokerage.co.uk +44 (0) 1905-356482 / 07949-095075 ASSOCIATE BROKERS: RBS MARINE, BIRDHAM POOL, CHICHESTER

CLASSIC BOAT MAY 2022

65

BROKERAGE

Boats for sale Looking to sell your boat?

Reach over 50,000 readers each month

To advertise call Andrew Mackenzie +44 (0)207 349 3718 or email andrew.mackenzie@chelseamagazines.com

PLUS For more boats to buy go to

classicboat.co.uk/buy-a-classic-boat

PINTAIL OF AVON.

Sloop with bilge keels and long centre keel. 27ft 6ins – 8ft 9ins – 3ft 6ins. Designed by Hugh Rossiter and built in 1966 for himself at his yard in Christchurch. Iroko planking on steam bent Canadian Rock Elm timbers with marine plywood deck, Trakmark sheathed. Built to Lloyds class 100A1. Bukh DV20 2 cylinder diesel. Alloy mast. Wooden boom. Tan sails. Big refit at Elephant Boatyard 2021 Lying: Solent Price: £18,000 Email: charles_rossiter@hotmail.com • Tel: 07802 422951

TRADITIONAL WOODEN OBAN SKIFF.

This is a beautiful example of a traditional wooden skiff was made to order to a very high quality by traditional wooden boat builder A&R Way Ltd. Unfortunately the owner died before he could sail it. The boat has been stored with the boat builder since.

The boat cost £22,500.00 to build, will accept £20,000.00 Ono. Contact: alhudson123@aol.com or 07936 106020

ROSSITER PINTAIL – LOA 9M.

A wonderful mix of classical looks with minimal maintenance, built in 1978 and undergone a major refit in the past few years, she is a fantastic example of these sea-kindly heavy displacement boats.

Beta 25 engine; cutter rig, lying Cornwall. £19,500.

Email: tehidy@ansome.co.uk • Tel: +44 7774 633 479

TWELVE-FOOT CLINKER, MAHOGANY ON OAK, DINGHY WITH STANDING LUG SAIL.

Built in Cowes in 2007 but virtually as new. Mainsail (75 sq.ft.) and jib (26 sq.ft.) made by James Lawrence of Brightlingsea, unused.

Galvanised road / launching trailer. £5,000 Images and details by e-mail: james.anderson.49@btinternet.com

SPIRITUS FB605.

26ft Classic British Folkboat. Built by John Perry in 1983, she is arguably the prettiest wooden competitive/cruising Folkboat around.

New Collars mast, new sails, new echo and log. Yanmar 1GM, Loo. Repainted and varnished this year. Laying Lymington.

Price: £21,000 Email: stephen@short-films.com • Tel: 07836 282888

DRAGON FOR SALE – CHIME – 1959 BORRESEN. Former very successful Wooden Dragon for sale. Requires major refit. Lying Aldeburgh. No mast and trailer not included.

Price £500.

Tel. 01420 538799 • E-mail: timcstreet@yahoo.co.uk

WALKER TIDEWAY 14 SUPER

‘AMALI’ 47’

MUCH ADMIRED SPARKMAN & STEPHENS SHE36.

Regrettably has to have new owner. Raced and cruised round Britain, Sweden to Portugal to Canaries and Caribbean. Almost ready to do it again or have a more gentle life in home waters. East coast.

Survey2019 available. £40.000 Email: arkirkby@btinternet.com • Tel: 07974 782915/01920 438340

Beautiful elegant wooden classic with unique charm, sweeping lines and topside flare. Privately commissioned and constructed using modern techniques in 1991 by Sean McMillan (now Spirit Yachts).

Cedar Mahogany Teak & Ash. Fully equipped and offered in excellent condition. Two helm stations, ample entertaining areas on deck and an interior with spacious and well thought out accommodation.

Sleeps 8. Semi displacement. Cruising 8 KNOT (max 12). Twin very fuel efficient Volvo Penta diesel engines. Range 500NM. £185,000 Contact: jvg@amalioflondon.co.uk • Tel: 07785 954 900

1960’s 12ft wooden sailing dinghy with Gunter rig, Jeckell sails. Sail no. 050. Complete with Mercury Mariner 3.3 OB. Well maintained and in sound condition. Dry stored.

Comprehensive inventory of accessories allows for immediate sailing. Road trailer included (plus spare wheel). Location: Suffolk Price: £4,000 Email: chris.berry396@gmail.com for photos and full equipment inventory included in the price Tel: 07967 145269

LE TEMPS PERDU

French gaff cutter, LOA 12,60m, length on deck 9,60m, Beam 3,30m, Draft 1,80m, engine Volvo Penta. Built in Granville, Normandy 1964. Hull iroko on oak frames, coachroof mahagony, teak deck. Successes in several Classic Boat regattas.

Well maintained with boatsmancare and in first class condition.

Owner selling now for reasons of age. Location Andratx, Majorca.

GBP £49.900.

Contact: canvey@hagengrote.de Phone: 0034 606379226

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CLASSIC BOAT MAY 2022

GRIMA. 1972 EX SCOTTISH CAR FERRY.

Built to Lloyds A1 spec. High quality steel displacement hull with retro fitted bilge keels. Completely overhauled. Excellent condition. 12 Berth. 2 x English Electric Kelvin TA6 engines driving twin Ulstein gearboxes with VPP. £170,000.00 as seen. NO TAXES. River Severn, Gloucester.

Email: Ken.Lovegrove@outlook.com

BOATS FOR SALE

Brokerage listing

C L A S S I C A N D V I N TAG E YAC H T S We hope that you enjoy our selection of vintage and classic sailing yachts. Please do not hesitate to contact us if you require any further information on any of the yachts featured here.

53ft Sparkman & Stephens Sloop 1935/2012

45ft Saunders Roe Medina Class Motor Yacht 1938/2018

51ft Bristol Channel Pilot Cutter William Stoba 1904/2010

One of the most sought-after books on the designs of Sparkman & Stephens is titled ‘The Best of the Best’. Undoubtedly, SONNY is one: a fabulous example from the heady 1930s, when the focused minds of two New Yorkers only in their 20s, Olin and Rod Stephens, rapidly evolved the fast, efficient, yet comfortable moderate displacement offshore sailing yacht to a point where it couldn’t be bettered. For the past 25 years this has been celebrated in revival and restoration, particularly of the handy-sized 50+ feet cousins of STORMY WEATHER. SONNY’s treatment, care and regatta success both sides of the Atlantic over 20 years has been the best of the best. That, and her story, abilities, and sheer good looks make SONNY such an enticing prospect.

Saunders Roe is a name mostly associated with aviation innovation, but with roots in boatbuilding on the Thames, then Cowes. Their 1930s Medina Class of fine, teak-hulled motor yachts gained an enviable reputation for seagoing properties and comfort; so well-built from the finest materials that they have survived mid to late 20th Century deprivations to become highly desirable restoration subjects. None finer than the last built, MAGYAR; meticulously restored by Harbour Marine Services of Southwold for an owner used to the strict disciplines of classic car restoration, and an experienced sailor under sail and power.

The Bristol Channel Pilot Cutter type has long been held in the highest of esteem as the perfect all round sailing vessel, and ALPHA completely fits that billing. Her long and interesting life has been guaranteed to last many more years after a restoration undertaken by and under the supervision of some of the best possible practitioners of their craft, for owners who really knew what they wanted. Independent of all the superb craftsmanship, the key element that has been restored in ALPHA is her ability from birth as a superbly easily handled vessel under sail and power by just two people, whilst offering the most comfortable of accommodation for long periods with plenty of space for friends.

€850,000 VAT not paid

£495,000

€480,000

Lying USA

Lying UK

Lying UK

36ft GL Watson Gaff Cutter 1894/2005

49ft Illingworth & Primrose Bermudan Cutter 1963/2017

40ft Philip Rhodes Bermudan Sloop 1946/1992

PEGGY BAWN’s exceptionally authentic restoration is recognised in her CIM rating’s almost unrivalled coefficient of authenticity.

Cruised and raced since, she is noted for perfect balance and good manners. In 20 knots under fingertip control her toerail kisses the water, and up to 17 knots, a flutter in her jackyard topsail marks optimum groove. Easily rigged and sailed by two, this perfect Victorian cruiser/racer offers the opportunity to step back in time into the shoes of her illustrious designer, then at the peak of his career.

OUTLAW may need no introduction to classic boat lovers. She first hit the water at Cowes in April 1963, and also the yachting headlines. Her innovative, light but strong construction, her chic looks - as much down to ergonomics and racing efficiency as in style - and her famous first owner, Daily Express newspaper proprietor The Honourable (later Sir) Max Aitkin, all assured yachting celebrity status. OUTLAW has lived up to the billing with major victories and podium placings both in her early seasons, and the Mediterranean classic yacht revival - and in mid-life she was a successful blue waters cruiser. Lovingly maintained and upgraded over 40 years by her yachting industry professional owner, OUTLAW is ready to delight her next caretaker.

An incredibly thorough rebuild by very competent people who knew exactly what they wanted to do with her, followed by more than a decade of the demands of successful day chartering on Penobscot Bay, Maine, have ensured fifteen years of trouble free, easily maintained ownership for two UK custodians of this strikingly beautiful, strong and practical sloop by one of the masters. SHANTIH OF COWES’ board-up draft of only 1.4m allows her to explore where others don’t dare, and with the centre board down she sails delightfully and with the lack of fuss her purity of sheerline suggests. With such ease of sailing, comfort below and pure personality, SHANTIH OF COWES may be the perfect family and friends classic forty-footer.

€300,000

€250,000

£112,500

Lying UK

For further information please contact: +44 (0)1202 330077 info@sandemanyachtcompany.co.uk

Sandeman Brokerage FP CB MAY 2022.indd 2

Lying France

Lying UK

Our classic and vintage yachts & motor yachts are available to view at:

22 Market Street, Poole, Dorset BH15 1NF, UK

– www.sandemanyachtcompany.co.uk –

MEMBER OF ABYA

CLASSIC BOAT MAY 2022 05/04/2022 67 13:58

Craftsmanship

Edited by Steffan Meyric Hughes: +44 (0)207 349 3758 Email: steffan@classicboat.co.uk

C/O THE BUILDER

Yard News

SECTION HEAD SUB SECTION

WESTER ROSS, SCOTLAND

New and old, island and mainland Work continues apace at the yards of Isle Ewe boats on the scarcely

mid-build with a 17ft (5.2m) carvel-planked, inboard motor launch.

populated Isle of Ewe, and Johnson & Loftus Boatbuilders in nearly

Meanwhile in Ullapool, Johnson & Loftus are busy with the rebuild of the

Ullapool on the mainland. On the island, Alasdair Grant and team are well

Zulu St Vincent (inset photo above). The hull has been reframed with

on with the rebuild of the Loch Fyne skiff Clan Gordon (bigger photo

home-milled Scottish oak and the stem and sternpost have been

above), with the boat fully re-framed, and planking progressing in native

replaced. Planking is now under way. On the new build front, Tim is

larch and oak, milled at the sawmill shared by the two yards. They are also

building a 16ft (4.9m) pulling boat for an estate on Mull.

PORT TOWNSEND, WASHINGTON

Lid goes onto Tally Ho The Albert Strange-designed, Fastnet-winning gaff yacht Tally Ho of 1910 came a significant step closer to completion in March, when owner and boatbuilder Leo Goolden and a small band of volunteers put the deck planks on. The 48ft (14.6m) vessel now has a swept deck fastened straight onto the deck beams – no plywood subdeck here – with thousands of Frearson-head deck screws, each of which had to be plugged in timber.

The deck will be caulked with cotton and payed in the traditional way.

Tally Ho is looking more like a yacht every day, but there is still a huge amount of work to do, including the rig, for which the spar timber, Sitka spruce, is ready and waiting. Next will come the cover boards, king planks, bulwarks and stanchions. See Leo’s popular series of videos on his

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CLASSIC BOAT MAY 2022

website, sampsonboat.co.uk, where you can also give a bit to the project via Leo’s Patreon page.

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CLASSIC BOAT MAY 2022

69

YARD NEWS

LYME REGIS, DORSET

BBA launch day Despite a forecast that left little room for optimism, staff, students and spectators at the Boat Building Academy (BBA) were determined that the three boats built by the Class of May 2021 should at least make some contact with the water on launch day. It was entirely sensible, however, that they should all stay within the relative shelter of the harbour and that the two sailing boats shouldn’t even consider hoisting their sails.

First into the water was the 14ft (4.3m) clinker motor launch whose sponsoring student is Karl Bedlow, a former insurance underwriter.

Built to Paul Gartside’s design number 189, she is of clenched clinker construction with a sapele keel, oak stem and transom, steamed oak timbers, khaya planking, and oak gunwales and fit-out. With a Tohatsu 20hp outboard on the stern, Karl hopes she might do 15 knots.

Next in was former dairy farmer Luke O’Connell’s 18-footer (5.5m), based on a late-19th-century Mersey river boat. Her white hull is strip planked Alaskan yellow cedar, glassed inside and out, and, although

sketches provided by Orkney boatbuilder Ian Richardson. She is glued

she was decked with plywood at the time of her launch, she will later

clinker with marine plywood planking, and has iroko laid decking over

have iroko decking laid over the plywood. Her spars are all in spruce,

a plywood sub-deck and iroko fit out.

with the mast, boom and gaff of hollow bird’s mouth construction.

Last but not least was the 15ft 6in (4.7m) Westray skiff (blue hull) whose sponsoring student is Jonathan Bevan, who previously spent 40

the sails – which remained securely stowed away from the blustery

years working in IT. Based on a type of fishing and transport vessel

conditions on Launch Day – were made by the students at the college.

common in the Orkneys in the early part of the 20th century, her lines

Judging by the length of the spars, the Mersey boat’s sail plan may

were developed by course tutor Mike Broome from a collection of

prove challenging in all but the most benign conditions.

GLASGOW

Crypto payment for pre-war classic yachts The Mylne Yacht Design office is now accepting payments in the crypto currencies of Bitcoin and Ether. Owner David Gray said “Just as the best yacht clubs around the world do, we are striving to engage a younger and more diverse generation to appreciate the charm and beauty of our sport. Our new crypto payment platform will help us find a new audience for our original authentic pre-war re-creation opportunities.” See more at mylne.com.

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Both of the sailing boats have sister ships previously built at the BBA, the Westray skiff’s being in clenched clinker; and in boat cases

CLASSIC BOAT MAY 2022

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MARINE DIRECTORY

To advertise call Andrew Mackenzie +44 (0)207 349 3718 or email andrew.mackenzie@chelseamagazines.com

Marine Directory

BOATBUILDERS

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DAVID MOSS BOATBUILDERS

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Repairs - Restorations

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Photo: www.luckybeanz.com

Photo: Keith Allso

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Photo: Peter Chesworth

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Phone:+44 +440 (0)1445 731191 189 Phone: 7892 889 Email: alasdairgrant@hotmail.co.uk Mobile: +44 (0)7892889191 Facebook: @isle ewe boats Email: alasdairgrant@hotmail.co.uk www.isleeweboats.co.uk www.isleeweboats.co.uk 3a Facebook Isle of Ewe @ isleeweboats Aultbea, Achnasheen Scotland IV22 2JW, Scotland

gosportboatyard@tiscali.co.uk

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Hayling Yacht Hayling Yacht COMPANY COMPANY

Established as wooden boat builders in 1935, and trusted to refurbish and repair yachts such as Lively Lady and Robertsons Golly, we are a family run business that takes pride in refurbishing new and old boats - from simple re-caulking to full refurbishment and teak decking.

Hayling Yacht Co

Hayling Yacht Co

Call 02392 463592 for a chat with friendly, experienced staff. www.haylingyacht.co.uk 72

CLASSIC BOAT MAY 2022

To advertise in the Marine Directory call Andrew Mackenzie +44 (0)207 349 3718

MARINE DIRECTORY BOATBUILDERS

EQUIPMENT

TRADITIONAL BOAT SUPPLIES LTD

Premier Boatbuilders at the Southern Gateway to the Broads

Oulton Broad, Suffolk NR32 3LQ 01502 507435 info@oultonmarine.co.uk

+44 (0)1173 305950 • www.traditionalboatsupplies.com

oultonmarine.co.uk

BOAT BUILDING

DESIGN

ALAN S.R. STALEY

SELWAY FISHER DESIGN

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Yacht Insurance Yacht Insurance

Winter Marine SimonSimon Winter Marine Classic yacht & pleasure craft insurance Classic yacht & pleasure craft insurance

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Woodford’s

Paul Fisher BSc. MRINA 24 Lancaster Drive, Lydney, GL15 5SL Tel. 07887 495847 enquires@selway-fisher.com

For the latest photos of SFDesign boats go to our Fb page and the Blog page on our web site

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by The Financial Conduct Authority 99 x 62.5 JOB VACANCY.qxp_Layout 1 16/12/2021 11:49 Page 1

SITUATIONS VACANT

Simon Winter Marine Limited is an Appointed Representative of Winter & Co (Marine) Ltd Winter & Co (Marine) Ltd is authorised and regulated by The Financial Conduct Authority

Craftsmen in timber and Grp Traditional shipwright service Teak decks, Painting & Varnishing

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The Marine Directory is the place to advertise

For sale superb Baby Blake Toilet

Recent +£800 Blake’s billing for complete overhaul and service.

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JOB VACANCY Boatbuilder required to join small team at our Boathouse in Stratford-upon-Avon.

Working in repair, restoration and operation of our heritage fleet of wooden passenger vessels and small boats.

Contact Nick Birch for information: nick.b@avon-boating.co.uk | www.avon-boating.co.uk

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CLASSIC BOAT MAY 2022

73

CRAFTSMANSHIP

THE MUSEUM BOATS CLUB, SCOTTISH FISHERIES MUSEUM

DON’T FEAR THE REAPER Meet the team behind the conservation of Scotland’s fishing past WORDS AND PHOTOGRAPHY MERVYN MAGGS

T

he establishment of The

range of his knowledge as a boat

Scottish Fisheries Museum in

owner, designer, engineer,

1969 was an important first

shipwright and fishermen. The

step to representing the

Museum Boats Club was awarded

fishing history of Scotland. Fishing has

the Queens Award for

served an important role in the

Volunteering in 2011 and David

economy of Scotland and UK, with

himself was awarded a BEM for

exports to many European markets at

his services to the Museum and

a time when the fleets were primarily

Scottish fishing heritage in 2017.

engaged in fishing for the ‘silver

Sadly he died earlier this year.

darling’ herring.

Gradually, Reaper grew back

The museum’s enlightened

to her old self. Over the past 30

approach took on the difficult task of

years she has been skippered and

creating a floating section and did not

crewed by the Museum Boats

just relegate the past to static exhibits. This approach was

Facing page,

Club, visiting many ports, mostly on Scotland’s east coast

supported by full engagement with the local community to

clockwise from

and in north east England, where visitors were warmly

conserve and explore the physical methodology of fishing,

top left: John

welcomed on board. This has not happened without the

its people and ancillary industries. This was reflected very

Firn, Rodger

need for continued maintenance and dedication. Time took

soon after the establishment of the museum by a desire to

McAslan, Bob

its toll on the boat and by 2015 plans were being made to

have boats in a seagoing condition; a further impetus to

Flann, Wins

give Reaper a full refit. For this, some major structural work

this ambition was the involvement of Dr Robert Prescott

Stewart, Dave

was needed to ensure seaworthiness, while remaining very

from St Andrews University.

Raeside, Dave

conscious of the need to conserve as much as possible from

Crowther, Ali

her role as a sailing Fifie. This work is now only months away

historic fishing boats that sailed in Scottish waters as well

Beedie and

from completion, with a new foremast ready on the quay

as an ambition to restore a lugsail drifter for the floating

Donald McDonald.

and the interior work and structural elements being finished

museum with public access.

Not shown Chair

by Ali Beedie from Speybuilt Boats.

Dr Prescott had a long and passionate interest in the

A challenge was set and the museum recognised the

Joan Paton; Ali

Alongside maintaining Reaper and White Wing, a 33ft

rarity and difficulty of finding a first-class Fifie herring

Beedie with

(10m) Baldie, the Museum Boats Club have also been

lugger in seagoing condition before they completely

Reaper foremast

involved and assisted in conserving Research LK62, a Zulu

disappeared. Their search ended up with the boat we now

skades; Donald

housed in the museum; Shirly II, a prototype Fifer inshore

know as Reaper FR958.

McDonald

fishing boat; Rose Leaf K160, a small Fifie; Athene KY240, a

measuring from

creel boat; and just to fill in the time, Antares KY23, a 33ft

government-funded work creation, supported by local

Reaper plans;

(10) motor-fishing vessel. All these wonderful boats can be

marine industries and volunteers. Dr Prescott led this

Dave Raeside

seen either afloat or in the museum.

process with his thorough research into all aspects of

working on

design, the social significance, and the skills needed.

Antares; Bob

my visit, was the energy and pride of the club, and the

Over the following years, much of the work was done by

Finally Reaper was restored to be used at sea, and it

What I did notice on the wild and windy winter day of

Flann working on

constant reference to Dr Robert Prescott’s work, research

was recognised that the formation of a group of skilled and

Antares; Dave

and to his spirit. It should also not be forgotten that

knowledgeable people from the community would be

Crowther

professionals are engaged when they are needed and can

beneficial to the boat’s long-term operation, and that of

caulking Antares

be funded, in order to achieve the high standards expected.

other vessels in the collection such as White Wing.

The Museum Boats Club was established on 4

A final observation is how this group have realised such high ambitions, working with the museum in the restoration

December 1985 by Gareth Stern, the museum’s director at

of a historic past. Without their work there is no doubt this

that time. The conditions for the club were set out as:

heritage would have been lost forever.

“Use appropriate materials and finishes for authentic

This is nothing but a brief look at the work of the

restoration or accurate reproduction; Maintain vessels in

Museum Boats Club and its relationship with the Scottish

seaworthy and/or exhibition condition; Ensure the safety of

Fisheries Museum. There is no doubt, it is a must see place

public, members of crew.”

when visiting this part of the world.

The group was led by David Tod, chairman of the Museum for 20 years and supported by the very wide

74

CLASSIC BOAT MAY 2022

Learn more at scotfishmuseum.org

CRAFTSMANSHIP

CLASSIC BOAT MAY 2022

75

CRAFTSMANSHIP

Boatbuilder’s Notes

By Robin Gates

Joyce’s curious grip The tools and joinery of yacht furniture share significant overlap with

long sawing the normal way, but if I ignore the discomfort of that

other fields of woodwork, and many will recognise The Technique of

upper horn chiselling into my thumb joint, and my pinky being

Furniture Making by Ernest Joyce (Batsford, 1970) as a bible of their

exposed to danger below the horn intended to protect it, I’m inclined

craft. But who has tried the curious saw grip illustrated – though not

to think Joyce’s grip enables a lighter and more precise cutting

explained – by Joyce in his chapter on the mortise and tenon joint?

action, perhaps lessening the influence of the heavy hand while

While sawing cheeks with the closed-handle tenon saw, Joyce has

allowing more input from the tool itself. It’s clear from the shape

four fingers passing through the aperture and his thumb resting on

evolved through generations how this handle should normally be

the upper horn. Using a smaller open-handle dovetail saw at the

held, yet Joyce was a master of his craft and surely he would not have

bench hook, his thumb again rests on the upper horn while his pinky

departed from convention without good reason.

curls beneath the lower horn and three fingers pass through the aperture. Normally we’re taught that the forefinger should point along

1 Joyce’s grip from The Technique of Furniture Making

the saw while the thumb rests parallel to it on the opposite side.

2 Normal grip with forefinger pointing, thumb to the side

Muscle memory weighs against success with a strange grip after so

3 Traditional dovetail handle shaped to fit the hand

1

2

A-roving punch

3

1

While clenching a wooden hull, a rove punch is used to seat the rove snug against the timber before the surplus shank of the nail is nipped off. To fit the purpose, the business end of the punch is bored with a countersunk hole so as to slip over the nail and house the conical washer-like rove. But because it is the smallest of the riveting tools, it’s also the one most likely Although normally of steel to survive a long life of repetitive work, a hardwood punch will serve well enough in the short term, and is easily made on site. If rove and nail are well matched, the punch requires only a light tap to seat the rove correctly;

2

the idea isn’t to flatten it. Any resilient timber will do, with grain running lengthways. The punch needn’t be round, although it helps you see what you’re doing if it tapers towards the rove. This one was made from 3in (75mm) of beech cut from an old chair stretcher. Bore the hole

76

to a diameter and depth to suit the

1 Rove punch made from a chair stretcher

rivet. And while you’re at it, make two.

2 Countersunk hole slips over the nail and rove

CLASSIC BOAT MAY 2022

ALL PHOTOGRAPHS ON THIS AND FACING PAGE: ROBIN GATES

to go a-roving.

SECTION HEAD SUB SECTION

Traditional Tool

By Robin Gates

SCREW CRAMP In Britain this type of wooden screw

been used by Noah’s hypothetical

Clockwise from

glueing cramps, sash cramps, T-bar

cramp disappeared from the workshop

workforce, since artists have

above: Wooden

cramps, joiners’ cramps, floor cramps

soon after the more robust and easily

commonly depicted tools of their

presse avec

or the more familiar G-cramps vital to

manufactured iron G-cramp appeared

own age when painting imagined

boulon; Finger

so many boatbuilding operations. Only

but it persisted in mainland Europe at

scenes from history. Planes, adze,

joint at the

since the 1970s have the British tool

least until World War Two. French tool

augers and chisels in the painting are

corner; Screw

catalogues listed a "cramp" as a

makers called it simply ‘une presse’,

recognisably 16th-century tools. That

thread

"clamp", perhaps influenced by

available either ‘sans boulon’ (without

said, the Romans were using wooden

American terminology, although

bolt) or as in this example ‘avec

screws to press grapes 2000 years ago,

many older tradesmen – and, I'm told,

boulon' (with bolt). You’ll appreciate

so who knows? It is but a short leap of

Australians – still refer to a "cramp".

that if the screw is tightened on the

the imagination for a screw press in

work with great force, leverage at

the vineyard to be used in a shipyard.

show hairline cracks and chipped

Many would call it a ‘clamp’ rather

crests, yet this centenarian cramp

corners of the open rectangular frame

The threads of the wooden screw

will cause their glued finger joints to

than ‘cramp’ but back when it was

remains strong and functional, even

loosen and eventually fail; hence the

made, circa 1920, all such screw-

serving as a convenient flat-lying vice

significance of the supporting bolt for

operated devices for holding parts

for small work. Also, note the

heavier use. Since the forces generated

together during construction were

decorative side-bead moulding – such

while persuading planks around frames

known in Britain as cramps, be they

a nice touch.

of a wooden hull are considerable shipyards used many more cramps with the bolt than without.

Evidence of its use in shipbuilding can be traced at least as far back as the 16th Century. The Swiss artist Kaspar Memberger (1555-1618) includes a cramp very similar to this in the painting ‘Construction of ROBIN GATES

Noah’s Ark’, where it secures one end of a board to a low bench for planing by a shipwright. It’s a long shot to suggest such cramps would have CLASSIC BOAT MAY 2022

77

Letters LETTER OF THE MONTH SUPPORTED BY OLD PULTENEY WHISKY

Greatest racing yacht? Britannia, surely…

I picked up a copy of CB last weekend and am rising to your

following the restoration of a single yacht – Endeavour – by

editorial challenge about the greatest racing yacht. Surely this

Elizabeth Meyer. I was lucky enough to go aboard her on her way

has to be the King’s Britannia?

through Southampton in 1989 and to see her sail in company with

She was designed by GL Watson and built on the Clyde in 1893

an unrestored Velsheda from the Parade in Cowes. They weren’t

by Hendersons for the then Price of Wales, later Edward VII,

allowed to race for insurance reasons but they were a glorious

whose intention it was to

sight all the same. I had

rejuvenate the ‘Big Class’

hoped that Sigurd Coates’

which was very much in the

efforts to recreate Britannia a

doldrums at that time with

few years ago might be a

yachting journalist Dixon

catalyst to re-start the Big

Kemp lamenting that “no

Class but it was not to be

more large racing yachts

and as far as I know his

would be built”. Royal

replica languishes in

patronage certainly did the

Southampton still. We have

trick and the launch of

now seen recreations of a

Britannia heralded the way for

number of the great

some of the finest racing

schooners, and Lulworth – a

yachts we have ever seen

contemporary of Britannia

around our shores.

– is back on the water again,

Britannia had a racing

so the skills are there to

career spanning the next four

recreate and sail these

decades before finally going

magnificent cutters. Would

to her rest in 1936 off St

it be too farfetched to hope

Catherine’s Point on the Isle of

Above: Britannia, seen here leading Meteor II

that the Big Class might be

Wight. Her sail-plan and rig

Below: Running Tide, as featured in last month’s issue

the next big thing for

were altered no fewer than

yachting›s entrepreneurs?

seven times to maintain her competitiveness against younger

I’m looking forward to seeing the Fifes race again in the Solent

and more modern arrivals and she ended her career with 231

this summer and read of the plans of Team Fife in Brest with great

firsts and 129 places out of 635 starts. I’d be most interested to

interest. Maybe one day soon we will see more of the big classic

hear if there is any other yacht with such a career record.

cutters race around our coasts.

In recent years we have seen the revival of the J-Class,

Richard Clarke, Truro, Cornwall

Where is Coral?

Last year I was mortified to read on Google that Coral had sunk off Crete.

I tried to find out if she was salvaged, as she sank in pretty shallow water. Have you any information on what has happened to her? I worked on her restoration for six years in Cape Town and have been keeping track of her until now.

Herb Phillips

78

CLASSIC BOAT MAY 2022

Working Sail Ltd.

Traditional Shipwrights Newbuilds, Restoration & Repairs

www.workingsail.co.uk 07949 805274 . 07790638084

CLASSIC BOAT MAY 2022

79

Next month SAILING TODAY WITH YACHTS & YACHTING

THE LAST FIFE The Fifes are coming back home to

NEW SAILING SKILLS SECTION

Scotland this June in the spectacular

with

known as the Fife

MULTIHULL SPECIAL LATEST CATS AND TRIS

MAY 2022 £4.95

TOM CUNLIFFE Channel crossing: best lesson I learned

YOUR SUMMER OF SAILING

Regatta. To celebrate that, we have the story of Sonata, the

47 regattas and events Plot your season here!

TIME FOR CHANGE Hannah Mills on creating pathways for female sailors SHOAL WATER DRIFTERS

CLUB OF THE YEAR Who got your votes

CHICHESTER MARINA What visitors need to know

9 771367 586148

One foot under the keel

HI-TECH FOULIES New sailing kit for 2022 SOLENT SPRING TIDE Perfect weekend guide 05

last Fife yacht.

Coverv4 - May.indd 1

15/03/2022 14:56

IN THE MAY ISSUE  Summer of sailing: 47 regattas and other events  Time for change: Hannah Mills on creating paths for female sailors  Chichester Marina guide

CIELITO

FINDING ENDURANCE

A recent addition to the Rahmi M

The wreck of the Endurance has lit up the

Koc collection is this 43ft, 1930-built

media like none other. Here is the story of

 New gear: high-tech foulies

American motor yacht, restored and

how Shackleton’s ship was found in the

brought back to fighting form.

frozen Antarctic Ocean.

 Lessons learned crossing the Channel with Tom Cunliffe

PLUS…

JUNE 2022

The traditional Broads yacht built in GRP for sale or charter;

On sale Friday 13 May,

our guide to traditional deck gear and more; preview of the

2022

Fife Regatta in June; events guide to the 2022 season; and more

Or why not subscribe?

30 YEARS AGO MAY 1992, CB45

The lead feature, although not the cover boat, was on the Irish Shannon One-Designs, a big, open 18ft clinker dinghy that is as loved now for family racing and cruising as it was 30 years ago. Their nickname, “the SOD”, stems of course from the boat’s acronym, rather than its character. There is also a very early motor-sailer in this issue – the 1908 Alfred Mylnedesigned ‘auxiliary ketch’ Senora. The owners had completed a near-20-year restoration. We reported at the time that “with a bow as fine as a chisel edge, Senora would cut through the Firth of Clyde like a claymore through a Sassenach. This colourful expression means – and I had to look it up I admit – ‘like a Scottish sword through an Englishman’. It certainly beats the “knife through butter” cliché. A later treat in the magazine is the story of the legendary Gardner diesel engine, a theme we revisited a few years ago when we went to see the revitalised Gardner workshop to inspect engines in restoration.

The things just go on forever.

80

CLASSIC BOAT MAY 2022

 Shoal waters: boats that float in a puddle

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Sternpost When delivery trips go right A trip on a temperemental trimaran ends up on the beaches of the Algarve for Dave Selby

M

ay be it’s just proposed. In short, me, but in my Max floats boats, and personal if he’d been on the experience I’ve found that Titanic it would have there are few more been the iceberg that desperate sea creatures sunk. than the delivery skipper, And so to Portimao as virtually everyone who in Portugal, where the has ever asked me to crew sardines are lovely and on a delivery has turned everyone speaks out to be desperate, English, because even sectionable, certifiable, the Portuguese struggle self-medicating and quite with Portuguese. The clearly unhinged. After other thing about taking these qualifications Portugal is that it’s in into consideration I then Europe, and we’re not ask searching and any more, which meant pertinent questions such as that Max had to stop ILLUSTRATION: CLAUDIA MYATT “will it sink?” and “if we eating sardines and get don’t, will we stay in nice marinas with showers and nightlife a 50ft (15.1m) trimaran out of Portugal in a bit of a hurry. nearby?” Come to think of it, the second question makes the first Mere seconds after we launched one of the two engines in the one redundant, but if the answer to the second is the least bit outer hulls failed. In Max’s book this barely rates as a to-do, as he’s equivocal or does not contain key words like “Saint-Tropez,” I more used to engine failure on boats with only one engine, and with normally turn them down flat. one left, he performed a series of elegant reverse spiralling pirouettes Anecdotally, this scientifically proves that the only sea-dwelling and triple axels to gently nestle in a 60ft (18m) gap alongside the organisms more desperate than the delivery skipper are delivery fish dock, then said: “Sardines, anyone?” Halfway through my crew, certain limpets and me. However, when my mate Max asked second sardine, Max poked his head into the saloon and said if I fancied crewing for him on a delivery trip from Portugal to the calmly “All hands on deck, we’re sinking,” so calmly I fact, that I UK I spared him the inquisition and simply said “yes” – once I’d had a third one before ambling on deck to find that we were indeed ascertained that Portugal was in the Algarve. You see, crewing is a sinking. In no time Max put a stop to this kerfuffle, locating a leap of faith and there’s no delivery skipper in whom I have more water intake that had come adrift, and after several hours bailing faith than I do in Max. What transpired was the most successful we got the water out of the massive lazarette in the central hull. delivery trip I’ve ever been involved in.

As we headed west into the Atlantic, further minor and routine You see, Max’s track record speaks for itself. Years ago he sailed teething troubles arose, including slack rigging, a swaying mast, his own concrete boat to the Caribbean where, upon lifting it exploding genoa cars, four steering failures as the hydraulic unions ashore, a great big lump of Essex mud dropped out of the hull to burst in sequence in 30-knot winds, and a perilous shortage of reveal what is known, technically, as a bloody great hole. Max, sardines. All of these, apart from the sardine crisis, Max fixed ever the optimist, and a keen environmentalist, is continuing his magnificently, but it was only when we ran out of hydraulic fluid experiments with Essex mud as the sustainable that Max decided to return to port – for more boatbuilding material of the future. sardines.

“Countless Moreover, Max has made a career out of Like I said, it was the most successful delivery trip delivering suspect yachts that other skippers have I’ve ever been involved in because it was round about times, Max has turned down. On countless occasions he has handed then that quite by chance (Facebook) I rediscovered handed over over leaky boats to the astonishment and old friends who lived in the Algarve. So as Max got leaky boats to disappointment of very well-insured owners who’d on with repairs I settled in with Karey and Bob and disappointed already filed their insurance claim. It’s a matter of their two Westie terriers, swimming in crystal waters, great pride to Max that most of these boats sank basking on golden sands, eating sardines and owners who’d within two hours of hand over. And when they watching the sun go down over the sea from their already filed discovered the wreck of the Mary Rose in the Solent, roof-top terrace for a week. In fact I might make it an insurance Max put in a very competitively priced tender to sail two. That floats my boat. claim.” it into Portsmouth. That would have saved English More importantly, when I parted from Max I Heritage a fortune in salvage fees, not to mention a hugged him and said: “I know you better and like you percentage of the income from day trips Max more.” Isn’t that what sailing is about?

82

CLASSIC BOAT MAY 2022

Judith R

Sale by Classic Yacht Management LTD Built for a Hollywood movie mogul in 1935 and with connections to European royalty, ‘Judith R’ is returned to the market for sale. She has spent 10 years being restored by her current owners, only her third owners from new, and this is a rare opportunity to acquire a unique boat with stunning lines whose decks were graced with the glitterati of the movie business and American politics during almost 5 decades of use by her original owner. She has modern, updated systems and conveniences fitted under the floors and in cupboards but retains her “streamlined Art Deco” style both externally and internally so looks the same as when she was originally built.

Judith R is 57’ (17m) on deck and 56’ at the waterline, with a 13’ (3.9m) beam and a 4’ 6” (1.3m) draft. She has a semi-displacement hull which makes her very stable in waves but allows her to achieve a high speed through the water. She is powered by twin Caterpillar C12 ACERT compact engines giving her almost 1,500 horsepower and allowing her to reach 30 knots in flat water which is not bad for an 85 year old!. She benefits from modern equipment for navigation, safety, air conditioning throughout and even a boiling water tap in her galley. Power is provided by an almost silent 22KVA generator.

Available for viewing nr Marlow, Bucks just 45 minutes from London.

£1.25m + vat For further information visit: www.cymltd.co.uk • Email: captainhook@cymltd.co.uk • Tel: 07966 578825