Classic Sailor No13 December 2016–January 2017 by Dan Houston

WWW.CLASSICSAILOR.COM

DECEMBER/JANUARY 2016/2017 £3.95

Getting into sailing Cruise wild shores Restore your own boat Learn your island heritage Acquire forgotten skills ...all in this issue

ACHILLES 24 CRUISE DUNKIRK LIFEBOAT RESTORED EAST COAST RIVERS BOOKS! ROBIN KNOX - JOHNSTON ON BILL TILMAN FOLDING KNIVES

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Announcing the 7th Biennial

CLASSIC CHANNEL REGATTA 2017

DARTMOUTH • ST PETER PORT • PAIMPOL

JULY 8TH-14TH 2017 Bringing together an international fleet of classic yachts and their crews for a week of friendly competition and informal social events, the Classic Channel Regatta has an established reputation for a week of highly enjoyable classic sailing. Three of the finest ports in the English Channel provide the perfect backdrop for a unique and varied series of races. Two days of racing off Dartmouth, then the Classic Channel Race from Dartmouth to Paimpol - this year with a stopover in Guernsey - are followed by the Round Ilê de Bréhat Race, a night in Lezardrieux and a grande finale in Paimpol as a central part of the town’s Bastille Day celebrations. Classic yachts designed before 1974 and those built more recently in classic style are welcome. Racing will be to the JCH Classic Handicap which is free. We invite you to join us in 2017 to experience everything that makes the Classic Channel Regatta such an enjoyable event.

For full information and to pre-register, visit www.classic-channel-regatta.eu

The Classic Channel Regatta is run in association with the Yacht Club Classique and the Royal Dart Yacht Club, and is part of the Challenge Classique Manche-Atlantique. Photograph credit

Editorial

Achilles 24

Signals

Theo Rye 1968-2016

Around the yards

East Coast Rivers: a family affair

Restoring White Cloud

Bill Tilman by Sir Robin Knox-Johnston

Lucy Lavers: the lifeboat that went to Dunkirk

This cruising life: how to enjoy visitors

Practical: Trailer sailing: lights and connections

Anchoring in heavy weather

Joints: Tee halving

Barton’s blocks, and Des Pawson on Baggywrinkle

On Watch: Folding knives

Books (not just) for Christmas

Off Watch: Christmas spirits

Calendar and Next Issue

The last word: heads-up from Lucy L Ford

Remembering my first Tall Ship Luke Powell building again; round-Britain voyage for children; new skills charity; Magic Dragon for non-racers Tommi Nielsen and Scott’s Discovery; Amundsen’s Maud unfrozen; new mast for Nancy Blackett; IBTC boatbuilder’s garden at Chelsea

Association news

Little Ship Club at 90; Old Gaffers; Yachting Historians

The Post

Hurricane-hit island; RNSA 14s; HMS(?) Pickle

Martyn Heighton 1947-2016

Tributes to the late Director of National Historic Ships UK

Classic Coast and Smylie’s boats

Faversham for barges, and beer; North Norfolk Crabbers

Andrew Bray

Welcome to the Guinness Show (with boats)

Nardi’s nods

Philip Rhodes’ Ranger 29

Valerie spreads her wings

Scott Metcalfe restores a ‘strange-looking clipper-bowed schooner’

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Sailing Scotland’s West Coast, but will she go over the top? Much missed already: yacht historian, designer, sailor We meet Janet Harber, author of the new edition The 100-year-old ketch that became a retirement project One great sailor on the life and career of another

Launched in 1940, restored in time for last year’s Return and Helen Lewis and the Skipper have disloyal thoughts The all-important but always awkward electrics How to make sure you don’t drag A step-by-step guide

At the blockmaker, and Des describes how to make the anti-chafe

A five-page round-up, plus a page of kit for your Christmas list Lloyd’s on a stick; Alpha Bravo for the young, and lots more Plus Shoreside, Artist of the Month and Sea Life Events for the coming months and what’s in our next issue Fighting through four layers of foulies in the smallest room CLASSIC SAILOR

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COVER PHOTOGRAPH: EMILY HARRIS

DEN PHILLIPS

Contents

28/11/16 11:13 AM

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25/09/2015 10:41

28/11/16 11:55 AM

Editorial Dan Houston

Remembering your first Tall Ship and the stars to steer her by I didn’t really understand back then how healthy it was to have that experience. I had a kind of inner knowledge that things had changed and one of the aspects of that was that new didn’t always mean better. In fact, as we seem to become increasingly like butterflies, pinned to the rim of a wheel that really is now going a little too fast for comfort, I do look at Tall Ships in terms of being good for our health and wellbeing. Gotta leave that screen behind though, the stars to steer by are going to be overhead. I think sailors take this aspect of wellbeing from their sailing for granted and think it’s not such a big deal but if there are any readers out there who want to expand or expound upon the subject then I’d be happy to run those articles. I always love stories of young people sailing so there goes a call for that too. Now are we a monthly magazine, like it says in the small print or are we going bi-monthly? I have had some calls on this and I don’t yet know myself. Trying to get our message out at shows and festivals and to work on our website and suchlike are all time consuming for our tiny team and it seems we’ll be doubling up on issues for one or two more yet. But as the tides are monthly and the zodiac is arranged that way it’s our wish to be doing that again soon. Meanwhile there is another show to go to: London by the Thames, in the ExCel hanger. Mr Bray on page 19 affirms that the best place has always been the Guinness stand and while we would have asked for a booth in that space we could guess the answer so we are a few paces away on stand B011. Make sure you come and say hello! Happy Christmas to all our readers.

GUY VENABLES FOR CLASSIC SAILOR

remember my first time on a Tall Ship. I remember friends being cool about it when I could tell they really wanted to say: Wha!? How high? And I can remember teachers at school seeing the romance of it, asking one or two questions. Square sails? Really? Today? There just weren’t that many Tall Ships around in the mid-70s. I had signed up for a course on the Sea Cadets’ Brig Royalist and although I was quite cool about it as well I already knew it was going to be a fantastic experience. A history teacher became fascinated that we would be taking our uniform with us. He, like me, could see me stepping into a past that Britain had all but forgotten. Rod Stewart’s Sailing had been number one for four weeks the previous autumn – but the video was on a power boat roaring up New York harbour. Actually going on a ship, powered by the wind, was properly quaint! On hearing me describe the famous blue-black square rig uniform in serge he really paid attention and seemed delighted that I knew the argot for it was a tiddly suit. I think I had already decided that sailors who could harness the wind were a cut of salt above the mere mortal, and at that age it was mostly what I wanted to do. Needless to say the voyage on the old Royalist was all it was cracked up to be, more, and I can still run sections of it in my mind. One of the most enduring memories was our landfall and getting ashore in Alderney – an island locked in its own time capsule for different reasons. Crossing the Channel, taking our watches, reporting oncoming ships and the feeling of being a necessary part of the crew felt like great life-affirming episodes; I was learning things I’ll never forget, and feeling useful.

Actually going on a ship, powered by the wind, was properly quaint CLASSIC SAILOR 5

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28/11/16 11:28 AM

Signals A new Luke Powell boat, a round-Britain adventure for young people, a wreck story with a heart-warming ending and a Strange rebuild HAPPISBURGH, NORFOLK

Beached Yacht Lone sailor John Favell was sailing south from Hull, with the intention of meeting up with friends in the Thames Estuary/Canvey Island area. Unfortunately, he did not reach his destination but instead was grounded on a sandy beach with his vessel impaled on a groyne, at Cart Gap, Happisburgh, on the North Norfolk Coast, reports Maurice Gray. Mr Favell, 55, acquired the ferro-cement 43ft Mithril two years ago to live on. While sailing about 2 miles out, at approximately 0100 the wind and tide began to cause problems so he decided to drop sail and continue under power, but then the engine failed and would not restart. Mr Favell said, “I was now at my wits end and couldn’t control her and she was drifting towards the shore. I was struggling – in fact panicking – it was just light

enough to see the shore and I was closing in on it very quickly. Mr Favell recalled the moment when Mithril hit a groyne. “It was adrenalin that prompted my next action as I had no chance, so I jumped onto the groyne and ran along the wet wooden structure like a tight-rope – it seemed endless, for what seemed 25ft before jumping down to the soft sand”. He added, “I could hear the loud crunching sounds as the yacht settled side on, but I could do nothing due to the wind and tide”. John Favell realised he had only just saved his own life by his instinctive actions. The Coastguard attended after being paged by a Humber Coastguard in response to a 999 call made by a member of the public. However, Mr Favell had already contacted the Coastguard by mobile phone to report he was off the boat

CORNWALL

and onto the bank. Early morning strollers, astonished by what they saw, helped Mr Favell collect some of his wet belongings that were strewn along the beach. He had lost most of his clothing and other items. A ball-park figure for the recovery and salvage could be as much as £7,000, but the boat was not insured. However, the lone sailor’s luck changed after losing his dream boat, and home, when

The Vincent was one of the largest and longest-lived Cornish pilot cutters

Luke Powell builds again Cornish traditional boatbuilder Luke Powell has taken up his adze again after a few years of charter skippering to build a 68ft replica Falmouth pilot cutter, as a community interest project in a new boatyard in Truro. The aim is to create a vocational training platform for maritime skills. Over the three-year project apprentices will not only build the vessel but also maintain and sail her once she is launched. Brian Pain, owner of the Thames Barge Lady of the Lea, has been working for some years in Kent with the

The wrecked Mithril on the beach at Cart Gap, Happisburgh

Faversham Creek Trust and shipwright Simon Grillet to develop a boatbuilding training platform. Now, he has joined forces with Luke and Joanna Powell to form the ‘Falmouth Pilot Cutter CIC’ Their aim is to resurrect Cornish maritime heritage by training a new generation of young people in the art of wooden shipbuilding. The newly-created ‘Rhoda Mary

Heritage Boatyard’ at Truro will be used to build a replica of one of the most famous and long-lived of Falmouth cutters, the Vincent. Built originally in 1852 for the Vincent family of St Mawes, she had a long career lasting in trade until 1922 before ending as a houseboat near St Mawes. The new vessel will be called Pellew in honour of a local hero.

local residents got together and raised money to help replace clothing and other items John needed. John Favell said, “I felt humbled by this kindness.” He added, “I just love the Norfolk folk who made me feel at home, so, I have decided to take up the hospitality offered and settle in Norfolk.” The publican of the Hill House Inn in Happisburgh, has offered John accommodation... and a job.

COURT CASE

Cheeki Rafiki trial opens Douglas Innes, director of the yachting management company for the Cheeki Rafiki, which capsized in the north Atlantic killing its four crew members, has appeared in court on November 3 charged with manslaughter. Innes, director of Stormforce Coaching Ltd, appeared at Southampton magistrates court to face four counts of manslaughter by gross negligence. He also appeared as representative for Stormforce, which faces a charge of failing to ensure the vessel was operated in a safe manner in accordance with section 100 of the Merchant Shipping Act 1995. Innes spoke only to confirm his name, address and date of birth and gave no plea during the short hearing. District judge Anthony Callaway adjourned the case and sent it to Winchester crown court for trial with a preliminary hearing scheduled for 5 December. He released Innes on unconditional bail until then. The 40ft yacht lost her keel as the crew were returning from Antigua to the UK in May 2014 after she got into trouble more than 700 miles from Nova Scotia. Onboard were skipper Andrew Bridge, 22, from Farnham in Surrey, and crew members Steve Warren, 52, and Paul Goslin, 56, both from Somerset, and James Male, 23, from Southampton. The Maritime and Coastguard Agency announced the charges in October following a two-year investigation.

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27/11/16 11:33 PM

“They will be encouraged to push their personal boundaries and learn about themselves as individuals” QUAY PEOPLE

ASPIRE360

Wanted: eight children to sail round Britain Eight children aged 14-18 will be sailing round Britain next April in a project designed by the sail-training charity Morvargh Sailing. The question is, which eight? Applications will continue to be accepted until 15 January. There will then be a three-stage selection process, including a day session at Mountbatten Watersports in Plymouth assessing resilience, communication and team skills. Morvargh Sailing was set up in 2010 when captain Matthew Barraud seized the opportunity to purchase the 57ft ketch Helen Mary R from the London Sailing Project, where he had been a volunteer.

Recently rerigged, Helen Mary R will carry the eight young people, together with an enlarged afterguard of eight adults on the five-week 1735mile voyage, titled Aspire360, leaving Plymouth’s Sutton Harbour on 2 April 2017. “They will be encouraged to push their personal boundaries and learn about themselves as individuals and in their relationships with others; and improve their academic skills,” says Matthew. The children will also need to fund their own places on the voyage, costing £1247, though it is hoped that there will be some bursary funding. morvargh-sailing.co.uk

ALBERT STRANGE BOAT

Morvargh Sailing’s ketch Helen Mary R will be crewed round Britain by eight 14-18-year-olds next year

PHILIPPINES

Rescued Mist restored

Mist, all ready to end two decades ashore, following her rebuild by John Krejsa

Mist, the Albert Strange canoe yawl, rescued from a Scottish beach 10 years ago and restored by Woodbridge boatbuilder John Krejsa, has at last returned to the water. She was relaunched at Melton Boatyard on 17 September in the presence of a small group of Strange enthusiasts with a bottle of champagne, wielded by John, across her stem. The 26ft 6in Mist, built in 1907, sank at her moorings on Gare Loch in 1994. She was

John Krejsa, with ASA flag

hauled up a couple of months later, and left ashore. It was 10 years later that a local man, Jim Hill, arranged for her to be moved to Gareloch Head beach and placed inside an old lifeboat hull there to provide some support. She was soon taken in hand by the Albert Strange Association, and in 2006, John Krejsa, then a newly-retired shipwright bought her and began what was to become a complete rebuild.

John Krejsa, who singlehandedly restored the Albert Strange Yawl Mist (see this page) originally trained in art and design – he was taught by the young David Hockney – and then worked in advertising before deciding he wanted to be a boatbuilder and applying for a job at Whisstocks in Woodbridge where he worked for 30 years. The yard closed in 1995, before he was ready to retire, but he was never short of freelance work until he took on the restoration of Mist 10 years ago.

Rebels kill and abduct The body of a German woman has been found on an abandoned yacht in the Philippines. The authorities believe her husband has been abducted by Islamic rebels, reports Katy Stickland. The military of the Philippines has reported that the yacht was found in a remote island in the Sulu archipelago and that the woman was shot. A shotgun was found lying near to her body. Her husband, who is also a German national, is missing. He is believed to have been abducted by Abu Sayyaf rebels. The group is reported to have made millions from kidnapping foreign nationals and demanding ransoms. The couple are believed to be Jurgen Kantner and his wife, Sabine, although no formal identification had yet taken place. A regional military spokesman, Filemon Tan told AFP that the couple’s passports had been found on board the yacht, which has been identified as the Rockall. The German couple (left) had previously been abducted by Somali pirates in the Gulf of Aden and held for 52 days in 2008.

Thedo Fruithof and medal

Thedo Fruithof has been decorated as an Officer of the Order of Orange-Nassau, one of the Netherlands’ highest civil honours, for services to historic sailing. Thedo is widely revered as a leading light in promoting traditional seafaring. He spent 22 years at the Zuider Zee Museum in Enkhuizen and from 1998 to 2014 he organised the Klassieke Schepen show there. Tom Hardy has been chosen to play Ernest Shackleton in a new movie about the ill-fated Endurance expedition.

CLASSIC SAILOR

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27/11/16 11:33 PM

Signals It’s all about initiatives and volunteers this month, so take your pick: help out at the Medway Queen or get involved with a new apprentice scheme MEDWAY QUEEN

Volunteers needed The battle to complete the restoration of the historic paddle steamer Medway Queen goes on. With the aid, once again, of the Heritage Lottery Fund the Medway Queen Preservation Society is coming to grips with current organisational and legal requirements for heritage charities. The focus is now on the volunteers who work on the ship and run the visitor centre. The board of trustees has been strengthened but

more skills and organisers are desperately needed. Money is always a limiting factor in any restoration project and much more of that is also required. A critical income stream is from visitors to the ship when she is open on Saturdays and help is always needed. In 2017 she will be open from February half term until December. More details on www. medwayqueen.co.uk or phone 01634 575717.

Medway Queen needs volunteers

BRIGANTES

The next eco-sustainable sail freighter

Rescuing a former sailing freighter, built in 1911, to make it suitable for ecological freight transport, with zero emissions by taking full advantage of the wind and self-produced electricity as the only means of propulsion – this, in a nutshell, describes the Brigantes project, an ambitious renovation project aimed at promoting the benefits of carbon neutral shipping, and strengthening the Sail Cargo Alliance, a growing movement of eco-

sustainable freighters. The 30m long ship, renamed Brigantes is currently being fully restored in a specialized shipyard in Trapani, Sicily. The new launch has been scheduled for 2018 at which time the reborn vessel will again sail the world seas, and one day have a chance to meet the Eye of the Wind, its world famous twin-sister ship. For more details, including how to support the project, see www.brigantes.eu.

Eye of the Wind, left, is, amazingly, sistership to the Brigantes, right, which could look like her is the sail conversion project is a success

PETTICROWS

SEYCHELLES

Magic Dragon

Maiden to return

Sometimes the lines of a classic boat are sacrificed just to keep it in a one design class. At least that is what Dragon owner Pieter Heerema, 65-year-old Vendee Globe competitor, thought, so he asked Petticrows, the home of Dragon building in Britain to come up with a Dragon with a few changes that would make it suitable for cruising rather than racing. The idea was to be able to step on the neo-Dragon from the jetty at the end of the garden, potter up the canal, and lock out into open water for relaxed cruising with not necessarily nautical friends. For Mr Petticrows, Tim Tavinor, what became known as the Magic Dragon was an interesting one-off (though

Tracy Edwards has bought back her beloved 1990 Whitbread winning yacht Maiden and now intends to bring her back to Britain for restoration. Edwards’ crowdfunding campaign in 2014 was scuppered when two big benefactors pulled out. The unused yacht has been in the Seychelles and Edwards estimates she will return to the UK next winter.

The Magic Dragon, steering herself as she cruises along photo and story by William Loram

a second has already been ordered) that he would like to develop further, and would welcome any enquiries so he could start developing it into a more affordable production day-sail cruising keelboat. “A lot of the modern boats are just so boring, and too much the same. The Magic Dragon is interesting in that it has modern thinking in the keel and the rudder, and rig, and theclassic lines of the Dragon,” Tim says.

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27/11/16 11:47 AM

NORFOLK BROADS

Harrier sails again A classic Broasds sailing cruiser, owned by an inflluential Broads personage is back in the water after major restoration work. Harrier, 23ft, built in 1900 and recognised as one of the oldest vessels on the Broads has been out of the water since 2014 as work was needed after discovering that some of her planks were rotten and needed replacing. Her owner is Bryan Read, aged 90, former chairman of the Norfolk Heritage Fleet Trust which owns the famous Hunters Fleet. He recalls how his aunt Ethel bequeathed Harrier to his father Hector,

Harrier, back in the water and still sailing after 116 years. Story and photo by Maurice Gray

who subsequently passed the yacht on to him. Bryan Read has spent his life on and around the Broads and remembers how his father relied on the Norfolk Waterways to transport grain to his family’s flour milling business R. J. Read and Son, in Norwich. In the early 1960s Bryan succeeded his father as Commissioner of the Great

Yarmouth Port and Haven Commission and Chairman of the Rivers Committee, which led to an additional role as President of the Broads Society. He later became a member of the Broads Authority. One of his greatest achievements was to save the famous Hunter Fleet after Norfolk County Council decided to sell it. He has now stepped down after 20 years as chairman and says it is time to take a slower place. “I love sailing on Harrier and will enjoy a leisurely approach with my wife Sheila and my 11 grandchildren and 15 Great Grandchildren”. The work on Harrier was carried out by George Elliot at Ludham Bridge and, although built over 100 years ago, she remains unchanged.

GLASGOW

A River Clyde regatta with St Ayles Skiffs The river Clyde was the setting for a Riverside Rowing Regatta in late September where six St Ayles Skiffs from around Scotland engaged in some fierce competition in wet racing conditions, writes Ben Duffin. It was a great weekend in the end. We launched two

GOLDEN GLOBE 2018

Secchi Disk ambassador Susie Goodall, the only female entrant in the 2018 Golden Globe solo, non-stop, round-the-world yacht race, has teamed up with the global, citizen science Secchi Disk study to become its seafaring ambassador. The Secchi Disk study, begun in 2013, is the world’s biggest citizen science study of the marine phytoplankton with data collected by seafarers from all around the world. www.secchidiskfoundation.org.

Photo: Sean Campbell

newly built traditional boats – a carvel Catspaw dinghy (Joel White/Herreshoff 12ft 8in) and a 10ft 6in clinker rowing boat called Annie B designed by Jonny Burke. I’m delighted to say both were launched to cheers and floated well on their lines! Visitors were able to come and visit our marquee and open workshop too, where they could take the chance to learn some traditional boatbuilding skills at the hands of our apprentices and watch some archival films of boatbuilding and maritime culture. After a damp Saturday, the sun shone on the Sunday and the skiffs went up river on a long row to explore the Clyde while we took visitors out in Annie B and had bacon rolls cooked on the boiler of a visiting steam boat.

NEW SKILLS TRUST

Heritage Marine Foundation A new charity, Heritage Marine Foundation,has been set up with the aim of beginning a new trailblazing apprenticeship scheme that links boatbuilding skills with those of seamanship and to address a shortfall of skills with in the industry. The foundation plans to start a three year apprenticeship seeing the apprentices spending four months of every year at sea. Its important that qualifications and shore side learning are supported with this element of understanding the daily running of a ship and working alongside the existing crew. The foundation hopes to address the

industry’s widening age gap and help many organisations with there future succession planning. The foundation will be based at Downs Road Boatyard in Maldon, and its trustees include paediatrician Dr Jasmine ArmourMarshall, boatbuilder Jim Dines, artist and educator Naomi Dines, master mariner and marine surveyor Nick Downden, and marine biologist Dr Lucy Woodall. Operations manager is Lyndon March. More details can be found on heritagemarinefoundation. org. CLASSIC SAILOR

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27/11/16 11:48 AM

Signals: Around the yards Spars aplenty this month - for Scott’s Discovery and Arthur Ransome’s Nancy Blackett, plus the defrosting of Amundsen’s Maud GLOUCESTER DOCK AND DUNDEE

Tommi Nielsen tackles Scott’s Discovery It is a busy time for Tommi Nielsen, the Gloucester Dock yard that specialises in the conservation of historic ships. Having been awarded the contract to carry out essential work on the mast and rigging of the RSS Discovery, Captain Scott’s ship in his Antarctic expedition now based at Dundee, Tommi has taken a team to partially dismast the ship and bring down the spars to be restored at Gloucester. TV presenter Lorraine Kelly is spearheading the campaign to crowdfund £40,000 for Dundee Heritage Trust, needed to complete the funding for the restoration costs, and ensure the future of this iconic ship that played

such a large role in the British attempt to be the first to reach the South Pole. “We are very pleased that we won the Discovery contract, it is very prestigious work considering the history of the ship,” says Sarah White, partner at the yard. Meanwhile, the last west country ketch Irene – an old friend of Tommi’s yard after a restoration in the 1980s – will be sailing to the Canaries for charter work after 40 metres of planking has been replaced, along with work on the rudder and tiller, new props, and replaced stern tubes. It turned out to be more work than expected, but owner Dr Leslie Morrish Above and left: Tommi Nielsen’s team sending down the spars on Scott’s Discovery at Dundere

knows all about that since he first rescued the 110ft Bridgewater-built ketch (1907) as an abandoned hulk from the Hamble in 1965. Also into Gloucester Dock is Olga, Swansea Museum’s 56ft Bristol Channel Pilot Cutter, having her MCA charter coding renewed. Tommi’s yard recreated the interior as the most authentic of the surviving original pilot cutters during a refit 2010-11. Also back for winter refits are Sceptre, the 12-Metre 1958 British challenger

for the America’s Cup, and Mascotte the biggest surviving Bristol Channel Pilot Cutter. Both are down from their Scottish bases where they charter during the summer months. They are joined by the topsail schooner Johanna Lucretia another old friend of the yard. And coming into Tommi’s dock from inland is the famous 1939 wooden narrowboat Gort, which was built to bring aluminium up to Birmingham from London during the Blitz.

FLORIDA

In love with Wookie When Chris Vassiliou ran across what is now named s/v Wookie, he writes, “I instantly fell in love. Designed by Bruce Bingham and built by Pacific Seacraft, the Flicka-20 had for 30 years sent my mind drifting across oceans. Once my name was on her documentation, I set about gutting her of all wiring, her tattered ceiling liner and rotting carpeting. With her old bowels barren she was then trucked to Pacific Seacraft for a new interior and a host of other improvements. My justification for such extravagance was simply passion, and a desire to professionally restore one of these amazing pocket cruisers.”

Want to read more about how Chris restored Wookie? Visit his blog at flicka20-wookie.com

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27/11/16 12:51 PM

IBTC LOWESTOFT

Boatbuilder at the Chelsea Flower Show IBTC Lowestoft is joining forces with award-winning Chelsea Flower Show exhibitor Gary Breeze to create a unique exhibit for next year’s show. Titled A Broadland Boatbuilder’s Garden it will aim to replicate the building site of the medieval Loddon Chet Boat, discovered in 2013 and excavated by the Broads Authority. The 6ft long, 12th-century boat was discovered near the River Chet, and IBTC was commissioned by the Broads Authority to build a replica. The exhibit will show the boat in a setting that incorporates plants which are of their time and native to the Broadland area, with a sail rigged to provide a makeshift shelter. Gary Breeze, who won both the Gold Medal and the Best Fresh Garden award at last summer’s show, is a lettering sculptor and boatbuilder. The exhibit, sponsored by the International Boatbuilding Training College, is inspired by the traditional skills which it continues to teach, and the ancient landscape of the Broads themselves.

CANADA/NORWAY

Amundsen’s Maud refloated

Some clean looking timber here!

RHODE ISLAND

Roald Amundsen’s ship Maud, built for his second Arctic expedition and launched 100 years ago, in June 1916, has spent the last 90 years preserved in ice, in Cambridge Bay, Canada, where she sunk after four years of being frozen in, in 1930. She had been sold to the Hudson’s Bay Company on behalf of Amundsen’s creditors. Now, the hull of the Maud has been lifted by a Norwegian team, which is planning to have her returned home to the town of Asker, near Oslo, where she was built. She was released from the seabed on 1 August, and a month was spent clearing mud from her hull. The team’s blog, maudreturnshome.no, reports: “Most of all we just feel extremely happy to see the enormous hull of Maud out of the water and also to see what good shape she is in despite all the years that have passed since she sunk in 1930. Now Maud is ready to face her first winter up in the air and she will slowly dry out to loosen some weight before she will start her long journey home next summer.”

Beautiful Carina gets a new bottom

Joe Loughborough runs the LMI yard in Newport Rhode Island, where he keeps his 1918 59ft (18m) Lawley cruiser Carina which serves as the family boat for a week’s holiday. She’s a beautiful old lady but her keel was getting old. So if was garboards off and out with the old before fashioning in a new stem and keel seen above, to keep the old girl going. Sounds like Joe was putting off the work... “It’s a project I kinda knew I had to do... but it goes well!” Looks like Carina will be back next season!

WOODBRIDGE

A new mast for Nancy Arthur Ransome’s Nancy Blackett is to have a new mast, following a second season of cracks in the existing one. At the end of this season, the state of the mast was reviewed by her owners the Nancy Blackett Trust, with its surveyor James Pratt and Allan Fuller, manager of Robertson’s Boatyard, Woodbridge. Various distortions and rigging problems were noted and it was agreed that the age of the mast – at least 30 years, and possibly as old as the 86-year-old boat herself – and of the galvanised standing rigging necessitated the replacement of both. Robertsons will undertake the project alongside its regular winter servicing of Nancy, with the making of the mast itself subcontracted to specialists Collars.

Maud, refloated after 90 years in the Canadian ice. Next stop, Norway

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Signals: Association news Showcasing clubs and classes around the country – please send us your stories

LSC at 90: Conviviality and education It was a proposal for a ‘yachtsmen’s study circle’ to meet fortnightly in London during the winter evenings that planted the germ of the Little Ship Club. It was made in a letter, signed by ‘Keen but Ignorant’ which appeared in Yacht Sales and Charters, 6 October 1926. The idea was seized on by the editor Maurice Griffiths for an editorial. By coincidence (or not?) the same issue contained the offer of a suitable room in The Ship at 45 Charing Cross Road, and a first meeting took place there on 5 November, attended by 27 ‘cruising men’. At the next meeting there were 40, and 80 people attended a dinner on 1 December. Thus was born the Little Ship Club, with the twin aims of ‘a convivial approach’ and ‘the educational aspect’. It was the educational aspect that came to the fore in the late 1930s when the

club became involved in the setting up of the Royal Naval Volunteer Supplementary Reserve, and applying its courses in seamanship and navigation to the training of prospective RNVSR members. This resulted in the unique situation of the Admiralty offering – without the usual preliminary of the club asking – the right to fly its own defaced Blue Ensign.

Members of the Little Ship Club assembling at Trinity House for its 90th anniversary dinner in October

Inevitably, Little Ship Club boats were among the Dunkirk Little Ships in 1940, often commanded by their owners rather than naval officers. By the end of the war, membership was over 2,500 and it continued to increase. It had greatly outgrown the Beaver Hall to which it had transferred in the 1930s, and in 1962 the foundation stone was laid for a new clubhouse beside the Thames at Bell Wharf Lane, with a 99-year lease. When, in 1983 the owners of the site, Eagle Star, wanted to redevelop the area, negotiations resulted in the provision of a new clubhouse, opened in1991, on a 125-year lease at a peppercorn rent and

with a capital payment for the inconvenience. In the meantime, the club’s courses were eventually adopted by the RYA. Many distinguished sailors have been members of the LSC, including presidents Claud Worth, its first, Dr T Harrison Butler and Sir Robin Knox-Johnston. The club celebrated its 90th birthday in style on 28 October, at the headquarters of another historic maritime organisation, Trinity House. It also held two anniversary rallies, one in the Channel Islands, with representatives of its American counterpart the Corinthians, and the other in September in Croatia.

OGA: Old gaffers, new adventures Old Myths …

There are some myths about the Old Gaffers that die hard! “I couldn’t join the OGA – it’s for bearded old salts in creaking wooden boats” or “The Old Gaffers? no room for plastic ‘lookalikes’ and certainly not Bermudans or motor boats!” None of the above is true. Indeed the modern OGA thrives on being open and inclusive. True, there might be a penchant for a bit of marine heritage conservation, for the warm feeling of woodwork under the floorboard, the smell of fresh varnish and tarry old rope! However for many, the practicalities of GRP and a simple rig have made gaffering more widely accessible. The romantics are still with us but what matters in the OGA is the comradeship of getting afloat

in boats of character, cruising in company with like-minded dreamers and having fun – everyone’s welcome in boats big and small. At our rallies you are as likely to meet a young family launching their brand new Shrimper on the harbour slip as you are to meet the crew of hardened ocean going ‘crusties’ aboard their ragged 40ft double ender, beckoning you aboard for assistance with another round of beer!

New Tales…

The OGA plans to use the pages of Classic Sailor to keep readers informed of Gaffer activities. There are OGA rallies all around our coasts, and across the water in Ireland, France and the Netherlands. The aim is to bring people and their

boats together and enjoy all the fun on and off the water. And Gaffer crews seem to have more tales to tell than many! As the saying goes: “The smaller the boat the greater the adventure!” You could just as well say that “the older that boat, the more intense the experience.” Certainly an old wooden cutter requires one’s full attention! Such a sense of adventure is hard to come by in the modern world, but 21st-century gaffering is alive and well in the OGA. Want to know more? Visit our website www. oga.org.uk read all about it and join us! We’ll be happy to take you along for the ride. Next month: The OGA’s big sailing plans for 2017, including our ‘Sou’ by Sou’west’ cruise in company next summer.

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Yachting historians out and about: Chatham “Anyone know why it’s called the poop deck?” asks David Chamney our guide as he flourishes his baton at the after deck of HMS Gannet. “It’s from the latin puppi meaning the stern of the ship,” he says before our questioning expressions can offer an answer. We’re about halfway through a guided ‘Royal’ tour of Chatham Dockyard and are getting a detailed armaments briefing on the 1878 190ft long Victorian anti-slavery sloop of war. David goes on to explain how the vessel, as a dormitory to TS Mercury on the Hamble

had a training regime so harsh that Hitler was encouraged to send some of his Hitler youth for a course in the 1930s. “They lasted about two weeks, it was too tough for them,” David relates. David’s knowledge of this, the other two warships, destroyer HMS Cavalier and HM Submarine Ocelot, our surrounding buildings and their history is comprehensive. He leads us past the building where Charles Dickens father worked in the pay office, and points out a sawmill put up in 1812 by Marc Brunel father of

Dockyard guide David Chamney in Napoleonic era naval uniform which slightly belies his vast and detailed historical knowledge

Isambard Kingdom. He can show us where HMS Victory was built, and where they seasoned the wood that was used in her construction. It’s a fascinating tour, and I am glad I am on the inside track as it were, because I have come with the Association of Yachting Historians. Before this we had been taken behind the scenes to the model store, where hundreds of model craft are stored in dry climate-controlled conditions. The historians got on their knees, almost worshipful in a clandestine temple devoted

to the celebration of line and detail. It felt like we were learning secrets! Then after being that impressed, it was bettered by David’s tour which ended in the Victorian Ropery where so much of the Royal Navy’s cordage had been made by the master ropemakers over 400 years (and still going). If you join the Association of Yachting Historians, for the princely annual sum of £10 you get invited to take part in a few outings and talks like this each year. I think I am going to go again! Dan Houston

Part of the old rope walk at Chatham is still being used for making rope

Historians Rupert and Robin Richardson hit the mother lode, away from the crowds in the model store

Model of HMS Victory, repainted in buff to match the real one’s new paint

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The Post Email or post letters and replies to the editor – see opposite; we’ll make sure responses to queries are forwarded on. Remembering the RNSA

A couple of days ago I opened up the August/September issue of Classic Sailor at page three and memories came flooding back when I saw the picture of a 14ft RNSA [as used in the new Swallows and Amazons film – Ed.] Over 60 years ago I crewed for my brother, Geoff Quantrill, in the handicap class at the Pin Mill Sailing Club, racing a RNSA on the River Orwell. In those days my brother worked for Austin Farrer at his boat building yard at Woolverstone and Geoff lived at the 'Cat House' nearby. On race days we sailed down river from where Woolverstone marina now sits and joined a selection of various classes of dinghies; I recall that not two boats were of the same class. There was a 14ft International, a Sword Fish, an Orwell One Design and two others very much like an Essex One Design and an Estuary One Design 18ft long. At that time we all had something in common with Swallows and Amazons as nobody ever wore lifejackets. On one occasion, whilst racing, we were visited by a hurricane type wind coming straight down river. My brother quickly decided to run up onto the mud and drop sails, realising what was about to happen. Sure enough the dinghies up river from us were soon turned over, floating like corks. We were then busy helping to rescue these crews as in those days no rescue boats were in attendance when we raced. Now aged 85 I still sail a dinghy at Waldringfield on the Deben River being an active member of the Waldringfield Sailing Club. Of course, nobody today would dream of sailing without a lifejacket. Roy Quantrill, Waldringfield, Suffolk

One of the two 14ft RNSA (Royal Naval Sailing Association) dinghies used in the Swallows and Amazons film

in italics and that permission to use the italic version of HMS was revoked after the celebrations of Trafalgar were over. This boat was not purposely built as a replica of the original Pickle at all and it is not historic, for one, it is not listed on the national historic ships site as an historic vessel. It is on the replica list although technically not a replica. So the stories of this boat having been purposely built as a replica of the original Pickle are inaccurate. Hayley Petty via email.

Look at my boat

At that time we all had something in common with Swallows and Amazons as nobody ever wore lifejackets Pickle and her sisters

I have some information with regard to the Pickle featured in the August/September issue of Classic Sailor. The Pickle, formerly called the Alevtina and Tuy and built in St Petersburg in 1995, was built to order for customers in Russia along with another four boats: Elena Maria Barbara, Volchista, Sadko and Pandora (formerly Anna). They were designed by Andrew Akhmeton who I had the pleasure of interviewing a few months back. They all had distinct figureheads and are all similar in appearance. Andrew Akhmeton designed the boats based on the drawings of Chapman in the 1770s and inspired by the

I’d like to share this picture (below) of my Norwalk Islands Sharpie 23 Kivu. I bought the plans from Robert Ayliffe (NIS Boats) and built the hull with a local boat builder and then fitted her out at home launching her in 2001. She is very unusual in having twin asymmetric plates which I discussed with designer Bruce Kirby. She features on the yahoo group on the NIS site if readers have access to it. Best wishes, Paul Daltry, Ipswich

Baltic traders of the time. The Alevtina and her sister ship Elena Maria Barbara were sourced from Finland sent to Gloucester Docks for a refit where the Alevtina was refitted to take the part of Pickle as the Elena was deemed too much in need of repair. The Alevtina was then used in the re-enactment for the 200th anniversary celebrations of the Battle Of Trafalgar, while the Elena Maria Barbara went to Wales to undergo a major rebuild at the World Of Boats attraction in Cardiff. That's the only reason that the boat Alevtina and Tuy has the name Pickle now. She was given grant to use the term HMS as long as it was

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classicsailor.com

Letter of the month

✉

7 Haslar Marina, Gosport, Hants. PO12 1NU

Call for help for hurricane-hit Ile a Vache off Haiti Nat Benjamin sailed south several years ago on the family schooner Charlotte, carrying supplies of fishing gear, spare/ old sails, clothes, money, and a lot of stuff for the use of the folks on Ile a Vache - an island of about 20 square miles 6½ miles off the SW coast of Haiti with a population of 15,000. Nat has advised that Hurricane Matthew (category 5) passed directly over Ile a Vache, and the residents were without safe drinking water, without food and without shelter as their houses were destroyed and virtually all the farm animals, as well as the farms (and unharvested crops) were destroyed. One of their urgent needs is for safe drinking water. Nat has found a generator operated portable water maker which can make 37 gallons of water an hour. It could be carried south in one of the boats leaving soon, or perhaps it could be air freighted in. It will cost about $6,000. Considering the ever present spectre of cholera, keeping folks from drinking tainted water is a

admin@classicsailor.com Editor Dan Houston dan@classicsailor.com +44 (0)7747 612614 Art Editor Stephen Philp Sub Editor Peter Willis peter@classicsailor.com Visible devastation on Ile a Vache - safe water is a bigger problem

very important consideration. With all their buildings to rebuild, small hand tools and building supplies (nails, etc.) are also desperately needed. Although the residents of Ile a Vache may have been a bit better off than Haitians living in the cities, they are now in truly desperate circumstances. Whatever you can send along in the way of dollars to the Sense of Wonder fund (senseofwondercreations.org), or suggestions, or goods and services will certainly help to make a difference to an island community struggling to survive. A side note for those of us who love Gloucester fishing schooners, and those

from Nova Scotia, I read on Wikipedia (while looking up Ile a Vache) that the treacherous reefs and rocks off the island are where the original Bluenose was lost back in 1946. Thanks. Ginny Jones, Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, USA

Write for some fizz Each month our letter of the month will be sent a bottle of de Bleuchamp Champagne

Contributing editor Guy Venables guy@classicsailor.com Columnists Andrew Bray, Federico Nardi Clubs and events liaison Oliver Houston oliver@classicsailor.com Advertising Ian Welsh ian@classicsailor.com +44 (0)7711 069544 Catherine Jackson catherine@classicsailor.com +44 (0)7495 404461 Admin Evie Farrelly evie@classicsailor.com Publishing director John Clarke Chairman David Walker Classic Sailor Ltd Published monthly-ish: ISSN 2059-0423 Subscriptions See our latest deal at classicsailor.com or call: + 44(0)1273 420730

The gig Dasher, with its all female crew welcomed us at Padstow with a cheery: “Thought we might get a gin and tonic,” writes in Colin Stracey of sea school First Class Sailing which circumnavigated Britain this summer with two boats raising money for Macmillan Cancer Support. CLASSIC SAILOR 15

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Martyn Heighton 1947-2016 Director of National Historic Ships UK: “He served the cause of heritage with extreme energy wherever he went, and where he went something significant always happened”

artyn Heighton, who died suddenly on 6 November, will be remembered with both respect and fondness as a doughty champion of the preservation of historic vessels, and a genial, knowledgeable companion with an informal approach. At his death he was Director of National Historic Ships UK, the independent, though government funded body set up to advise authorities and the likes of the Heritage Lottery Fund on matters relating to historic ships, as well as informing and educating the public through its National Register of Historic Ships, and other initiatives introduced by Martyn such as the Shipshape Heritage Training Partnership, set up to promote the skills needed to maintain such vessels. Martyn has filled the role since NHS-UK was set up in 2006, and piloted it through the governmental bonfire of quangos in 2010. Prior to NHS his career included CEO of the Mary Rose Trust, and a long association with Bristol, were he made his home, through SS Great Britain, the Matthew and the Historic Harbour. It was Martyn who organised the first International Festival of the Sea at Bristol in 1996. He also worked with the Merseyside Maritime Museum development in the regeneration of Liverpool’s Albert Dock and the National Trust where he led their national programme to celebrate ‘SeaBritain 2005’. Complementing Martyn’s work with NHS–UK he was a Trustee of HMS Victory Preservation Company, HMS Caroline, Lakeland Arts Trust (owners of Windermere boat museum), a member of the Cutty Sark Advisory Committee, on the Council of the Society for Nautical Research and a Liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Shipwrights. Martyn’s fondness for a bit of showmanship ensured that while NHS-UK was serious it was never stuffy. He introduced the National Historic Ships Flagship scheme in 2009, a status awarded annually to a significant historic vessel with an active programme of visibility to the pubic. He also launched the National Historic Ships flag, a defaced Red Ensign that can be worn by any vessel on the Register, see right. Among many tributes, a particularly heartfelt commemoration came from Matthew Tanner, chief executive of SS Great Britain: “Martyn Heighton was not only my friend and a valued colleague and mentor, but also a stalwart leader in UK and international maritime heritage. He was always unstinting with his help and good humour for everyone, and he will be very sorely missed. “His career was quite remarkable – he served the cause of best practice in UK and international

“He has left a strong legacy and we’ll remember him as we follow his path” From colleague Hannah Cunliffe: His clarity of vision for the future of the historic ships sector, his breadth of knowledge and ability to take an objective stance, his tenaciousness in seeing things through and the warmth of feeling with which he embraced the wide variety of projects he was involved with was very impressive. As a mentor and colleague, he was funny, supportive and forward thinking. We have been overwhelmed by the tributes and messages of sympathy which have come flooding in, which underlines the way in which he touched so many people’s lives. He has left a strong legacy and we’ll remember him as we follow his path.

heritage with extreme energy wherever he went, and where he went something significant always happened…. “Martyn was always inclusive, and always embracing – welcoming people in and encouraging them to find their own place in the national heritage while never letting go of his core principles and values as a heritage and conservation professional. This balance of quality and rigour, while finding ways for everyone to take part, was a significantly positive attribute... “There are probably very few historic ships in the UK that have not been directly touched, and supported, and enabled by Martyn and his team over the last ten years. “As a legacy and of real importance is his work to deliver and edit the major and unique book Conserving Historic Vessels, published by National Historic Ships in 2010. This volume has become the definitive guide to best practice and practical conservation for historic ships worldwide… “Martyn received the Museums & Heritage Lifetime Achievement Award in 2010, and there is little doubt that he deserved imminent public recognition with a national honour; it is sad that it cannot now happen. “The loss of Martyn Heighton is real, and a blow to the management and conservation of our maritime heritage and culture. My thoughts are with Evelyn and their two sons, and for the loss of a charismatic and energetic friend with whom there was much work still to do.”

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Classic Classic Coast Coast

Smylie’s boats

Faversham

North Norfolk Itchen Ferries Crabbers

PHOTOS: DAN HOUSTON

IO The area around the Swale (which as we all know is not a river) seems to be a continuation of East Anglia south of the Thames. Certainly it has more in common with the creeks and marshes of Essex than the Channel coast. By theFaversham, time you read the very And its this, ‘capital’ has real possibility of this imposing been a long-standing centre for structure tumbling into thebarges. sea building Thames sailing may been least in forthe Th esehave days theaverted, work isatmore anotherofwinter. severe nature repairUnusually and restoration, south-easterly stormsvigorously have pushed but it is still carried coastal erosion on the olkWharf coast’s on at and around theSuff Iron Orford Ness to within a few feet Boatyard. of the lighthouse’ s foundations, Standard Quay, a little further andthe members of the Orfordness up creek and closer to the Lighthouse Trust have working heart, and pubs, of thebeen ancient flat out(500 to install defences’ – town listed‘soft buildings, several bags of shingle in sausages of them pubs),wrapped is not, alas, what ofwas. high-performance geo-textile it Creeping gentrifi cation bonding – to keep the sea atstoutly bay (see is making inroads, albeit orfordnesslighthouse.co.uk). resisted by the locals (keep an eye e 98ft lighthouse was built and onTh favershamcreektrust.com) in 1792 decommissioned by there areand still barges to be seen Trinity tied upHouse there. in 2013, in view of theElsewhere threat frominencroaching sea. this complex It has already an attempt of creeks are survived the Hollowshore by the National Trust, which owns Boatyard at Oare Creek, which the Ness, impose a policy of also offerstothe extremely ‘controlled ruination’ (ie let it fall traditional Shipwright’s Arms, down). The Lighthouse Trust aims to keep it standing, and open to visitors, ‘for as long as possible’. Visiting, on open days only, involves a short ferry trip and a 40-minute walk, each way, across the Ness. Dates for 2016 are still to be announced, and are dependent on the continuing stability and safety of the structure and its surrounds.

best-known of a good selection of watering-holes around the Swale, many of them serving locallybrewed ale by Shepherd Neame. In all a perfect destination for a little cruise, particularly if you are shallow of draught. Peter Willis Orford Ness itself is a classic example of an ever-changing coastline. The long, shifting spit of land that separates the River Ore from the sea is quite capable of closing the river’s mouth and forcing a breakthrough higher up, where the river’s alternative name is the Alde. It’s mecca for connoisseurs of bleak, exposed seascapes (and WWII military detritus on Havergate Island). Access, by boat, is carefully restricted by the National Trust. A good everyday alternative on the nearby mainland is the equally bleak stony beach known as Shingle Street. Top: The Thames barge Orinoco makes village has three pubs, herOrford way down Faversham Creek. including Jolly SailorArms down Centre: Thethe Shipwright’s at Hollowshore by the harbour; an excellent fish Below: The Editor’s boatOrford Nereis being restaurant, the Butley craned out of the creek for some Oysterage, and the fine Pump Street ongoing renovations at Iron Wharf bakery. Peter Willis

Orfordness Lighthouse

The spiral staircase at Orfordness Lighthouse may still be climbed by visitors

owned an Itchen once haveboats fond referred memoriestoofasher beached ftenFerry you’ll findand these simply alongside the old Supermarine shed thethe river Cromer Crabbers, asatif Woolston, the small across town on Pal of Itchen called coast though shethe wasonly no from Southampton. northern sweep ofshe thewas Norfolk was pal of the newhome bridgeofthey were building at the time. – me and myof these beamy, rounded craftWe . I guess some Pal that is – were first must ones to into one of the support the the blame becrash put upon travellers such aspillars. Daniel This was mostly down to two facts: that thehave sails didn’t thethe Defoe who, in 1724, didn’t muchreally to sayfitfor boat and the Stuart-Turner started throughout time place except engine that it never supplied Norwich with my plentiful with the boat. It was, though, a greatoflearning ‘why not to buy supplies of lobsters. No mention crabs? experience However aon 1820-lithograph abyboat’ . I often wonder what happenedcrab to her. Robert Dixon shows lug-rigged boats on the shore line by a Wonder was, fact, a fine in example an Itchen Ferry. Built the great dilapidated jetty.inBuckland, 1875, of reported that crab andbylobster SU120,Sheringham, has been lovingly restored and sails and Dan Hatcher 1860, Wonder, fisheries wereincentred on Cromer, Runton, Weybourne from I remember her a few years back during the Swale all theFaversham. neighbouring coastalseeing villages. Barge Match. Hatcher, known as King Dan to his contemporaries, It has beenDaniel writtenGthat the traditional doubler-ended North Norfolk was a very successful of for yachts at his200 Belvedere yard between 1845 fishing boat has beenbuilder around at least years. Indeed, one suggestion and 1880 and thus working boats were renowned for theircoast speed. is that fishers camehisdown south from theequally Lincolnshire/Yorkshire Wonder butHowever speedy she Not and that it was heavilywas inflnecessarily uenced byhis thefastest, cobles. thewas. coble itself was The roots (and name) deemed unsuited to the sandy beach conditions and so the crab boat, as of came from The important factor in its evolution was to wethese now craft know it, evolved. the village of off the beach – for harbours are few and far copesmall withfishing working directly Itchen Ferry lying onTh the between herewith. ese boats are almost symmetrically pointed at either river Itchen in the eighteenth end and have ability to lie century. beam onSmall to thesprit-rigged sea when they clinker-boats worked theman come onto the shore.off One beach, shing outonasthe far gunwale as would fioft en sit the Isle of Wight. Their size to balance the boat whilst grew as theywent trawled furtherof a the others in search away from theirthe base. tractor to haul boat out. Consequently they Of course, in theadopted early days the gaff rig as working there were nomany tractors, and the fellows did.devised The boats were way fishermen a handy three-quarter decked with afrom of carrying the boat away small cuddy with berths, the beaches of thetwo surf. Holes in athe cupboard and coal stove to allowed them to pass oars through from side top stake called ‘orrucks’ while the hours when to sideaway by which a team of fishermen were able to lift the boat and walk it not fishing.Th Gaff -rigged up-beach. e same holes were used in place of rollocks or thole pins to with a long-boom row the boats. over the stern and two headsails, I remember in the 1990s watching one particular boat coming ashore some were asa series long asof30ft in and taking photographs from the point at which the boat length. of thewas catch arrivedMuch back and lying beam on, to when it was safely aboard a was shrimps and oysters trailer and trundling itsand way towards a row of such vessels atop the beach. they raced Ihome to land. Although counted fewer than a dozen boats, records tell us that there Inonce 1872,125 according to the fishing wereand 570 Sheringham second-class were boats working fromregisters, both thethere Cromer boats working Solent another 61 fiinshers Poolehere: where the boats were beaches alone.the I love theand terms for the Crabs and Shannocks similar. The design was widespread aroundrespectively. Southampton Water and the for the men of Cromer and Sheringham Solent– somethemselves being referred to distinct as HytheNorse fishinginfl cutters. Other well-known The boats have uence: clinker builders were Alfred Payne and both of fiNortham, andribs Lukes, whose construction, wide strakes andFay, built skin rst with oak being added he moved Hamble.inThey yard was aboutthe thehull. sameBefore spot asmotorisation I kept Pal before to strengthen which saw antoincrease were worked by fishermen crewed for the yacht-racing fraternity beam,mostly they were rigged with onewho lugsail. Lengths were in the region of during the regatta season, and the filarger shermen toowere racedbuilt. aboard their own craft. 15ft though, post-motorisation, boats Black Bess, CS32, Itchen Ferries been survivors: Edward Cooke,have in 1828, producedFreda some, CS110, fine representations of these Nellie , SU71,Others but seehave www.itchenferry.org foryears morebut, as they adapted engine crab boats. followed over the by the 21st to century power quitealmost well and lurk in places. One17ft daywooden I’ll ask them they were all others fibreglass. Thway-out en in 2014, a new crabif . Hewitt, without anyone knows to boatbuilder my Pal of Itchen Auk,whatever was builthappened by Stiffkey David boat, the any drawings to work from. Maybe we’ll see a renaissance in these lovely North Norfolk craft, possibly even outside of Cromer!

The important roots (andfactor name) these craft came The in of their evolution was to cope fromworking the small village lying with directly offoftheItchen beach,Ferry, for harbours on the Itchen in the eighteenth century. are fewriver and far between herewith CLASSIC SAILOR 17 CLASSIC

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27/11/16 11:36 PM

Den Phillips 2017 Calendars

EAST COAST CALENDAR

CLASSIC YACHT CALENDAR

Marga 1910 sailing past the Citadel, at Les Voiles de St Tropez.

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28/11/16 11:58 AM

Andrew Bray

visited the Classic Sailor stand at the Southampton Boat Show, had a chat with the Editor and met cartoonist Guy Venables. From Dan’s reports later on the show had been a successful ten days for the magazine. For the last six years I have visited various boat shows, mainly London and Southampton, for pleasure, to meet up with old friends and ogle unaffordable boats and desirable equipment – although it must be said that Maggie May’s needs are simple and revolve more around lines and blocks than things electronic. But this visit got me thinking about shows past. I first visited the Southampton show in 1971 and although I had been to London a couple of times in my teens, my first ‘professional’ show was also in 1971. Since then I have been to every single Southampton Show, all but one London Show, 16 at Annapolis and Dusseldorf and a smattering at METS, the trade show, Paris, Cannes, Monaco, San Remo, Brisbane and Friedrikshafen. All of this adds up to something like three years and four months spent looking at boats, their gear, meeting the readers and drinking copious amounts of Guinness. Three years and four months? Hasn’t this man got anything better to do with his life? The first London Boat Show was held at Olympia in 1955 where it shared the hall with one of the circus companies that wintered there. Yachting Monthly was there and JDS, Des Sleightholme, told stories of having to leap clear as the elephants relieved themselves on the other side of the partitions. After two years it moved to Earls Court and by the time I was a regular visitor it was a mature show, with a central village feature, boats on the pool and regular shows on the stages there. The pool was originally built to be a fullsized Olympic pool but, according to legend, it was just a few inches too short. In between Boat Shows it was drained and covered up for other events and concerts – it was here that Pink Floyd staged The Wall in 1980. The pool took a long time to fill and for the water to be conditioned.

Tongues loosened by another pint, many a good story started life on the sticky ﬂoors of Guinness central

It took even longer to empty. Allegedly the only time the organisers went for a ‘fast drain’ half the basements in Earls Court flooded. The village feature might have been the official central feature but to exhibitors, and especially journalists, the real central feature was the Guinness Stand. As the late Andrew ‘Spud’ Spedding, writer, cartoonist and wit commented, “I’m on the boat stand at the Guinness Show”. It was on the Guinness Stand, otherwise known as The Office or The Irish Embassy, that journalists quaffed quantities of the black stuff, on expenses as well, with the fully justified excuse that it was here that the real business of the Show was done. The marine trade was off duty here, tongues loosened by another pint of Guinness, passing on gossip and information all fully off the record. Many a good story started life on the sticky floors of Guinness central. The Guinness stand at ExCel is a very poor imitation. The only other shows that came close to this were Dusseldorf and Annapolis. At Dusseldorf ‘pig and beer’ at one of the several bier houses is a popular alternative, preceded by a quick Killepitsch or two standing outside in the freezing January cold. It’s the only show I ever attended where beer mats scribed with the number of drinks bought, were accepted a receipts for expenses claims. Annapolis was always my favourite show. Held in this beautiful town on the shores of Chesapeake Bay in autumn it is not only a great show with good opportunities for networking and news-gathering, it also has everything from a real American diner, Chick and Ruth’s Deli where a good breakfast lasts all day, café restaurants like O’Brien’s and McGarveys, the less salubrious ACME bar and fine dining at places such as the Chart House, on the site of the old Trumpy’s boatyard. It was here in March 1942 that, after a heavy snowfall, the roof collapsed destroying the boat stored there. That boat was the original Schooner America.

GUY VENABLES

The real central feature of the Boat Show: Andrew recollects past times spent imbibing Guinness and gossip

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Martha Primrose

50 ft Ashley Butler Mayflower Class Gaff Yawl 2012

£295,000 Lying UK

MARTHA PRIMROSE has already proven herself with cruises to the Med and back; fast, safe and comfortable – perhaps defining the term Modern Classic with her carvel planking, long keel and effortless charm. Ashley Butler’s designs are inspired by the ergonomics, form and function of the historic working craft of the British Isles. The simplicity, seaworthiness and speed follow their classic-yacht splendour of form, canvas under sail, and the quality of the materials and craftsmanship.

33 High Street, Poole BH15 1AB, England. Tel: + 44 (0)1202 330077 www.sandemanyachtcompany.co.uk email: info@sandemanyachtcompany.co.uk

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Nardi’s Nods

by Federico Nardi of Cantiere Navale dell’Argentario

Ranger 29 Lively sheer, moderate freeboard, attractive overhangs and 5ft 11in headroom, all without compromising appearance

hilip Rhodes is one of the best American designers of the 20th century. He was also a forerunner in the use of fibreglass; his first series-produced fibreglass boat was built in 1956. In 1960 the Dutch de Visser yard began production of the Rhodes’ designed Ranger 29, not to be confused with the boat of the same name designed ten years later by Gary Mull. With an overall length of 28ft 6in the Ranger 29 has berths for four and 5ft 11in of standing headroom. Rhodes has managed to give all this internal height without compromising her appearance; she is still handsome even with her tall stepped doghouse. Rhodes’ capable hand can be evinced from her lively sheer, moderate freeboard and attractive overhangs. The raked transom is pleasing to the eye and also helps to keep the permanent backstay well off the mainsail’s leech. She is rigged as a masthead sloop; with only 334 sqft (31m2) of sail she is easy to handle. Although only 20ft on the waterline and with a beam of just 8ft, below decks nothing is missing: a complete galley aft with two bunks and a fixed table in the main cabin, two more bunks in the forward cabin and an enclosed head between the two with access from both. Storage is considerable for this size of boat with a roomy lazarette and cockpit seat lockers in addition to a hanging locker below. Auxiliary power can be had from either an outboard in a well or an inboard below the companionway steps. Comfortable, with privacy for a couple, the Ranger 29 has a draught of just 3ft 10in; her long keel does away with the need for a centreboard. Many Ranger 29s can still be found: with a ballast using 2,750 lbs of cast iron or lead (the latter is to be prefered), the total displacement comes to 7,965 lbs. The single-spreader aluminium mast is stepped on deck. Market price is around £5,000. Above: Tall doghouse gives good headroom without compromising apppearance Right: The saloon, with ﬁxed folding table

TRANSLATION BY JAMES ROBINSON TAYLOR

RANGER 29 LOA 28ft 6in (8.7m) Beam 8ft (2.4m) Draught 3ft 10in (1.2m) Displacement 7965 lbs (3613kg)

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RESTORATION

Valerie: with the w ‘A strange-looking, rather dilapidated clipperbowed schooner.’ But that was then... By Mike Smylie

ost people will have experienced one of those rare moments in life when something catches their attention and the heart rate increases. Exclude the interaction between the sexes and surely one of the loveliest of inanimate objects to awaken that little heart string – for boaty types at least – must be a boat, whether it be one of the many down-to-earth working varieties or a sleek and curvy yacht. For boatbuilder Scott Metcalfe of Waterfront Marine, Porth Penrhyn, Bangor, his turn came when wandering around Liverpool Marina in 2003 and casting his eye over what he described

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e wind in her arms Built 1895, restored by Scott Metcalfe over nine years, and relaunched in 2013, Valerie sails again

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VALERIE’S RESTORATION

History of Valerie

Stow & Sons, boatbuilders of Shoreham, Sussex, had built up a reputation for excellence by the time Valerie was launched. She had been designed by Harry T Stow, the grandson of the founder of the company John Stow who, along with his eldest son Thomas, started the yard in 1866. Harry, it seems, was regarded as being responsible for many fine yachts after he took over the business around the turn of the nineteenth century. Valerie was in fact one of his first designs though several others have survived through the years to sail today; Tern II (1899), Voluta (1900) and Rosalind (1904) being fine examples. According to Lloyd’s Register, she was owned by Thomas Stow which suggests being built as a speculative stock boat and she remained in that ownership until 1898. This was during one of the busiest periods for the yard when 23 craft were produced between 1890 and 1899 and it has been further suggested that perhaps there had originally been a buyer who had later dropped out. In 1907 she was registered in Dublin, owned by William A Brodie with an Italian address in San Remo, kept in the Solent and had a Kelvin engine. By 1912, according to rumour, she had moved to Ireland and is reputed to have been involved in gun smuggling for the IRA alongside Erskine Childers’ Asgard though no evidence has been discovered to confirm this. It does,

however, make adventurous reading and generally adds to the fascination behind this gem of a yacht. By 1934 she was registered to Alexander Cochran CBE who, according to historian John Leather, had been a naval architect at Burns Shipyard in Mumbai. It is thought he actually bought her about 1922 when she crossed back to England. Cochran lived in Paignton and kept the boat at Dartmouth. In 1939 she was converted from a gaff yawl to a cutter rig. Cochran died in the late 1950s and by 1962 she was registered to SDN Preston of London with the Helford River being her home port. The engine had been changed for a Gray Marine and it is believed there were several changes of ownership including one to AJ Ellis (date unknown) and another to ART Kirby by 1966. Next, Richard Biddle, a Somerset- based solicitor, bought her in 1972 and later had much of her planking replaced in pitch pine after the copper sheathing was removed at Port Hamble Marine. Again what became of her over the next 20 years is unknown though she spent time at the Exeter Maritime Museum and was converted to a schooner rig and taken back to Shoreham where, in 1991, John Timms purchased her. He later sailed her round to Liverpool where he was preparing to do some remedial work to halt the steady decline in her condition. However, it soon became obvious that a rebuild was necessary, and without the funds for this, he decided to move the boat to Port Penrhyn, Bangor, where some stabilisation work occurred. John eventually decided he was fighting a losing battle and Scott bought the boat for little more than the value of her lead and engine. That was in 2004, just a year after that first introduction in Liverpool.

THIS AND OPENING SPREAD: RICHARD FRICK

as a “strange-looking, rather dilapidated, clipper-bowed schooner”. Even in its poor state he realised that lurking beneath the faded and weary skin was a gem of a yacht and many a night must have followed when he felt the boat entering his dreams. The boat was just sitting there that day, alone and lonely, awaiting attention and though, of course, he didn’t realise it at the time, luck had it that it was to soon come his way. That boat was the 1895-built yawl Valerie.

The rebuild

By the time of her relaunch in 2013, after many hours of work, Valerie was reborn as a gaff yawl and was in tip-top condition.

ROGER SANDERS

Valerie’s rudderstock, proudly announcing her date of birth, and traditional parrel beads and hoops on the mast

From the outset back in 2004 Scott realised that a good percentage of the boat was going to have to be rebuilt but his first problem was that the records from Stows were largely non-existent and history of the company equally scanty. Everything then of uncertain quality was stripped out as far as was necessary, back to basic, so to speak, down to just the frames and planking. The pitch pine was still there, presumably from the 1970s refit although it was always possible that she could have been replanked at a later date. The top two planks each side were teak. At some time, probably when she was rerigged as a schooner and to compensate for the altered rig, the after end of the lead keel had been cut off and relocated, cut up, to the forward bilges.

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It was, of course, down in the bilges where the majority of rot had taken place and necessitated the renewal of the frames throughout. Unlike many yachts of her vintage, Valerie has almost working boat frames 3in square, doubled in some areas, instead of the delicate ribs associated with many Edwardian yachts. Grown oak was used for the end futtocks and laminated iroko for the central ones. All the floors were renewed in galvanised steel along with new keel bolts. The beam shelf and stringers are all in one piece Douglas fir. New deck beams and carlins in oak and a deck in two layers of ply finished in 1/4in teak completed the structure. On deck she has been described as being “a slight of simple Victorian-inspired

splendour: deadeyes, a low-level coachroof – without port lights – and a minimum of deck piercings give a view from aboard and ashore that would inspire any owner to glints of pride.” Down below the interior intentionally has a basic feel so that any prospective new owner – yes, Valerie is for sale – can tailor his or her own requirements. The saloon is fitted out in Welsh oak panelling and there’s a galley with cooker and two settee berths and two pilot berths. Generally the fitting out is definitely of a very high standard. The engine is a Yanmar 3YM30 propelling through a Sillette Sonic sail drive unit to a two-blade Gori folding prop. On deck new masts, spars and bowsprit have been manufactured mostly in Douglas

fir by the yard, except the mizzen boom and gaff from Sitka spruce, and Valerie has been re-rigged in her 1895 way, i.e. as a gaff yawl. Sails in Clipper Canvas have come from Steven Hall of North Sea Sails of Tollesbury. That Scott Metcalfe has put both his bank account and heart into this rebuild is, as one steps aboard, obvious at the very outset. It’s been a well thought out and sympathetic project, and now the boat is easily sailed by a small crew. I do like this description of the man I’ve known for many years now: “Outwardly [he] gives no signs of being any more caring or intuitive than the majority of classic yacht restorers that one can find around the country, but an appraisal of the quality and elegance of the rebuilt Valerie induces a re-appraisal of the man: it’s impossible to

“A boat that can be easily sailed by a small crew”

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XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

RUTH AND SCOTT METCALFE

“It’s impossible to achieve this level of artistry and functional beauty without having an understanding that goes beyond the merely professional”

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VALERIE’S RESTORATION

Valerie 1895 LOA 47ft/14.3m LOS 62ft/18.9m LWL 33ft/10m Beam 10ft 2in/3.1m Draught 6ft 6in/2m Displacement c47tonnes

Anove: Valerie’s clipper bow, covered in gold leaf Left: Stages of restoration, and the part completed, simple interior

achieve this level of artistry and functional beauty without having an understanding that goes beyond the merely professional” (Sandeman’s Yachting Chronicles). Wandering around the yard recently, seeing a mast propped up on baulks of timber, I recalled a conversation we had several years ago about mast making and those of Vilma. “Her masts are solid, like the Hearts of Oak and most of the other nobbies we’ve restored. Solid masts are the traditional ones really, and were used on most working boats. But that one down there,” he said, pointing to one hanging in the roof of the workshop, “is from Valerie. It’s a hollow mast which gives a lighter mast for yachts. It’s made up from eight stocks of Douglas fir at full length. 40ft in all.” Which just goes to show that Valerie has been an ongoing project over a number of years while Waterfront Marine has undertaken numerous other bread-andbutter projects. Look around the dock at Port Penrhyn and a number of vessels have undergone some degree of work by the yard. There’s the nobby Lassie and the Danish fishing boats Vilma and Klevia. Vilma started life out as Mias, built in Vejle, Denmark in 1934. Scott bought her in 1996 and started a steady conversion and rebuild. She is now rigged as a Welsh topsail schooner and is the star of many an Irish Sea festival where, under Scott’s skippership, she acts as a pirate boat, complete with firing cannon. Some years ago he undertook the complete rebuild of the nobby Hearts of Oak from Morecambe Bay, funded mostly with a Heritage Lottery grant. Another nobby, Lassie of Chester, has undergone much rebuilding over the years. Before that there was Tasma, a boat that Scott had history with – his father bought her in 1962. She’s an 1897, Luke of Hamble-built yacht which Scott has maintained and virtually rebuilt over the years. In the corner outside sit two forlorn nobbies - Falcon and Helen III whilst out front is the Greek trechandiri Astra, a strange sight indeed. The Lyle Hess designed, 1990 Alice looks to be changing hands and the new owner is talking about changing her from a bermudan rig to gaff. Behind, in Dickies shed, is the 48ft twinscrew gentleman’s motor yacht Shuna, ex-La Caniche, built by Hugh McLean & Sons in Govan in 1935. Much of the inside has been rebuilt, as well as replacing the huge aft deck whilst the wheelhouse has been built in pieces and awaits installation. Work progresses at a pace. I see Scott keen to start on the rebuild of Klevia as he starts to plan for the summer and juggle between sailing Vilma to various festivals, finishing Shuna, starting on Klevia and earning from the various other work that will come his way. A sale for Valerie might well help his plans. Valerie is currently for sale at www.sandemanyachtcompany.co.uk

History Of Stow & Sons Reading Henry Cheal’s 1909-published The Ships and Mariners of Shoreham, one quickly realises the amount of shipbuilding at that port that dates back to Norman times. Admittedly, back then Shoreham didn’t exist although the river Adur, which today flows out into the Channel there, was described as, and presumably regarded as, a ‘highway to the Continent’. Shipbuilding flourished right into the 19th century, building merchant ships and men-o-war. It was against this background that John Stow arrived from Littlehampton, along the coast, around the middle of that century. Added to this activity was a strong fishing industry based mostly around oyster fishing and drift-netting. Luggers were commonplace and boatbuilders such as May & Thwaites (later William May) and John Winfield were building such vessels. Stows appears to have entered the market just as iron was beginning to supersede wood for large vessels and merchant ship building was slackening. Yet John, along with his son Thomas, seemed to have bucked the trend and successfully developed a reputation for quality in the small boat and yacht end of the market. Cheal notes that ‘roominess’ was a special feature of Stow’s yachts because of the ‘excellent internal planning’. Indeed he mentions that out of some 900 boats supplied to convey ‘troops up the Nile for the Soudan [sic] Expedition’ from various English boatbuilders, those of Shoreham, and presumably Stows, were considered second to none. They must have also been building working boats, for Dixon Kemp (1878) mentions Thomas Stow as being responsible for some Brighton Beach Boats, probably of the type so well illustrated by Edward Cooke. It is also known that the yard built yachts designed by noteworthy folk such as Albert Strange, Fred Shepherd, Linton Hope alongside Dixon Kemp. According to Martin Smith, even though they had orders from home and overseas, and employed many people, the family never gained any particular wealth from the business. Thomas raised eight children. Most went into the family business and his eldest Harry eventually inherited. He was an accomplished designer himself and was responsible for many other yachts as well as Valerie. However, he never married so when he died after crashing his motorbike (possibly after a heart attack) in 1936 at the age of 76, he was childless. The yard was thus bought by another boatbuilder named Haworth who amalgamated several other yards all into one. Today the old Stow yard is home to the Sussex Yacht Club. Some twelve Stow yachts are known to still exist out of a total of 79 built between 1866 and 1936, according to the late Theo Rye, though others might appear from time to time. This number doesn’t, of course, include the working boats and other launches built by Stows. At 120 years of age this year, Valerie is undoubtedly a genuine historical artefact, and one now that is able to survive, barring mishap, for another few decades. MS

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ACHILLIES 24

Cruising Highland waters in an Achilles 24 Rob Bashford relates how cruising the west of Scotland was a dream come true – but could he also achieve a goal of sailing ‘over the top’?

he plan was hatched over the dark winter months. The boat would be relaunched in midApril and we would take her from Inverness, via the Caledonian Canal, to the West Coast of Scotland in early May. We would then have a 10-day window to explore this worldclass cruising ground. Our ultimate goal was a more ambitious one though; to return home not by way of the canal but ‘over the top’, via the North Coast of Scotland. As one of the most committing sec-

tions of the UK coastline, it was not a passage to be taken lightly in a small yacht. I was all too aware that conditions would have to be near-perfect for us to be able to complete this part of the voyage. From a personal perspective, the aim was to build my experience. I have my Yachtmaster Coastal certificate and although I have logged a decent number of cruising miles over the years, much of it has been as a crew member. So this was an opportunity to gain some valuable miles as skipper and crucially, to get some longer passages under my belt.

Two weeks’ worth of stores were loaded onto our Achilles 24 at Inverness Marina. Then began a three-day transit of the remarkable feat of engineering that is the Caledonian Canal. Thomas Telford’s creation allows boats to bypass the long and exposed passage around the North Coast of Scotland, by linking together a series of lochs with sections of canal. One of the great inland waterways of Europe, it cuts its way through magnificent scenery. Having travelled it a number of times, I can highly recommend it as a journey in its own right. The West Coast was reached via the sea lock at Corpach, near Fort William. Before I could

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even start thinking about weather windows for a passage ‘over the top’, we first had to sail a big stretch of the West Coast, with all its own inherent challenges. To add to the mix, our schedule was pretty tight, without much margin for bad weather or other eventualities. My friend Jon joined me at Fort William on the evening of departure. Our first full day on the West Coast dawned clear and bright but distinctly lacking in breeze. So the journey began under power; the Achilles 24 relies on an outboard engine mounted in a well in the cockpit – this has many advantages over a transom mount, such as

Main photo: Rob helms towards the Sound of Sleat. Left: Lysbeth, his Achilles 24. Right: tied up on the Caledonian Canal

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ACHILLIES 24

Main photo: approaching the Kyle of Lochalsh and the Skye Bridge at sunset. Below: Passing two of the Small Isles, Eigg and Rum. Bottom: Lysbeth sailing

sending prop wash over the rudder and keeping the prop in the water in big seas. However, it does make for a rather noisy, fumy experience in the cockpit and I hoped we wouldn’t have to do too much motoring on this trip. The first target was to reach the picturesque town of Tobermory, on the Isle of Mull. We made good progress down Loch Linnhe, making full use of the ebb tide before turning the corner into the Sound of Mull. The breeze gradually began to fill in from the north-east and we finally had the opportunity to hoist the sails. After a wonderful beat under blue skies and with another following tide, we arrived at our destination in the early evening. The next day we would face our first big challenge of the trip – rounding the exposed headland of Ardnamurchan Point. For many West Coast sailors, this is a serious obstacle in

their voyage, providing a stark contrast to the more sheltered waters to the south. Although the tides are not particularly strong compared to other notorious headlands, Ardnamurchan Point is fully exposed to the prevailing south-westerlies and large swells are common. Once round Ardnamurchan, our goal was to reach Kyle of Lochalsh, which meant negotiating the significant tidal streams at Kyle Rhea. In these narrows between the mainland and the Isle of Skye, tides can reach up to 8 knots and any passage through this area must be timed to arrive with a fair tide. We duly worked backwards from this tidal gate; the result being a very early departure from Tobermory. We left Tobermory the following morning and began making our way towards Ardnamurchan Point. As we approached, I felt a tingle of anticipation; I had been round once before but in

We soon regretted this mistake as the seas grew shorter and steeper and we began shipping water over the bow a much larger yacht and very benign conditions. We had made the decision to stand well off but the shape of the peninsula made it feel as though we were making no progress towards our destination to the north-east. Despite using a couple of waypoints to keep us the necessary distance off, we inevitably started to cut the corner; the lighthouse on the point exuding almost magnetic qualities. We soon regretted this mistake, as the seas grew shorter and steeper and we began shipping water over the bow. A

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CRUISING THE HIGHLANDS

It felt as though we had reached a frontier, with the unknown lying beyond the aptly named Cape Wrath

few minutes later, I noticed we had a problem. As each wave washed over the foredeck, a shower of water was spraying through the forehatch. I dived below to find an already very wet forepeak, where all our personal gear was stowed. It appeared that the neoprene seal around the hatch had begun to perish and no matter how much I tightened down the hatch, water kept leaking in. Not enough to cause major concern but enough to make the boat very wet. Given the conditions, any thoughts of a running repair were quickly dismissed. In light of this and given the uncomfortable conditions, I made the decision to return to Tobermory. It was disappointing to retreat at this early stage but it seemed like the only sensible option. There was a chandlery there and hopefully we could effect some sort of temporary solution. After our early departure, we were back there by

late morning. We sealed up the forehatch as best we could, which meant we could no longer use it and hoped it would last the rest of the trip. We set off again the next day for another stab at Ardnamurchan. This time we rounded without incident and began a long beat towards the Sound of Sleat. By early evening, we were well into the Sound but the wind had begun to drop. Our VMG plummeted and we realised we would need to motor if we were to make our tidal gate at Kyle Rhea. In the end, we squeezed through the narrows with the very last of the flood tide and made our way round to Kyle of Lochalsh as the sun began to set. After two long days at sea, we decided to make a shorter hop the following day. Our destination would be Loch Gairloch; specifically a friend’s pontoon at beautiful Badachro. We woke to bright sunshine and a light breeze. After passing

under the Skye Bridge, we made our way into the Inner Sound between the Isles of Raasay and Rona and the mainland. The breeze was light and occasionally we had to motor to maintain progress. We saw our first marine mammals of the trip, with a sighting of some common dolphins. We made it to Badachro on a stunning evening and spent some time catching up with our friends. The next day would be another test, as the longest of the trip so far. We were aiming to reach Kinlochbervie; the final staging post for a potential passage ‘over the top’. The winds refused to budge from the north-east and we resigned ourselves to a windward leg up the Minch – the notorious body of water that separates the Outer Hebrides from the mainland. We were greeted by yet another glorious morning aas we left Loch Gairloch bound for the rugged north-west corner of Scotland. The wind increased to a steady Force 5 and the sea state grew to the predicted moderate conditions. The Achilles performed superbly, shrugging off the waves and remaining light on the helm, with one reef in the main. Although unable to lay our destination point, we were able to get closer to the rhumb line as the wind veered east during the day. We ticked off the major headlands of Rubha Reidh and Point of Stoer, as the vistas over the North-West Highlands grew ever more impressive. Finally, after 66 miles of tough but rewarding sailing, we reached our destination: the fishing port of Kinlochbervie. It felt as though we had reached a frontier, with the unknown lying beyond the aptly named Cape Wrath. We were both tired from some long days at sea and in need of a rest. The decision was made to take the next day off to catch up on sleep and do our admin. The next leg would be the big one, from Kinlochbervie to Scrabster; a straight line distance of around 70 miles. I was continually monitoring the weather forecasts from a variety of sources. In many ways the weather was outstanding, with blue skies and bright sunshine but it was the direction and strength of the wind that bothered me. All the forecasts pointed to a continuation of the north-easterly airflow we’d been experiencing since the beginning of the trip, with the distinct possibility of it veering east and increasing to Force 6 in the near future. My confidence in the boat and our ability had been bolstered by the conditions we’d dealt with thus far but the forecast was far from ideal for an east bound transit of the north coast. One thing that makes this section of coast so committing is the lack of safe havens, particularly in onshore winds. And as with any passage under sail, we CLASSIC SAILOR

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ACHILLIES 24

This infamous stretch of sea has some of the strongest tidal streams in the world wanted to make use of a fair tide, which in our case meant an easterly set. This potentially meant wind against tide conditions and to top it all, there was talk of fog later the next day. I was also thinking ahead to a transit of the Pentland Firth, the body of water between the Orkney Isles and the mainland. This infamous stretch of sea has some of the strongest tidal streams in the world, with rates up to 12 knots. The almanac quite clearly states that ‘this potentially dangerous channel should only be attempted in moderate winds (<F4), good visibility, no swell and a fair neap tide’. The forecast for the next 2-3 days certainly did not meet those criteria. This was not a decision to be taken lightly and I wrestled with it all day. Various scenarios played through my mind but my gut instinct said this probably wasn’t the right time to attempt such a passage. So reluctantly, I made the decision to return home via the canal, vowing to return and complete the passage another time. After all, as they say: ‘It will always be there’. We left Kinlochbervie early the following day and started the long sail south towards the Caledonian Canal. Thanks to the wind staying in the north, we were treated to fabulous downwind sailing conditions all the way back – any disappointment about not making it ‘over the top’ was soon forgotten. We covered the 196 miles to Fort William in three days, our longest run being nearly 100 miles. So I had ticked off some more long passages and some night sailing to boot. We re-entered the canal at Corpach and completed the final part of our journey home to Inverness.

LEARNING POINT: REEFING As a masthead rigged boat, I find the Achilles 24 benefits from a reef in the main when the wind is consistently blowing over 20 knots (apparent). Generally there will be little or no loss of speed as a result and the boat feels more balanced and comfortable. The ability to put a reef in the main quickly and efficiently is a key skill for any sailor. The process will vary from boat to boat but the principles remain the same. On our boat, it goes as follows: Ease the mainsheet until the main depowers, whilst continuing to sail under genoa. Crew goes forward to the mast and releases the kicker and tightens the topping lift. A harness and/or lifejacket should be worn. Crew in the cockpit eases the main halyard until the first reefing eye can be hooked onto the reefing hook at the gooseneck. 32 CLASSIC SAILOR

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CRUISING THE HIGHLANDS

ACHILLES 24 Designer: Oliver Lee Builder: Chris Butler (Butler Mouldings) Overall length: 23ft 9in (7.24m) Waterline length: 19ft 6in (5.94m) Beam: 7ft 1in (2.14m) Draught: Fin keel 3ft 9in (1.14m) Triple keel 3ft 3in (1m) Displacement: 2600lbs (1180kg) Ballast: 1314lbs (596kg) iron bulb Sail area: 206 sq ft (19.15 sq m) Accommodation: 4 berths Headroom: 4ft 6in (1.37m) As well as being a fantastic boat, the Achilles 24 benefits from an active and friendly owner’s association (www.achillesyachts. co.uk, plus a comprehensive forum www.flickr.com/ groups/achilles24, which will answer almost any question an owner has.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Rob runs his own outdoor adventure business, Coast and Cairn, based near Inverness. He has been sailing since childhood and now delivers a range of RYA practical and shorebased courses, alongside other outdoor activities. He bought Lysbeth, his Achilles 24, in 2013 and has since extensively refurbished her. Charts and Publications used: Admiralty Leisure Folio SC 5611 – Mull of Kintyre to Point of Ardnamurchan Admiralty Leisure Folio SC 5616 – Point of Ardnamurchan to Shiant Isles Imray Chart C66 – Mallaig to Rubha Reidh and Outer Hebrides Imray Chart C67 – North Minch and Isle of Lewis Reeds 2016 Western Almanac The Yachtsman’s Pilot – Isle of Mull by Martin Lawrence (Imray) The Yachtsman’s Pilot – Syke and Northwest Scotland by Martin Lawrence (Imray) Image courtesy of Navionics Webb App The main halyard is re-tensioned. The No1 reefing line is tightened to bring the new clew down to the boom. The topping lift is eased and the kicker is re-tensioned.

ILLUSTRATIONS: TREVOR CLIFTON

The excess sail is tidied up using sail ties. This whole process should take no more than a minute or two and can be done whilst still making progress under headsail (unless to depower the main, you have had to alter course significantly). If need be, when shorthanded, the boat can be hove-to in order to temporarily stop it and provide a steady platform to work on.

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28/11/16 10:17 AM

OBITUARY: THEO RYE

Theo Rye

1968 – 2016

Theo Rye, naval architect, yacht restorer, historian and contributor to this magazine died from a brain tumour on 12 November at the age of 48. This appreciation is by his friend Martin Black

nyone who has followed the history of the Classic Yacht revival over the last twenty years will certainly have come across the name of Theo Rye on numerous occasions. Indeed it is difficult to think of any project relating to the restoration of a large classic sailing yacht where he has not been involved, on some basis or another. Their names are a litany of all that is remarkable and eye catching at the major regattas of today – the schooners Eleonora and Sunshine, the gaff ketches Belle Adventure, Kentra and Eilean, the great cutters, Cambria and Moonbeam IV, the 15-Metre Lady Anne, the 12-Metre Miquette, the 8-Metres Saskia, Fulmar, Carron II, Siris, Osborne and Invader II, as well as iconic vessels such as Stormy Weather, Hallowe’en, Peggy Bawn, Merrymaid and Ayrshire Lass, to name but a few. Yet, his pathway into classic yachts was humble – learning to sail as a teenager on his grandfather’s Folkboat and later sailing a Merlin Rocket on the Cam. He obtained a B. Eng (Hon) in Ship Science at Southampton University alongside developing his windsurfing skills and after graduating he worked as a deckhand or bosun on the three-masted schooner Creole. He went on to crew on Altair and worked on commissioning and delivering Tuiga. All of this gave him a sound practical appreciation of how big sailing yachts operated and the challenges that they could represent. In 1993 Theo joined Fairlie Restorations and remained there for seven years, working on the restoration of Belle Adventure, Kentra, Madrigal II, The Lady Anne, Carron II and Siris – all of which gave him a sound grounding in William Fife’s design and building techniques. He had a remarkable breadth of abilities – able to survey a yacht with a view to restoration, a successful project manager and a highly skilled naval architect and marine engineer. His extensive experience on working on previous major projects was a huge asset. When combined with his remarkable attention to detail, he brought a huge amount of added value to the projects

that he worked on. Going over a Fife vessel that was earmarked for restoration he would identify modifications that had been made by later shipwrights. He knew that Fife had carried out the original work in a particular manner and for very good reason. More importantly he was able to clearly articulate why it was important and necessary to correct those later errors. That attention to detail followed through into the detailed analysis of the original plans. Often these required to be carefully redrawn to correct minor distortions that had occurred as a result of the drawings being rolled up for over a century. He was

Going over a Fife vessel earmarked for restoration he would identify modifications that had been made by later shipwrights a fine draughtsman. All designers can be guilty of drawing errors and few escaped Theo’s gimlet eye. His objective was always to understand and honour what the original designer had set out to achieve. It was extremely important to him that any restoration had to remain true to the way in which the original yacht had been built. Yet he was no Luddite. On larger yachts there was often a need to compromise - a new owner might

wish air conditioning, fresh water plants, refrigeration units and the latest navigation aids to be put aboard. It was Theo’s challenge to accommodate such requests as discreetly as possible. Such additional items added weight and his task was to find a way of getting the yacht to float to her original lines and to preserve as far as possible her original sailing characteristics. As the classic yacht racing scene became increasingly competitive, Theo was increasingly called upon to improve rigging plans and make internal changes to strengthen the hulls to meet the greater loads they were now faced with. This required the boat to be re-engineered and those fortunate enough to go below deck and see how Theo achieved this can only marvel at the elegant solutions that he came up with. Whether he was acting as a consulting naval architect to a project or was undertaking the project management himself, he carried out all his assignments with a quiet confidence. Yacht owners can be extremely demanding individuals, yet Theo’s charm always won them over. One test for whether a naval architect is successful or not is the number of times a client returns to him with more work. Theo had a large band of very faithful clients. I have known Theo over 20 years and I, with many others, am pleased to be able to claim him as a good friend. I was merely an enthusiastic, if remarkably ill-informed, amateur yachting historian. Theo on the other hand had a deep fund of knowledge not only on the evolution of yacht design but also on how building techniques had developed over the years. Yet it was knowledge that was lightly worn. He was also by far the best source for the latest waterfront gossip on new restorations, the discovery of old vessels long thought lost, the activities of others working in the same field. When I was preparing a biography of G L Watson, my knowledge of yacht design was at best rudimentary, at worst deeply flawed. I was ill equipped to write a biography on that most innovative of designers. It was a huge relief to me when Theo was co-opted onto the project. I could not have had a better tutor. He had a delightful

Theo was a hands-on sailor as well as a naval architect and used his knowledge of sailing to inform his consultancy

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JAMES ROBINSONTAYLOR

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OBITUARY: THEO RYE

TOM NITSCH

Theo... had a deep fund of knowledge not only on the evolution of yacht design but also on how building techniques had developed over the years. Yet it was knowledge that was lightly worn

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DAN HOUSTON

OBITUARY: THEO RYE

Left: Theo in April this year on the bow of Invader II a brand new 8-Metre Fife launched in America this spring, Theo had designed her rig. Above: helming Ayrshire Lass a 19th-century Fife design restored in 2008

manner about him. With his easy charm he would start of with “I not sure if I would have expressed it quite like that”. There followed a very clear explanation of what I might have been trying to say, always avoiding the more technical terms. It became the litmus test for the book – if I could understand the more technical matters then there was every chance that the lay reader would as well. His input added immeasurably to the book in its final form and I shall for ever be in his debt. It would be wrong to see him as merely involved with classic yachts. Nigel Irens was an early influence on Theo. They first

worked together on Ilen Voyager with its distinctive trimaran hull which, in 1988 set a new Round Britain powerboat record with an average speed of 21 knots covering 1,568 miles without refuelling. Their joint collaborations spanned Theo’s career covering both design and construction including the design of Molly Bán, a 19m GRP motor cruiser. At the time of his death Theo had also been working on the design of a very large passenger carrying schooner. He was also involved with the establishment of a traditional boatbuilding school on the Beaulieu River.

He was the best of friends and to know him was an enriching experience. Erudite on a wide range of topics. Blessed with a very happy marriage to Sarah and a home that backed on to his local cricket pitch, another of Theo’s great passions, although a game in which his ability never quite caught up with his enthusiasm. Most of all I shall remember the laughter and walking our dogs through the Hampshire countryside, where my dog (a townie through and through) would, to Theo’s delight, roll in one muddy field after another, to be caked in Hampshire clay. Theo is irreplaceable.

QUAY PEOPLE – remembering Theo When I asked if Theo was the right guy to help with this restoration – of a famous racing yacht that has been underwater in the Baltic for decades (see CS1) everyone I spoke to agreed he’d be the ideal person for the job. And he came and stayed with us and worked and his knowledge was fantastic. He’d worked on so many projects and yet he had this low profile, which was a big part of his appeal. Bo Eriksson restoring Ester in Sweden. Theo was consulant naval architect.

We should all be thankful for Theo’s work on the Lloyd’s project as it would never have happened without his unstinting work in correcting the final draft which the digitising company had found beyond them as he had the historical knowledge and the technical skill. He will be greatly missed.

On the site of a restoration he had a bawdy sense of humour, yet he also had the ability to make classic yacht design understandable to a wider readership in an entertaining style and a love for the elegant use of the written word.

Jeremy Lines worked with Theo compiling the Lloyd’s Register of yachts onto a memory stick (see p86).

Iain McAllister, restoration expert.

For someone so obviously intellectually superior to the rest of us mere mortal sailors, he used our language and instantly made you feel comfortable and relaxed. He was very patient and a great listener. I miss him. Chris Barkham Captain of Cambria.

We worked at Fairlie Restorations together for several years and then afterwards on other projects. He was a tremendous talent backed by real knowledge, a delightful wit and an astonishingly modest man. William Collier GL Watson, Liverpool. CLASSIC SAILOR

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EAST COAST RIVERS

The East Coast covered Second-generation author of East Coast Rivers, Janet Harber, has just celebrated sixty years and 20 editions of the revered guide. Here she talks to Peter Willis about her dad, their boats and the changes she’s seen

anet Harber – Jan to all who know her – is the second generation author (editor?) of what has become a family institution: East Coast Rivers, originally created by her father Jack H Coote and first published sixty years ago. She’s also spent time as a yachting journalist, and we began the interview with a cheerful half-hour of gossiping and reminiscing, both agreeing that Production Editor, a role we’ve both filled, she on Yachts and Yachting in a 15-year career there, is both the best and most important job on any magazine. She trained originally as a photographer, at London’s Regent Street Polytechnic, which landed her her first job, at Y&Y, and has stood her in good stead ever since. The majority of the photos in East Coast Rivers, updated for each new edition, are by Jan. The photos in the earlier editions were taken by Jack, who worked at Ilford Films as head of technical services; as well as East Coast Rivers, he wrote several books about photography, and some on sailing, including the original version of Total Loss (still in print, updated). Plus one covering both – How to Photograph Boats. Jan’s earliest memory of sailing was when the family lived at Teddington and kept an old Broads yacht on the Thames. They bought Iwunda, the boat most associated with the book over the years, in 1949 from

Priors Dock in Burnham. “She had red velour backrests to the seats, a big cockpit and a great big counter stern – we thought she was marvellous!” She also describes Iwunda, 34ft, 11 tons, as “A leaking old centreboarder, built in the 1920s, reputedly by a cabinet maker off the London Road (Southend), certainly not a boatbuilder.” They kept her on the Chelmer Canal at Heybridge Basin, and it was there that Jack met Maurice Griffiths, then editor of Yachting Monthly, who got him to write some articles for the magazine about the local rivers. These, collected together, became the guide’s first edition, in 1956. Jan has happy childhood memories of the extensive cruising they did, partly for pleasure, always for research. “Phone boxes, garages for petrol, early closing days…” As we talk, she picks up an early edition – like all her copies it has served as a looseleaf folder full of update notes for the next one – and out falls a slip of paper. It proves to be a rough sketch map of Levington Creek “PO, telephone, stores, Ship Inn!” is written to one side, and by the entrance a withy is marked. It was, for her and her sister Judy, all very Arthur Ransome. ”We’d go to Pin Mill and walk up the hill to get the milk – I could probably quote the two East Coast books (We Didn’t Mean to Go to Sea and Secret Water) – they were very well thumbed. I used to fancy myself as Nancy Blackett, or possibly Titty. Certainly not Susan!”

Maldon, with the smack Telegraph in the foreground – header photograph to the River Blackwater chapter in the new edition

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JANET HARBER

Jack met Maurice Griffiths, then editor of Yachting Monthly, who got him to write some articles about the local rivers for the magazine

From far left: Jan (standing) and Judy aboard Iwunda aground in the Backwaters; Jack on ‘the Broads yacht’ with young Jan; Jan at the helm of Iwunda and, right, at the helm of Blue Shoal

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EAST COAST RIVERS Header photo to the Orford River chapter: barge Edme, with Orfordness and its lighthouse behind

The photo of Jan, age 12 and Judy, 8, on Iwunda, was taken at Horsey Mere in the Walton Backwaters (aka the Red Sea in Secret Water) and appeared in several of the early editions. Iwunda was replaced by the canoe-sterned Blue Shoal, another centreboarder, 31ft long, in 1960 – Jack had photographed her (and fallen in love with her) on the Orwell in 1956. She graced the cover of one edition and he kept her until 1980. When Jack died, aged 80 in 1993, shortly after completing the 14th edition, Jan and the family took up the task for which they had been so well prepared and have produced now six subsequent editions. Jan’s own sailing has included Merlin Rockets at Ranelagh SC on the tidal Thames when she lived in London. After marrying and moving to Essex she and her husband owned a series of cruising boats, all kept at Paglesham on the River Roach; and later shared a Twister and a Dragon (“very old, pitchpine, Norwegian – not the ideal daysailer but fun”) with Jack. Nowadays Jan does most of her sailing research aboard sister Judy’s lift-keel Parker 325 Sandack. The publishing history of the series has gone through a succession of changes too. Having started as a thin clothbound ‘pilot’ book (price 9s 6d) published under the

Yachting Monthly banner, it moved for the 2001 edition to Nautical Data, then publishers of Reeds almanac, and became a ‘cruising companion’. (“A mess, this one – I didn’t have a lot of control,” sighs Jan.) Then the US company Wiley began its UK nautical

The purpose of the book has moved away from phone boxes and early closing days towards ‘cruising companion’ imprint, took over Nautical and produced the 2008 19th edition in the present A4 hardback format. Wiley also bought up a small nautical publisher called Fernhurst Books, and when the company pulled out of leisure boating, Fernhurst bought its list back, and along with it, East Coast Rivers and the other ‘Cruising Companions’. It, too is a family affair – alongside founder Tim Davison is Jeremy Atkins (both veteran dinghy sailors) and Jeremy’s daughter Rachel, in-house designer on East Coast Rivers. So the new East Coast Rivers is a first for Fernhurst, as well as being the book’s 20th

edition, and marking 60 years of publication. A good excuse for a launch party, and one, the first in the book’s, and the publisher’s history, which took place in November at Fox’s marina shop on the Orwell in the heart of the East Coast. For Jan herself, it marks the completion of her ownership of the title. “I feel I am the author now, after six editions I mostly edited. When I took over, most of the text was still my dad’s. Now the purpose of the book has moved away from telephone boxes and early closing days, and more of the ‘cruising companion’ content – what to do ashore, local interest, maritime history and so on – is mine.” But she adds: “As Jack said in the preface to the first edition, ‘Any success this book may have, will have been largely due to the enthusiastic help I have received from many kindred spirits who sail the rivers of the Thames Estuary…’ After 20 editions, that still applies, and we are grateful to everyone who has helped over the years.”

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Dragon Elska

S&S Sonny

S&S Dorade

S&S Skylark S&S Santana LMI cares for a special group of yachts from modern racing to classic 100 year old gaffers. In between these book ends lies our forté. The compiled team is currently in hull rebuild mode with a significant refit/restoration of our third S&S, namely Santana, the once darling of Bogie and Bacall, Skylark and Dorade are successfully “off and running”. Other gems from the boards of Herreshoff, Burgess, S&S, Crane, Fife, Luders, Anker, Alden and Lawley with 12m’s, 6m’s, P’s, Q’s and S’s make their home base at LMI. Please view our website galleries for snapshots of what and how we do it.

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8/10/16 10:05 PM

WHITE CLOUD

Retire to restore When teacher Les Weeks gave up work, he wanted ‘a Project’ to keep himself busy. He found it in a 100-year-old gaffer lying in a farmyard

fter nearly four decades teaching craft design and technology, I was planning my final three years before escaping into retirement in July 2010. I was concerned about what to do with this well-earned free time – I didn’t want to be watching endless repeats of Midsomer Murders. Sometime early in 2007, sailing with a friend and our wives, we moored up in the Hamble River and I chatted to a guy on a beautiful Falmouth Quay Punt he’d spent 10 years restoring. I then had my moment of epiphany. I knew what I wanted to do, but how do I persuade my wife, Barbara,

that despite living, 60-odd miles from the sea, this was a workable plan! Eventually, I plucked up the courage and said what I thought I might do, “What a good idea,” was the immediate, unexpected, reply. I needed no further prompt and I hit the internet looking for ‘A Project’. I had always admired the gaff-rigged wooden boats I learnt to sail on the Norfolk Broads on school trips, so the Project had to be wood and it had to have a four-sided mainsail. I quickly found a suitable project and through the broker, Catherine Dines at M J Lewis in Maldon, arranged to go and have a look. She was in a farmyard in Kent where she had been taken to be restored by Rob Taylor, but sadly he had died having barely Above:White Cloud being relaunched at Downs Road Left: in an earlier life, at Dordrecht, possibly on her way to Finland in the 1950s Right: at Maldon Town Regatta White Cloud 1912 LOA/LWL: 25ft (7.6m) L0S: c34ft (10.4m) Beam: 8ft (2.4m) Draught: 5ft (1.5m)

started. She was in a sorry state, open to the elements, mast broken, no cabin roof or external bulkheads and rats nesting in the sails – a previous viewer had concluded she was a ‘basket case’. Not deterred, we sat on board and decided that there wasn’t anything that I wasn’t prepared to have a go at. We both agreed that she had a lovely shape out of the water and so must be even better in. Shortly after this we became owners of White Cloud, a 25ft, 1912 Teignmouth yawl, built on the lines of a Falmouth Quay Punt. I needed space to work and Catherine (and Jim) Dines offered me space at Downs Road. I bought a large tent; 10 x 4.5 x 3.5m, which cost over half what I’d paid for the boat, but became my workshop and second ‘home’ for two or three days a week throughout the project. I was determined to do all the restoration work myself and keep the cost to a minimum; after all, I would be on a teacher’s

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The stem was a grown-oak piece, which couldn’t be replaced as such, so I decided to laminate a new one. Still teaching at this time I had one thing that I couldn’t easily find elsewhere – lots of bench space, so when the kids went home, I started my work. I reassembled the stem post and used it as a mould to make a former which I laminated over using oak strips and West Epoxy; a useful teaching aid for my A-level group, and guess what came up in the exam that year – laminating! The mast was missing the top ten feet – the result of an unravelling Wickham Martin in a Force 11 gale – so that was the next workshop task. We’re spoilt these days with the internet and I was easily able to find out how to make a splicing box and create a 1:12 taper on both the new top piece (female) and the existing main piece (male). Any woodworker will never throw away decent timber. Over the years I’d hoarded lots.

CHRIS FORMAN

pension with no great reserves of cash. When I started, I was still teaching three days a week and hoped it would take me about four years to complete. The first task was to remove anything that could be removed: paint, rubbing strakes, toe rails, hatch coamings, and the old, seized Bukh engine that had 8-year-old sea water in the cooling system! Cleaning off the paint revealed some problems. The gaps between the planking were, in some places, large enough to put fingers through, but more worrying at this stage, the stem post would obviously have to be replaced. I had assumed that the planks were screwed to the stem and would all have to be sprung out of the way, but was relieved when Kevin Finch, a helpful shipwright at the yard, explained that the plank ends were attached to the apron behind the stem post, allowing that to be removed without bothering the planking.

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WHITE CLOUD

Clockwise from top left: the new laminated stem; replanking the coachroof; three-metre length of oak for the keel being lifted into position

Bits of old lab benches were used for grab handles, an iroko workshop table became cockpit seats and locker tops and more iroko from a room divider became sheerstrakes, toe rails, rubbing strakes and the frame of the sliding companionway. I was also given some heavy section oak which became replacement floors for those that had rotted; the school bandsaw with a canting table made the shaping relatively easy. Whilst removing the stem post I had found the breasthook had exploded due to rusting bolts. There was more rot around the bowsprit, mast bits, mast partners, foredeck hatch and the mahogany sheer strakes were in a very bad way. To replace these, the deck had to come off and I remembered that, when telling people I’d planned on taking four years, they’d said I’d better make it six! All the deck beams were loose, some were split, joints had slipped and the port side was sagging out by an inch. With this pulled into shape and some new beams fitted I replaced the decking. Luckily, the bunk tops were made from the same pine as the decks and these were sacrificed for patches.

Amazingly there were only four cracked or broken frames, which were replaced with laminated elm made from an old fireplace lintel donated by a friend. White Cloud’s planking is pitch pine on elm and was in almost perfect condition, but all the nails needed hardening-up. A good friend stands outside the boat holding a heavy dolly against a nail head while you are inside hardening roves and re-riveting over the nails. I got through a lot of good friends! Many hundreds of nails were hardened and 250 or so replaced. Thanks guys! The planks were over 100 years old and, although they still gave off a beautiful resin smell when attacked with a blow torch, they had lost their elasticity and ability to ‘take up’, opening up the gaps significantly. Ask three people their opinion on a boat building matter and you’ll get four answers! In the end, having weighed up the alternatives, I decided to spline above the waterline and ‘feather’ (i.e. glue a spline to just one side of the gap between the planks) below the waterline leaving a caulkable gap and allowing the boat to take up.

To achieve a consistent 7mm gap between the planks, I machined each side of each joint, running along a guide batten, with the depth set to a little less than the thickness of the planking, creating a rebate to glue the spline against. This job took many days and left the boat even more ‘porous’ than before. I slept on board throughout the restoration and during the icy winters, wind rushed through the gaps. One reason I joined the Maldon Little Ship Club was to have a warm, friendly place to while away some of the long, cold Friday evenings. I got lots of encouragement from the members and a number of offers of a box of matches! The splines were machined from pitch pine and epoxied in with monel staples. The feathers were more difficult to glue firmly to just one plank edge, leaving a gap for caulking. However, at school we had acquired a laser cutting machine, which I used to convert a Perspex shop sign into hundreds of wedges; problem solved. With the staples removed and the splines faired and sanded, a coat of primer was applied and she began to look like a proper boat again – well

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WHITE CLOUD

almost. A little later on I had a short lesson in caulking and made a start on the 600 feet of gap. A new aft bulkhead for the cabin went in, followed by a lazarette created with mahogany T&G and the cockpit was designed around these and the proposed engine. The cockpit coamings were shaped and capped, portholes fitted – and then my first big mistake. I’d been watching trials for varnish in another boating magazine and had seen that Sadolin Ultra Woodstain scored highly. Only three coats necessary and only recoat when in obvious need. Of course I used this, but it just wasn’t durable; any serious rubbing and it peeled away. On a test rig, or the timber facing of a building, I suspect it’s wonderful, but I had to varnish over everything with Le Tonkinois. There’s no such thing as a free lunch! Originally decks from this era were waterproofed with canvas, laid over thick gloss paint and pressed down firmly before being sprayed with water to shrink the canvas as the paint dried. I wanted to canvas White Cloud, but the decking was not sound

enough. So a 5mm mahogany marine ply cover was applied using polyurethane glue and plenty of bronze nails. Titebond 3 waterproof PVA was applied and a hot iron was used to press the canvas into the glue, before a generous application of thinned glue over the canvas to shrink and seal, before primer, undercoat and finally deck paint. The jobs now became smaller, but no less complicated. Making the navigation table, the electronics box and fitting the new galley was fun, but testing. As the bunk tops had been ‘stolen’ to patch the deck, new bunks were made using mahogany T&G fronts with plywood tops. One Ikea double mattress made pads for all three bunks and the foam was cut with an electric carving knife! Barbara upholstered the pads in marine tolerant fabric. By this time I was on course to re-launch White Cloud in her centenary year. But the keel timbers had large gaps which might not take up. Jim Dines recommended replacing the lot. ‘Phew, that’s a big job’ I said. ‘Nah, just a lot of little ones’ was the reply. Relaunch was put off for another year! Two big hydraulic jacks held the keel in place as I removed the keel bolts and the keel was lowered onto greased ‘sledges’ to be pushed out of the way. I made hardboard patterns and removed the offending timbers. I’d calculated the size of the oak required and received two quotes, both £700, but John Rogers, restorer of Essex Melody, recommended a call to John Bissell, relatively new owner of Hazeleigh Wood near Maldon. The trunk of an oak tree was found and a deal was done for £100. Much better! My second big mistake came next, with a borrowed chainsaw. My first cut was a near disaster. Following a line with a chainsaw is very difficult, but I realised it was possible to run the saw against a fence clamped to the log and the situation improved. Early on in the restoration it had been suggested that I contacted the Transport Trust and perhaps apply for an award, but I didn’t think they would be interested in a small project like White Cloud. However, I completed their application form and a representative of the Trust came to have a look. I was delighted when several months later I received a letter informing me that I had been awarded a Restoration Award with a generous cheque for £1,000. In June 2013 I was invited to Brooklands and was presented with my Award certificate by HRH Prince Michael of Kent. Mentally, I allocated that money to pay for the keel timber and then a new mainsail, but I actually spent it several times over! It was a great day when the engine came on board, lifted over the boat on Jim’s JCB arm, transferred to my hoist, slung from the well supported apex bar of the tent, and lowered onto the waiting engine mounts. Using a computer graphics package, I’d calculated

their position and angle carefully and hoped all would be well. It was pretty good and only minor adjustments were needed. I thought it was a good idea to have a survey done whilst the boat was unfinished, so things could be corrected if necessary. Lawrence Wheldon of Ark Surveys in Maldon came and did a thorough job, offered plenty of advice and a few compliments. There was only one significant recommendation; he felt that there could be movement at the hood ends and the garboard planks; so the fixings should be doubled up. The next weekend 170 1¾in No10 bronze screws were inserted, filled, faired and painted. The caulking was covered with red lead putty and the hull painted and anti-fouled. By now the cabin interiors were completed and varnished. Gas piping had been run from the new gas locker in the stern, oil lamps and LED lighting positioned and all the electrics for the navigation lights (also

I allocated the award to pay for keel timber and a new mainsail but I actually spent it several times over! LEDs) and VHF radio run to deck glands. The Faversham smokeless fuel burning stove had been refurbished, tested, and installed with a new chimney. Andy Nichols, my blacksmith friend, had cast a gunmetal mast crane for the throat halyard and Jim Dines, aka TS Rigging, had made up the standing rigging, bowsprit shrouds and running backstays. It was time to return to books and photographs to sort out the running rigging. There’s an awful lot of string on an old gaffer! On 23rd September 2013 White Cloud was re-launched. Kevin asked: “Is she leaking?” I jumped on board to see. “It’s pouring in!” A quick look and he said “Nah, that’s nothing. We had to put two pumps on a boat a little while back”. Three tides later there was just a mere trickle; amazing! Masts were stepped and the engine tested. Two weeks later all was set and White Cloud felt the wind in her sails for the first time in nearly 12 years. It was just a short trip down river and back with Chris Foreman who had helped on the project from the start and Bill Sutters, now sadly no longer with us, who was navigator for the trip whilst I worried about everything else. I was off to Australia to visit my daughter the following week and so it was the next season before White Cloud sailed away from base and beyond Osea Island. Hopefully she’ll now have many years ahead of her. Whether or not it’s another hundred, I’ll not be around to find out. ★ CLASSIC SAILOR

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BILL TILMAN

Tilman the rugged adventurer, said that for those who went to war straight from school and survived it, the problem of what to do afterwards was very difficult 46 CLASSIC SAILOR

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Tales of Tilman Sir Robin Knox-Johnston provides an introduction to the legendary sailor-mountaineer’s life and character for Lodestar Books’ new uniform edition of all ‘Bill’ Tilman’s works

ajor Harold William ‘Bill’ Tilman CBE, DSO, MC and Bar, is without doubt one of the twentieth century’s greatest adventurers. War hero, coffee planter in Kenya, mountaineer and eventually a sailor, he led a full life anyone with an adventurous spirit can only envy. He was born in 1898, and as for so many of his generation, life after school was an immediate posting to the trenches in France where the Great War was raging. Despite winning two Military Crosses for gallantry by the time he was twenty years old, he survived the slaughter that killed so many of his young, teenaged contemporaries, and such awards are a clear indication of a courageous person who is willing to take risks. The war eventually ground to an end leaving a young man, barely twenty years old, who had already lived a lifetime of experience, with the question of what to do with a future he had not fully expected to have. In his first book Snow on the Equator Tilman wrote: “To those who went to war straight from school and survived it, the problem of what to do afterwards was peculiarly difficult. A loss of three or four years upset preconceived plans, and while the war was in progress little thought was devoted to such questions. Not that there was no opportunity for such thinking, for there was ample time for that through solitary night watches at observation post or gun line; during periods of what was euphemistically called resting behind the lines; or, where most of us went sooner or later, in hospital. No, the reason was because making plans seemed rather a waste of time. Either the war would go on interminably, in which case one was already arranged for, or, in the other alternative, consolation might be found in the philosophy of Feeble, that ‘He who dies this year is quit for the next.’” Fate made the decision for him, as he won a square mile of British East Africa, now Kenya, in a lottery for ex-servicemen. He settled down to coffee growing for the next twelve years, and might have continued if he had not met Eric Shipton, another coffee grower in that country, and was introduced to mountaineering. Over the next eight years the two made some of the greatest climbs of the decade, and in 1936 he achieved the first ascent of Nanda Devi, without oxygen, at 7816 metres the highest mountain yet climbed. Tilman volunteered in the Second World War, spending time with Albanian and Italian partisans behind enemy lines, and earning a DSO for his services, but was back climbing with Shipton in Tibet by 1947. But by now the Himalayas were becoming crowded with expeditions of younger

“There is something in common between the arts of sailing and climbing. Each is intimately concerned with elemental things, which from time to time demand from men who practise those arts whatever self-reliance, prudence, and endurance they may have. The sea and the hills offer challenges to those who venture upon them, and in the acceptance of these and in meeting them as best he can lies the sailor’s or mountaineer’s reward.” BILL TILMAN

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BILL TILMAN

Tilman had to navigate, like other skippers of his day, using DR and a sextant. He was a superb seaman. Right: Tilman an old pilot cutter and ice was almost a theme of his life

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BILL TILMAN

Top: En Avant was a converted tug on which Tilman shipped during his last fateful voyage in 1977 when he was 80, heading for the S Atlantic to climb Smith Island. The boat, Tilman and crew disappeared without trace. Above: Mischief in Greenland, a previous one-volume collection of some of the books, and, left, Major HW ‘Bill’ Tilman

men who could reach greater heights than was possible for him as a 50-yearold. However one suspects the real reason he looked for pastures new was that the Himalayas no longer appealed to a man who enjoyed the challenges of the wilderness, and exploring areas off the beaten track away from the crowds. He was a natural pathfinder and had always sought the excitement of seeing and climbing something for the first time. He decided to look further afield. It was a conversation with a friend that led him towards the Patagonian Ice Cap at the foot of South America. Areas marked Inesplorado would have been irresistible to a man of Tilman’s temperament—and he did not resist. His first problem was how to get there. He investigated taking a ship to Buenos Aires and crossing Argentina but discovered that was not possible for two or three years. And so he discovered the sea: “There is something in common between the arts of sailing and climbing. Each is intimately concerned with elemental things, which from time to time demand from men who practise those arts whatever self- reliance, prudence, and endurance they may have. The sea and the hills offer challenges to those who venture upon them, and in the acceptance of these and in meeting them as best he can lies the sailor’s or mountaineer’s reward. An essential difference is, perhaps, that the mountaineer usually accepts the challenge on his own terms, whereas once at sea the sailor has no say in Areas marked the matter and in consequence may suffer inesplorado would more often the salutary and humbling have been emotion of fear.” Tilman decided to marry the two sports irresistible to a to achieve his objective. He bought a dinghy, man of Tilman’s sailed in it and on friends’ boats to build temperament – his up experience, and then bought a 1906 Bristol Channel Pilot Cutter called problem was how Mischief. These sturdy boats, built for to get there racing to ships to provide pilots, are not the most manoeuvrable, but they were strong and cheap compared with the cost of a new yacht at that time. He refitted her in Palma, and arranged that the previous owner would sail her with him to South America, although he insisted on bringing along his wife. Tilman, who never married, gives the strong impression of being a misogynist, and an insult to the wife’s cooking led to husband and wife leaving ship in Gibraltar, along with two other crew members. Now dangerously short of crew he realised that by the time he had found replacements it would be too late to sail to South America, and so resolved to sail to England and await the next sailing season. A wise decision as you don’t go near Cape Horn in the southern winter in a small boat. He found a scratch crew who mutinied off Oporto and then with one or two friends who came out to join him he made a safe passage to Lymington. It was not the best introduction to voyaging and we will never know what caused crew to abandon the boat in such numbers, but crew can be difficult unless they are willing to give and take, and picking up bodies just to make up numbers is far from an ideal way to gather in a good crew, unless they are outnumbered by competent sailors to support the routine and discipline that is essential to the safe and happy running of a boat. His voyage the next year to South America to cross the ice cap is one of the great sailing and exploration adventures. He describes the passage through the Magellan Strait in straightforward terms but, as those of us who have sailed in those channels know, it is a dangerous route with almost constant, cold adverse winds for the west-going vessel, of Force 7 or more. Despite this he achieved his objective and returned via the Panama Canal, a voyage of some 20,000 miles. In his amusing style of writing he describes the vicissitudes in a casual way that belies what he really achieved. I have never been sure whether Tilman was particularly hard on his crews or he just chose them badly. Such comments about a crew member as “felt that a man with the unseamanlike habit of wearing gloves at night in summer in the Atlantic would not prosper on a voyage of this kind” indicate a rather unsympathetic attitude toward his crew’s comfort, even if one might share his surprise. The bars of the waterfront and the yacht clubs are full of people talking CLASSIC SAILOR

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BILL TILMAN

Tilman navigating at the table of Mischief on her way south in 1957 taken by crew Jim Lovegrove who answered Tilman’s ad in the Barmouth Times which read: Hands wanted for long voyage in small boat: no pay, no prospects, not much pleasure.

about their experience and planned adventures, but all too often these spice to his life. That Tilman completed so many of his voyages successfully appear to be imagined more than achieved or achievable. There is a harsh is a credit to his determination and his seamanship. difference between the imagined demands of a voyage to high latitudes and The arrival of GPS has closed forever the heroic era of expedition travel, the reality of working a boat in cold and clammy or gale conditions in the whether on land or at sea. It has deprived the modern sailor of the days before satellites, when navigation and the boat’s exact position were satisfaction of making a good landfall by use of the sextant or dead never easy or precise. Sailing in old boats does make greater demands on reckoning, and of the hours spent nervously watching out for a landfall in the willingness to accept discomfort, or deal with recurring equipment thick fog with just a lead line to indicate a possible position. So it is perhaps failures that sap sleep and stamina, and many of hard for the sailors of today to imagine the extra care Tilman’s crews appear to have found this reality more and doubt that were a part of the navigator’s lot until than they could accept. the 1980s. Tilman’s voyages have to be seen in the The loss of Mischief The loss of Mischief off Jan Mayen Island in 1968 has light of small elderly boats, reaching out to Polar areas off Jan Mayen Island often been put down to Tilman’s poor seamanship and infrequently visited and not accurately charted, and in 1968 has often been in a way it is hard to put it down to anything else. A with crews of varied experience, and without any of proper lookout, although appointed, was not kept, and the modern aids that are now taken for granted. put down to Tilman’s he should have hove to further away from the coast, but I first heard of Bill Tilman whilst at the same poor seamanship it is easy to be wise after the event. The Arctic is an school in Hertfordshire, Berkhamsted Boys School, and in a way it is hard unforgiving place to sail and this was a bad year for ice. which he had attended 40 years earlier. He was a Once the boat had been put ashore, where the necessary famous Old Boy who was still mountaineering at the to put it down to repairs could be made, she was at the mercy of the time. To me his attractions were the adventures he anything else weather conditions, and strong winds and ice floating made in far off places, which distracted me as I into the bay eventually caused further damage that studied and dreamed in the same buildings in which made the planned tow to Norway a forlorn hope. The he had been educated. Sadly we never met, one of my strenuous effort for more than two weeks after beaching the boat, to patch her great regrets, so I know him only through his writing. But his writing is so up, get her afloat again and sail to Iceland where repairs could be made would amusing and comfortable and its subject is the real classic adventure that is discourage most people. It is in his efforts to repair and re-float his boat that not readily available to us today. Tilman is at his best. Sea Breeze’s wreck off Angmagssalik on the east coast of Greenland is Sir Robin’s article forms his foreword to Mischief in Patagonia, one of one of those nightmares every skipper wishes to avoid. In ice, engine failed, Lodestar Books’ serial republication of all Tilman’s books (plus a biography), no wind, and the currents that push along the coast drifting the boat each with an introduction, and sometimes and afterword, by distinguished inexorably towards the rocky coast with no hope of rowing off: the specialist authors – others include Tom Cunliffe, Roger Taylor, and Libby conclusion was inevitable. Anchoring in that area is almost impossible. I Purves. The books are £12 each, and are being published pairs, quarterly (12 tried it within the same fjord on one occasion but the drifting ice soon so far, four more to go). There are cost-saving offers for the complete series – pushed our yacht so the anchor became trapped beneath an ice flow, from for more information, see lodestarbooks.com which we extricated ourselves, using the motor, with great difficulty. Baroque, yet another Bristol Channel Pilot Cutter, nearly suffered the same fate close to Angmagssalik in 1975. She survived but all but one of the crew abandoned the vessel at Reyjavik. Tilman got her back to Lymington the following year and sold her and that was his last voyage north. It is a part of his restless character that Tilman actively sought the unfrequented areas of the world. He relished the opportunity to explore, and the dangers that are inevitable to the pathfinder just brought added 50 CLASSIC SAILOR

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LIFEBOAT RESTORATION

The rescuer’s Return How Lifeboat and Little Ship Lucy Lavers was rediscovered and restored by a Norfolk conservation group in time to take part in last year’s Dunkirk Return By Peter Willis

PHOTOS: PETER WILLIS AND RESCUE WOODEN BOATS

arely had Aldeburgh’s new No 2 lifeboat arrived on station in the spring of 1940 than the call went out for boats to rescue allied troops trapped on the beaches of northern France. Thus it was that Lucy Lavers’ first ‘shout’ was to Dunkirk, as one of 18 RNLI lifeboats within the Royal Navy’s fleet of Little Ships. Seventy-five years later, rediscovered, rescued, restored and, in the nick of time relaunched, she rejoined fellow Little Ships for the 2015 five-yearly commemorative Return to Dunkirk. Lucy Lavers is one of the classic openboat 35ft 6in (10.8m) Liverpool class lifeboats, of which 28 were built during the 1930s. Single-engined, they have the distinctive curved and varnished mahogany engine canopy. Lucy was built by Groves & Gutteridge in Cowes, Isle of Wight. Like the other lifeboats called up, her part in Operation Dynamo, the Dunkirk evacuation, involved being towed across the channel, with small Royal Navy crews, and some RNLI coxswains, to ferry troops from the beaches – for which their shallow draught suited them – out to the larger ships lying offshore. Lucy had arrived in Dover on 31 May, and remained on duty at Dunkirk until late in the evening of 4 June, returning overnight to Ramsgate. Back at Aldeburgh, she and her fellow Aldeburgh lifeboat Abdy Beauclerk were kept busy during the war years, often searching for survivors of ditched aircraft. In this period they saved 107 lives. Lucy

remained at Aldeburgh until 1959, after which she was taken into the RNLI’s reserve fleet, seeing service at Wells-next-the-Sea and Sheringham on the North Norfolk coast, and at Rhyl in Wales. She was finally sold out of the RNLI in 1968, and went to the Channel Islands, initially as a pilot boat in St Helier, Jersey, where a small train-cab style wheelhouse was built onto her engine canopy, and she was renamed L’Esperance. She then became a private fishing boat and was later bought by a dive and ski club. In 1997, her engine canopy and other items were removed for use in the restoration of the St Helier lifeboat, Howard D, also

a Liverpool class boat, and her double-diagonal hull was taken over by the Dunkirk Little Ships Restoration Trust, which initially shipped it to the boatyard of boatbuilder and lifeboat enthusiast Simon Evans at Sens in France, before moving it to the Trust’s site at Marchwood near Southampton in 1999. The Dunkirk Little Ship Restoration Trust (DLSRT) is a remarkable organisation. Its object can be summed up as to prevent the loss of any endangered Little Ship by any means possible – which usually means removing it to a place of safety, until a new owner or a restoration plan materialises. In Lucy Lavers’ case this took fourteen years, during which she narrowly escaped being

Lucy Lavers, a Liverpool class Lifeboat LOA 35ft 6in/ 10.8m Beam 10ft 3in/3.1m Draught 2ft 3.5in/ 0.7m

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LUCY LAVERS

destroyed by a fire at Marchwood, but did become lost to the sight of some of her enthusiasts. The deadlock was eventually broken by the establishment of a new charitable trust, Rescue Wooden Boats, which seemed designed for the purpose. Rescue Wooden Boats Rescue Wooden Boats is another rather remarkable organisation, and possibly a unique role model for maritime heritage bodies. Based in the North Norfolk coastal town of Stiffkey (which actually is pronounced Stiffkey and not Stukey as some people would have you believe), its central aim is the restoration of working wooden craft, by preserving and utilising the necessary skills in the persons of two local boatbuilders, and eventually their apprentices. It also has a strong mission to record the history of the local fishing community and its way of life on film via interviews, old

photographs and the like. “Over 60 fishing families came to a meeting we held brining their photo albums,” Wendy Pritchard, one of the founding trustees, told me. “We scanned them and we’ve now got over 110 films on the website.” The boatbuilders are brothers David and George Hewitt, born and brought up in nearby Blakeney. They built their first boats in 1976 and since then have built and restored many wooden working boats between them (as a private activity they also produce the Stiffkey Cockle, a 15ft GRP replica of a local clinker dinghy). With

A unique role model for maritime heritage bodies, preserving and utilising the necessary skills

other trustees, notably boat-lovers Wendy Pritchard and Graham Peart, the trust was set up in 2011. Premises were found in a former military camp on the outskirts of Stiffkey, which now houses a visitor centre, workshops and storage for a number of local work boats currently awaiting attention.

The restored Lucy Lavers in the Rescue Wooden Boats’ workshop at Stiffkey

The restoration The arrival of Lucy Lavers was the result of some local detective work, as David Hewitt explains: “We knew she’d served at Wells and Sheringham, and heard she was at Marchwood, but were told she’d been burnt – but it turned out the DLSRT had saved her at the last minute. She was just a hull, but we wrote and asked whether we could have her. Of course we had to demonstrate we were capable of tackling her.” Lucy Lavers was sold by the DLSRT to Rescue Wooden Boats for the proverbial £1 almost immediately the trust was set up, CLASSIC SAILOR 53

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LIFEBOAT RESTORATION

Above: Boatbuilder David Hewitt with the rebuilt engine canopy.

and dominated its life up to her relaunch in 2015. A year was spent obtaining funding from the HLF and restoration began in 2013. “There was a lot to do on the hull,” tells David. “We stripped her right off, did extensive replanking and then put in all new transverse and longitudinal bulkheads. We had to replace the bilge keels and stringers… it was a massive task.” New fenders – the wooden strips along the sides of the hull – were made and fitted. As a lifeboat, Lucy Lavers had had a centreboard, but this had been done away with at some stage during her private ownership,

and the galvanised steel centreboard case had been filled up with concrete to make it watertight. So this had to come off and local blacksmith Hodgsons Forge fashioned a new one in the traditional manner. The steering gear had to be remade – although the wheel is off another lifeboat, a donation from Southern Ireland. The mahogany rudder and the stainless-steel rising rudder stock were made and all the cast bronze deck gear replaced. And that was just the hull, which had been considered in fairly good condition when it arrived. The next major challenge

was to rebuild the missing engine canopy. “That was the biggest single item,” says David. “It took two of us – with apprentice Tom Gathercole – over five months to build. We’d seen them before – lots of those old Liverpool lifeboats were used as fishing boats around here, and obviously we had a full set of her original plans.” The shape of the canopy was built up on moulds – “like building a boat,” comments David. “We lofted the shape off and away we went.” There is a double diagonal skin of African mahogany on an oak frame – though they broke with tradition in using

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LUCY LAVERS Right, from top: the forepeak, with Dunkirk plate; steering position; three stages in the building of the engine canopy

The major challenge was to rebuild the missing engine canopy – that was the biggest single item

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LIFEBOAT RESTORATION

Right: Lucy Lavers approaches Levington Marina on her journey to Ramsgate for the Dunkirk Return

WEST System epoxy between the skins rather than canvas. Beautifully varnished, it is a work of art and gives Lucy Lavers the distinctive lifeboat look she deserves. Meanwhile spars had been commissioned from Simon Read in Aldeburgh, and sails made by Steve Hall at North Sea Sails in Tollesbury. In fact the sails are a bit controversial. Although it’s taken for granted that, having the masts, these lifeboats had the sails, many people doubt they were ever used, on the assumption that if conditions were too rough to use the engine then they were certainly too rough to set the sails. Real sceptics believe the masts were only there to hold up the wireless aerial. Still some authentic sails are there, though try as I might, I’ve not been able to obtain a photograph of them hoisted. And Steve has donated a splendid banner to fly from the masthead. Another authentic touch is the thick woven bow ‘pudding’, a bulbous rope fender made by Des Pawson. In fact the canopy wasn’t quite ready for the planned launch day on April 11, and had to be temporarily fixed in place for what became the pre-launch event, held at Rescue Wooden Boats’ inland centre, with TV presenter Anneka Rice and the Bishop of Lynn. Among the several hundred well-wishers who came were people who’d had close associations with the boat. David Cox, coxswain, and crewmembers Tony Jordan and Alan Cooper had served on what David calls the ‘lucky boat’ when she was twice relief lifeboat at Wells-next-the-Sea. Also there were great-nieces and nephews of Tom Parnell, who had been coxswain on Lucy Lavers’ momentous first ‘shout’ to Ramsgate in May 1940, and Hugh Lavers, great-grandson of the original Lucy Lavers.

Return to Dunkirk Still, all was ready by 4 May when Lucy Lavers was launched in Wells harbour, ready to begin her staged journey to Ramsgate, calling in at East Coast ports, including Aldeburgh of course, and thence on to Dunkirk. At Lowestoft, an offer of an original sail from a Liverpool class lifeboat came over the radio as they were leaving. At Aldeburgh both the main and inshore lifeboats were launched to greet her arrival. As the Little Ships were preparing to leave Ramsgate, Wendy Pritchard, who was crossing on Lucy, was approached by an elderly lady carrying three yellow roses, who asked her if they could be cast on the

A lady with three yellow roses asked if they could be cast on the water in memory of her brother water in memory of her brother Johnny, who died at Dunkirk. The outbound trip was fairly placid, but the return passage was very different, according to Henry Faire, another trustee, who was aboard for it. “We were scheduled to lock out with the fleet at 6am, but the decision was taken to delay by three hours because of the wind. It didn’t go down, and with wind over tide things became very rolly. Twenty of the Little Ships turned back, but we decided to carry on. About seven miles out, we suffered a sudden loss of power.” This proved a chance to put to use a feature of the lifeboat known for some

reason as the ‘dead man’ – an internal access hatch to the propeller. “Four butterfly nuts to undo, pull up the plug and there’s the prop in its tunnel beneath us, with a fishing net round it. Trevor Holsey, ex-cox of the Sheringham lifeboat who’d started on a single-screw Liverpool class boat, stuck his hand down and pulled it away. He remarked that the tunnel tends to suck stuff in.” After that, conditions improved, sea flat, light wind, sunny day. “Later we were summoned to come up close astern of Massey Shaw, the London Fireboat, and they handed us a shopping bag on a boathook. This turned out to contain eight chilli baked potatoes, one for each of us aboard. But the highlight of the trip was our arrival in Ramsgate – there were about 2,000 people on the end of the pier, cheering the Little Ships home!” Lucy Lavers received another heroine’s welcome when she arrived back at Wellsnext-the-Sea a couple of weeks later. Since then she has been leading a life of comparatively quiet retirement, running harbour trips for visitors –many of whom combine the experience with some time among the extensive exhibits at the visitor’s centre. Meanwhile Rescue Wooden Boats – David and George – have been tackling the backlog of local fishing boats, including whelkers Bessie (herself a registered Dunkirk Little Ship) and Harvester; crab boats Black Beauty, Pegasus and Star, and an unnamed mussel flat, built in 1966. Volunteers are a big part of both the organisation and the actual work on the boats – more are always welcome!

rescuewoodenboats.com Maritime Heritage Centre, Greenway, Stiffkey NR23 1QF

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ACHILLES 24 CRU ISE DUNKIRK LIFEBOA BOOKS! T RESTORED ROBIN KNOX EAST COAST RIVE JOHNSTON ON RS BILL TILMAN FOLDING KNIVES

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28/11/16 11:35 AM

MARINE MOTORING

Guests and disloyalty Helen Lewis and The Skipper reflect on hospitality aboard, winter cruising... and the germ of the idea that it was time for a change of boat

o, about these visitors. I’m with the lovely Winifred Brown on this. (If you are a ‘cruiser’ do read her wonderful book Duffers on the Deep). Guests fall into three categories; those who know nothing but pretend to know everything; those who know nothing and make that clear from the start, and those who know everything but keep very quiet. Fortunately for us most of ours fall into the latter two categories. They also come in all sorts of shapes and sizes but do not necessarily take up their corresponding weight or breadth in cabin space. Although many things are the same on a classic boat as its modern sister the use of space is not. Hence the visitor who insists on travelling with a hard suitcase may find himself perched on top of it in his bunk. The one who comes complete with an electric hairdryer will be sadly disappointed and the one who cannot tolerate her G & T without ice will remain sober. Now please do not misunderstand. We love our visitors - well, nearly all of them. A visitor can come for many reasons, leaving

aside the delight of being on a beautiful old boat, your jovial and charming company, the lure of waters new and the scrumptious food you place in front of them. On our boats we have welcomed many different guests and each and every one of them has added something to our lives. Sometimes a boat is a haven for a friend in need. We have a brave friend who joined us very shortly after her partner had died. She was unused to travelling alone and unused to a boat at sea, yet she did two remarkable things. Only weeks after Jim had died she accompanied us from the East Coast down to Dover to cross the Channel. The sun shone, the waves rolled and so did the boat a little and she was exhilarated. The next morning she told us she had slept. A very small step in her journey and ours. When she joined us again we had reached Paris. Here she alighted from the train, first time abroad solo and, not speaking French, she arrived in the Arsenal under her own steam. She had decreed that she would join us as we moved further into France on our way to the Mediterranean. We hesitated, unsure how to explain that

Some guests don’t take to the seafaring life – but some indubitably do

we had no idea where we could drop her off or how she was going to get back to England. We needn’t have worried. This courageous and innovative woman was a survivor, she had printed off the timetable and the route of the railway line as it snaked its way out of Paris southwards following the line of the Seine. Some miles outside Paris we brought the boat alongside a rusty hulk and off she hopped bearing her small suitcase. She waved to us as she crossed the bridge and made her way to a tiny railway halt that would carry her back to Paris and onwards to home. We knew then that she was going to make it. At other times we have the rowdy awakening of our family descending upon us. There we are, Darby and Joan insulated from worldly concerns and suddenly guests arrive bringing that very world tumbling into ours. It fair makes us reel. Once our son, daughter-in-law and grand-daughter sought us out in Bremerhaven with an hour’s notice. On their way back from Slovakia they decided to make a small

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THE CRUISING LIFE: PART 7

detour. They piled into our twenty-six foot of space bringing with them laughter and clobber. Somehow we managed two nights sitting on one another’s laps, granddaughter and dog all tangled up, making scrambled eggs and visiting the mixed-sex open communal showers and hearing all the news from back home. Recently we were joined by a TEENAGER for a week. We had been ready for the challenge. The Skipper had an entire schedule of tasks carefully saved up to delight, entertain and most importantly educate The Teenager. It was not to be. Said Teenager had other ideas. He taught us about Pokemon – well he tried. When he wasn’t on his phone he was asleep. Thus it was that he moved through a large part of the beautiful Stockholm Archipelago dozing peacefully, making no demands and as happy as Larry. With the visitors sometimes comes more of the outside world than we want. They usually come armed with our letters. These we press into a plastic bag and stow at the back of a locker for a few days until, fortified

by a beverage or a large piece of chocolate, we are brave enough to open them. Of course sometimes the sun doesn’t shine and then our Guests are put to the test. Are they real boaters, could they withstand the rigours of damp days at sea when one’s boots leak and those waterproof trousers show their true colours? Some do

Gone are the days when it would be prudent to offer a small tot of rum, more’s the pity and some don’t and which of them rises to the occasion is sometimes surprising. Our Guests aren’t always human. Our boats have played host to dogs aplenty. We ourselves travel with both a dog and a cat and our cat is dog enough for most people. He protects his territory like a rottweiller but still there are some would-be sea-dogs

that are prepared to take the risk. Some stand their ground while others decide to take the sensible approach and withdraw to their owner’s knees. Visitors occasionally come in an official capacity. We have been boarded by Border Forces both in UK waters and abroad. Always slightly unsettling, we find that we gabble incoherently, trip over ourselves trying to find Ship’s papers, passports and make soothing cups of tea. Gone are the days when it would be prudent to offer a small tot of rum, more’s the pity. A couple of times the dog has broken the ice, nuzzling up to the knees of a customs official oblivious of the gun at their hip and of the effect of her golden fur on their smartly pressed black trousers. On other occasions the dog has been sadly missing, it being illegal to bring her back into the UK on your own boat. Then we find ourselves earnestly justifying the obvious detritus of a doggy home thinking in our paranoia that they may rip up the sole boards suspecting an illegal doggy

Visitors.. dogs and granddaughter. Main pic, Breakfast in Bremerhaven

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MARINE MOTORING The Skipper’s word

Breakfast on deck in Oslo

immigrant. Of course they aren’t in the least concerned about that and their visits are usually both exciting and entertaining. Bringing an enormous high-powered RIB in a heaving sea alongside a vintage boat is as nerve-wracking for them as it is for us. The intrepid official who leaps aboard is much more interested in our war bell and binnacle than in any real likelihood that we are smuggling cocaine or poor people from the Calais encampment. Anyway, we left little Sea Lion on a journey and must get back to him. At Oslo sadly we had to turn for home. Inexperienced as we were this turn was a little late and the weather decided to turn with us. We spent a couple of weeks on a small island off Gothenburg while the wind roared and the waves swept over the harbour wall. Ingenuity was required to occupy ourselves on Vrångo,

and deepened over the years. He seemed to know me better than I knew myself; something had shunted me from a targetfocussed career woman and homemaker to a restless soul who was ready for the next port, the next adventure, the next new encounter, the next country. As if floating above my own head I found myself saying the words that would seal our fates “Well, I guess if we had something a little bit bigger, perhaps with two engines and a guest cabin it might be fun”. So, dear Reader, you probably got there before me. We made our way home that autumn with the glow of a low sun and the fields all ripe around us and the seed of an idea in our minds. The journey back was a highlight all on its own. The canals and little towns revisited with winter at our heels took on a new beauty. We avoided the Kiel Canal and sailed up the Trave to Lübeck, a great Hanseatic Our journey back was hard won port and the seat of all things that year... and we started to have marzipan. I hate the stuff but the Skipper was in ecstasy. disloyal thoughts and plans When we stopped of an evening we scoured the internet looking an island so small that we could cycle round lasciviously at the yachts for sale. it in an hour; we managed to read and laugh At Bad Essen in pouring rain we had and fish and cycle and, a real lifesaver this, a setback. Not speaking German, we had take the ferry to Gothenburg. failed to take note of the radio’s warnings Our journey back to the safety of the of lock closures on our route.The next day inland waterways was hard won that year. we had to retrace our journey by 120 miles. We obsessed about the weather and grabbed By the time we reached Calais there small windows in it to edge our way south and was ice on the decks and the weather was west. At about this time we also started to have inclement for the foreseeable future. Poor disloyal thoughts and eventually plans. little Sea Lion must stay abroad while his crew jumped ship escaping on a ferry: rats It started with the Skipper asking if leaving a lovely little gallant vessel that I thought I could take to this cruising had conveyed them safely for thousands business as a way of life? Now the Skipper of miles and were now not only deserting had been working on this for some years but planning a permanent change of craft. and he knew with what ferocity I clung We had fallen in love again, the Skipper to my small thatched cottage, firmly and I. We had seen pictures of a boat ashore and a long, long way from the that was our hearts’ desire, lying in Brigg sea. You may remember that it was with and beyond our pockets but there was an a cunning sleight of hand that he had unmistakeable glint in our eyes. winkled me away from the safe confines Next Month: What not to do when you of the River Thames and swept me out buy a classic, and choosing your yard. to sea. His dastardly plan had developed

To go or not to go. It’s a binary question that belies the myriad reasons why we choose one answer over the other. The weather is only one factor among many. Four lads in a racing yacht, the family on a charter holiday, the sailor who has to be back in the office on Monday, the practical boat owner who has just fitted a wind generator, the couple limbering up for the ARC – they may chorus the word ‘Go!’ but that might be all their decision-making has in common. It certainly doesn’t do to leave harbour because others are doing so. I am boringly cautious – Helen marginally less so, but we both have to agree to go. We don’t want our old tub shaken around, we don’t want to be shaken around ourselves and shaking around the ship’s dog and cat just invites mutiny. The wind can be less of a problem than the sea it whips up. Motorboats tend to roll in a beam sea where a yacht is kept steady by keel and sail, and planks work more in a heavy sea. The equation is simple: the steeper the waves, the more water I have to pump out of the bilge. While we were stuck on the island of Vrångo – which gave us our word for being weather-bound - the fishing boats stayed put but yachts came and went. Some were clearly well-found with crews to match, experienced in the boisterous ways of the Kattegat. Others were leaving because they were on a schedule. Over the years we’ve come to cherish the leisure bad weather forces on us. Friends are made, books are read, odd jobs done, new places explored. Once on a UK circumnavigation we idled away a memorable three weeks at Lawrenny Quay in the River Cleddau doing all those things. When we eventually got away the forecast suggested we’d have a few days in Padstow before moving on. Perfect. We were barely over the Doom Bar when the Met Office had second thoughts. We could safely get round Land’s End the next day, it now reckoned, but thereafter a mighty gale would vrångo us in Penzance for a week. Off we went, locking in with hours to spare. That night the wind howled and the lightning forked and we snuggled down with relief, certain this was weather no one would go out in. Then, in the small hours, we felt a boat raft up to us. Daylight revealed a battered catamaran alongside, with a Central Casting bearded delivery skipper swigging beer in the cockpit. Where did you come from, we asked, wondering how he could have missed the gale warning. Or had he been so rash as to ignore it and set out anyway? Boston, he replied, barely removing the can from his lips. Boston, Massachusetts. Vrångo... means no go

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TRAILER SAILING PART 4

Lights, contact, action: gett in In our latest instalment David Parker talks about getting to know your lighting

he sandwiches are made and the luggage and children are packed in the back of the car. The boat’s ready and hitched up while the grease on your well-maintained trailer shimmers in the sun. You’re ready for your trailer-sailing adventure to begin and then tragedy strikes at the last minute… one of the brake lights isn’t working. Hold on - calling that a tragedy is going for the hyperbole early on isn’t it? Possibly. However you could argue that what follows shortly after is tragic in its own way. It is the sight of a grown man kicking a trailer board down the road before slumping to his knees and head butting it. Meanwhile his family sits in the car looking on and his wife furtively locks it from the inside. You see, as anyone who has worked on car or boat wiring will testify, there can be nothing guaranteed to have you frothing with frustration as much as that intermittent electrical fault you cannot identify. It has happened to me more than once; I even had to delay a trip by a whole day because of a wiring malfunction that happened every time we got just half way down the road. After a lot of false starts it wasn’t a great beginning to a trailer sailing holiday. And this is why trailer electrics merits an article all of its own in this series: this subject can be one of the most testing areas for the beginner if you have a problem. While you might get your trailer professionally serviced, a technician will rarely be on hand if a light packs up. It might be a simple matter of changing a bulb but if you haven’t got the right spares to hand or something to clean the contacts then it isn’t so simple is it? If you set off with faulty lights it’s both dangerous and illegal. It might be more complicated than a bulb and be a broken wire, poor connection or short circuit. Then where do you begin with fault finding? Well, hopefully what follows will help avoid such problems or sort them out without too much stress if they crop up. Let’s start by working towards avoiding any electrical troubles in the first place. One of the reasons that trailer lights can be particularly temperamental when towing boats is that, boats being boats, they come in all shapes and sizes. This means that typically you don’t have a standard trailer shape with fitted lights unlike with a box trailer for example. You can buy bespoke trailers with built in rear lights but more often you will have to fit them yourself by mounting a lighting board. It is this fact alone which means the lighting system is far more vulnerable to wear and tear than connections which are permanently fitted in secure housings. By their

very nature these lighting boards are portable, lightweight and fully exposed to the elements. Also they can be very tricky to fix firmly to the back of some boats so inevitably get a fair degree of abuse if poorly secured. Then after being bumped around on the back of the boat they

Lighting boards can be very tricky to fix firmly to the back of some boats so inevitably get a fair bit of abuse if poorly secured end up lying on the ground in a tangle of cables or haphazardly shoved somewhere in your bid to get afloat quickly. Later they may well suffer more neglect when stored or not in use. For these reasons I have found the best way to ensure long term protection of the lighting board is to make a rigid wooden mounting

frame to both safeguard it and make it easy to secure. This custom made mounting board fits a variety of craft which I tow. The dayboat always proved a bit of a problem because it is virtually a double ender so it’s very fiddly to fit the lighting board on its own securely. So I made the board with a slot which sits on the small squared-off engine transom and it can be quickly secured by shock cord and a couple of bungees. For our sailing dinghies it has an additional brace to lock it on to the rudder pintle and incorporates a support to hold a mast when trailing. Admittedly it took time to make but it was inexpensive and well worth the effort. It has more than paid for itself in the convenience and speed with which I can now secure and remove the lighting board, saving me a lot of hassle each time I trail. Put it this way, when I’m on a motorway on a wet Friday night I’m very pleased to know my lights are firmly attached to the boat.

Staying within the law

However you mount it, a lighting board should not be positioned more than 1.5 metres (59in)

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TRAILER MAINTENANCE

tt ing wired up for the road board and finding those faults before it’s you that blows a fuse 1 The rig, at Warsash on the Hamble if you were wondering 2 The lighting board needs to be wide enough so that the red triangular reflectors are not inboard of the widest part of the load

3 A sturdy custom- made mounting frame is inexpensive to make – it should be quick and easy to fit with bungee straps 4 In this case a lip holds the frame over the narrow transom so the lighting board simply drops in place

from the ground. Lighting on boat trailers is, like all lighting on vehicles, subject to the Road Vehicle Lighting Regulations. The lighting required on boat trailers is similar to that required for any other trailer and a standard trailer rear light board will already have the basic lights required. These include indicators, stop lamps, tail lamps, red reflectors (which must be triangular), a number plate lamp, and probably at least one red fog lamp on the off-side (driver’s side). You will also need some form of letting the driver know the indicators are working correctly such as a buzzer or light. For larger boat trailers, extra lamps/reflectors are required. If the boat trailer is greater than 5m long then amber side retro-reflectors are required, spaced no more than 3m apart. The rearmost side reflector can be red and must be within 1m of the rear of the vehicle. Also if a boat trailer is wider than 2.1m then it must be fitted with end outline marker lamps i.e. two white ones facing forwards and two red facing to the rear. These must be at the maximum height at which structure is available to mount them on.

If you are hauling a very heavy load and the gross mass capacity of the trailer (i.e. trailer mass plus the mass of the boat) is greater than 3500kg then Long Vehicle rear marker boards are required. No trailer can be parked at night on the road unless the rear position lamps (tail

We also need to consider overhanging loads – or probably masts in our case, perhaps if you’re carrying one on the vehicle roof lamps) on the trailer and the position lamps on the towing vehicle are illuminated. If you do leave a detached trailer on the road between sunset and sunrise for any reason then it must be properly illuminated. This means it must have a lamp for the rear registration plate in addition

5 Secure loose electrical cable with tape or cable ties at regular intervals

to a rear position lamps and two front position lamps. It also must be secured from moving and of course must not cause an obstruction. We also need to consider overhanging loads – or probably masts in our case. Additional lamps and reflectors must be fitted to loads which project (forward or rearward) by more than 1 metre (approx 40in) beyond the towing vehicle or the trailer. So if the mast is hanging more than 1m over the back of the trailer it will need a rear lamp and additional red retro-reflector. A way around this if you have a big overhang is to have a trailer extension so that the rear lighting board is positioned vertically below the rearmost part of the load. Similarly if you have the mast projecting forward more than 1 metre (approx 40in) from the front of the car, perhaps if you’re carrying the mast on the vehicle roof, then it needs to have a front facing white lamp and white retro-reflector fitted. If you have any queries about lights or want specific legal information don’t forget that if you belong to a national motoring organisation they should be able to help. CLASSIC SAILOR

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TRAILER SAILING PART 4 Travelling lights

In the standard lighting board all the wiring is run internally and fed by the main black 7-core cable which terminates in a 7-pin electrical plug. It is this male plug which is connected to the towing vehicle’s female socket mounted on an offset bracket next to the tow hitch. A slot engages the male and female plugs correctly so that all the pins match up. Current to power the lights comes from the car’s 12 volt DC electrical system by tapping into the vehicle’s main lights supply to power your auxiliary trailer lights. So remember that if ever you leave your trailer lights on when parked for any length of time and the engine isn’t running, you’re increasing the current draw on the battery. When you buy your nice new lighting board the last thing you will probably consider is to take it apart. But you should – well at least part of it. Don’t wait until you’re stuck in the cold, dark and wet to find out how to remove a lens cap so you can replace the bulb. Learn which bulb does what and check how the internal contacts operate. Similarly you should carefully inspect the interior of both 7-pin terminal sockets so you know how to examine them for a loose connection. When you open up the male 7-pin socket it will have a hinged housing. Carefully note the small locating lug which helps you reposition the interior pin console in the right place in this housing. This is the sort of thing you might well not notice the first time you come to strip it down at night and you’d be left wondering how it all went together again. Let me repeat the importance of getting familiar with the contacts, the sockets and how they are wired before something goes wrong on the road. Often a bulb might stop working or only have intermittent function because a contact might have vibrated out of position during the journey itself. If you’re able to quickly check basic things like this you may well go straight to the problem and be able to get on with your trip. In our diligence to keep well-greased wheel bearings we may overlook that the electrics need a bit of ongoing maintenance too. Get into the habit of a regular inspection schedule for the electrics to ensure that all the connection sockets are clean and protected from dirt and wet. Even if it is just a periodic squirt of relevant areas with WD40 that will help. Sound connections are vital – also check the main feed cables are in good condition and aren’t worn. Also check that screws haven’t become corroded so that you can easily remove lens caps and get at the sockets easily. A smudge of Vaseline on screw heads and threads helps stop rust forming.

Fitting sockets

If you had your tow bar and 7-pin connection socket professionally fitted then the wiring looms of the car may well be a bit of an alien world. But even a professional job can develop a dodgy connection so it’s still important to understand where the feeds for the trailer lights tie in with the car’s supply. The first time I fitted a tow bar I did the wiring myself and this has

6 A quick visual check ensures no grit, moisture or seaweed has found its way into the connectors 7 Inside the male connector with its colour coded wires. When you open it note the way the pins are orientated so it all lines up correctly 8 Testing the contacts on the car socket is normally a two-handed job so a thin bit of bungee and a parrel bead makes an excellent home made clip to hold it open

9 A multimeter is an ideal way to test the contacts and check for continuity if a fault develops

this hole will have a sharp edge. It is also much easier to pre-wire the 7-pin female socket before fixing it to the plate between the tow bracket and the tow ball. The wiring of the 7-pin socket typically goes as follows with 1 at the top and the numbers going clockwise. (No 7 black is the centre pin.) Pin 1 Yellow Pin 2 Blue Pin 3 White Pin 4 Green Pin 5 Brown Pin 6 Red Pin 7 Black the advantage that in theory you know what’s what but it can be a time consuming learning curve doing the whole thing from scratch. If you are fitting a tow bar and the electrical socket yourself you will probably need to strip out part of the rear boot fascia to get access to the car’s wiring which feeds the rear lights. Your general vehicle handbook will list the colour of wires for particular circuits but probably won’t have a wiring diagram. The wiring loom on any vehicle is pretty intimidating for the amateur so it would be sensible to get a workshop manual with detailed information before undertaking this job. The tow bar fitting kit should have instructions, but when you have drilled your 12mm hole through the boot floor near the socket to take the 7-core cable remember to fit a grommet to protect the wire because

L/H direction indicator Rear fog lamps Earth return R/H direction indicator R/H tail and number plate lamps Stop lamps L/H tail and number plate lamps.

With the female socket fitted you have to feed the 7-core wire towards one of the vehicle rear light clusters and match the appropriate colours from it to the vehicle lighting feeds as specified in the manual. Snap connectors are the easiest way to join wires because you then don’t have to strip down the sleeve on each individual wire. However you will have to strip back the white cable to ensure that it has a good earth to the vehicle. The earth tag must go on bare metal so make sure there is no paint or grease which will prevent it providing a good earth. On a 12volt DC system operating like this if the earth doesn’t work then none of the lights will. If you intend to undertake a DIY job, bear in mind that some makes of car are also fitted with bulb failure indicators. In this case bypass relays should be wired with trailer brake and sidelight feeds to prevent overloading the system. These

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TRAILER MAINTENANCE 10 If a problem develops and you’re working alone, run the trailer board alongside the car so you can check the lights when fault finding

11 A final check that all is well with the lights should always be carried out if possible before you start towing 12 Get familiar with the lighting board so a simple job like changing a bulb can be done easily 13 Having a few basic spares to hand can save you a lot of trouble if an electrical fault develops when you’re away from home

are more complicated and certain cars also require special manufacturer’s factory wiring kits which are expensive but need to be used. Although wiring-in the car trailer socket yourself will increase your knowledge, cost savings may not be that great when you factor in the price of the tow bar as well. It may well be worth letting the professionals do the car wiring, then you can just worry about the boat trailer.

Also a headlamp goes in the glove compartment – I’ve found tracing a wiring fault holding a torch in your mouth doesn’t help the stress situation Circuit testing

When you are confident that everything’s working correctly, it’s very useful to keep a tool kit handy specific to the boat, the trailer and its lights when towing. I like to carry spare bulbs, cable ties, an electrical screwdriver, snap connectors, insulating tape, WD40, spare bits of wire and a multimeter. Keep this tool box in a readily accessible place and not buried in the boot under a mountain of luggage. Also a head lamp goes in the glove compartment because I’ve found trying to trace a wiring fault holding a torch in your mouth doesn’t really help the stress of the situation. In with the head lamp is

also a homemade quick reference diagram of the 7 pin lighting connections. To check both lights and the terminal socket you can buy special testers which will plug in and have LED lights that show which lights are working. You can also use a multimeter and the way to test a terminal with this or a buzzer is to hold the positive lead to the terminal you want to test and the negative to the earth. If necessary you can earth the black lead from your multimeter by using the tow bar itself if it gives you a better contact. When power is applied and you put the lights on, you will get a 12-volt reading on the meter. If you’re using a buzzer the alarm will sound if the circuit is working correctly. You will need help testing the brake lights of course, getting someone to put their foot on the brake pedal in the car. To know when the indicators are working, on a digital multimeter a number will flash briefly each time the indicator flashes; whereas on an analogue multimeter the needle rises and falls. When you want to test continuity to the lighting board then plug it into the car socket and remove the lens cap from the cluster you want to investigate. Again turn on whichever function you want to test, be it indicators, lights or brakes, and hold the positive lead of your test meter to one of the light contacts and the other to a negative ground or the white earth cable. A negative ground can be the trailer itself if necessary. If you have continuity and everything is working well your multimeter will read 12 volts or if you’re using an audible alarm the buzzer will sound.

Using a multimeter

A multimeter is used to test and measure parts of an electrical system. It may be digital or analogue; the former gives the readout in figures and the later has an analogue scale and a moving pointer. Digital ones are cheap and easy to read but bear in mind if you pay a bit more you should get a much better bit of kit with longer leads and a more robust casing. However, you do not need a highly expensive model designed to offer more measurements than the basics. For most of the time you will want to use a multimeter to measure the voltage in volts, the current in amps and/or the resistance in ohms. Voltage, resistance and current are inseparable pals and team up in a simple formula V = IR where V is for voltage, I is for current and R is for resistance. (You are unlikely to measure current when testing a trailer board but what this shows is how much current a circuit draws so on board a boat for example it will tell you how long a fully charged battery will power a particular device.) Even the most basic meter should come with a manual – keep them together at all times because it is one of those things you rarely use – but when you do need it you don’t want to forget which probe goes in which socket. Also remember to switch the meter off each time after you have used it so that you do not run the internal battery flat. For our purposes the voltage will be DC (Direct Current) on a 12-volt system. (In your house you will have a far more powerful AC supply of 240 volts). A normal car battery supply should therefore read 12 volts or more likely 13.5 or above if the charging circuit is running. To measure voltage place the red probe on a positive terminal and the black on a negative terminal. If you get the terminals the wrong way round on a digital meter you will see a minus sign and on an analogue meter the pointer goes away from the scale. You will see different voltage ranges on the meter. On a circuit where you were unsure of the voltage you would set the dial to the highest range first to avoid any damage to the meter. Here on a low-voltage battery circuit we know it will be 12 volts so we can set it to the next one up i.e. 20 volts. Measuring resistance is very useful to check ‘continuity’ i.e. that an individual circuit is working and that no wires or connections are damaged. With this you set the meter to read ohms. Use the probes to connect across part or all of the circuit and if there is continuity the meter will give you a reading and probably also a buzzing sound. CLASSIC SAILOR

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TRAILER SAILING PART 4 If you suspect a break in the main 7-core cable itself then you can test continuity of each wire with a separate long length of single-core wire. Set your multimeter to the Ohm resistance measurement just as if you were testing a fuse or circuit on board the boat. Attach the singlecore wire to one end of the coloured cable (or its pin) and then connect the black test lead to the other end of this wire. Then put the red lead of the multimeter to the suspect contact and if the pointer reads zero or the continuity buzzer sounds you know the wire is intact.

FITTING A NUMBER PLATE Screwing into a trailer board with wires inside is not a good idea so often self adhesive strips are used to secure number plates. Unfortunately these can degrade over time and I find Velcro strips are an ideal way to fit number plates securely. Also if you have more than one trailer you

can still use the same number plate because they are easy to remove. The other advantage is they give you space behind the number plate to run a lashing or bungee if you want to secure the lighting board to a more sturdy support such as a wooden bracket.

Keep it tidy

The best way to secure the main cable from the trailer board to the vehicle socket is to use tape or cable ties at appropriate intervals along the cable length. If you can, run the cable in the boat as far as possible to prevent it working loose – they can even end up dragging on the ground beneath the trailer. Keep any excess cable securely and neatly fastened, again in the boat if possible. However, make sure that where you plug into the car socket you have enough free trailer cable to allow the coupling head to

1 Make sure your lighting board is wide enough. The red triangular reflectors should not be inboard of the widest part of the load, or the wheel arches on the trailer, which ever is widest.

Often, trailer engineers see damage where people have driven off after unhitching the trailer... but left the lightboard’s plug attached move freely when turning or reversing without putting any strain on the wires. The way I do this is to put a shallow loop/swan neck in the cable on the draw bar before securing it. One final point is to always have the warning triangle from your car handy or buy another one specifically for trailing. Then if you do unfortunately encounter any problem or have a lights failure you can pull over somewhere safe and get the warning triangle in position straight away while working on the electrics. Problems might not just occur en route of course. Often specialist trailer engineers see damage where people have driven off after unhitching the trailer… but left the lightboard’s plug attached so the terminals have been ripped out by force. People also apparently have the habit of dropping the trailer on the wires or plugs. Another regular mishap is breaking the lenses by backing the lighting board into things when close quarter manoeuvring. So try not to rush things, treat trailer electrics with a bit of care and they shouldn’t pose any problems. Coloured wires and fickle sockets may seem a bit daunting at first if you have no experience of them, but with a bit of practice it is not difficult to get familiar with the basics of the system and sort yourself out if you need to. In the next and final instalment we get ready to roll and look at securing the load, tips for the trip and some manoeuvring techniques.

2 Clean the surfaces with solvent first. The Velcro strips on the number plate are made slightly longer than the width of the plate. This provides tails with which to remove the Velcro

3 When the strips are positioned and you peel back the side to fit it to the lighting board be careful not to get any of the mating surfaces dirty

Press the number plate in to position so that it will be properly illuminated by the trailer board lights

Velcro provides a very strong bond so pull up on the strip not the number plate so as not to break it

Note these are the tails about 1cm long which allow you get to get hold of the Velcro strips easily

66 CLASSIC SAILOR

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Boats for sale Boats for for sale sale Anglia Yacht Brokerage Boats trailer and upped rating to category B. £37,950

and bronze work. Complete with cover and break back road trailer £8,995.

standing lug yawl rig. Complete with electric motor, covers and road trailer. £7,750

1999 Storm 15’ with balanced lug 1990 Drascombe Dabber Mk2 in Tel. +44 (0)1359 17 47 www.anglia-yacht.co.uk M J Lewis & Sons (Boat27 Sales) Ltd sales@anglia-yacht.co.uk rig. Complete with(Boat cover, electric exceptionally tidy condition with M J Lewis & Sons Sales) Ltd Tel:01621 859373 - Email: info@mjlewisboatsales.com MTel:01621 Joutboard Lewis & Sons (Boat Sales) Ltd and combi road trailer. cover, Honda 2.3HP 4-stroke and 859373 - Email: info@mjlewisboatsales.com

1999 Tel:01621 Storm 15’ with- balanced lug 1990 Drascombe Dabber Mk2 in 859373 Email: info@mjlewisboatsales.com www.mjlewisboatsales.com £2,250 road trailer. www.mjlewisboatsales.com rig. Complete with cover, electric exceptionally tidy condition with £4,450 www.mjlewisboatsales.com outboard and combi road trailer. cover, Honda 2.3HP 4-stroke and £2,250

road 1999 Storm 15’trailer. with balanced lug 1990 Drascombe Dabber Mk2 in rig. Complete with cover, electric exceptionally tidy condition with £4,450 outboard combi roadSpecialising trailer. small cover, Honda 2.3HP in sailing Bare-boat and4-stroke and Anglia Yacht Brokers are and a well established boat £2,250 road trailer.since 1996 we offer Skippered charters builders based in the UK near Bury St Edmunds. £4,450

2006 Cornish Crabber 17’ in lovely condition with coppercoated underside, 6HP outstanding sailing destinations around 2006 Cornish Crabber 17’Suzuki in 2008 2004 Post Boat 14’6” in stunning condition 1982 McNulty Longstone 12’ larch on oak in 1987 Cornish Cormorant in tidymarketing condition with 1995 Lune Whammel 17’ Mk1 gaff cutWe provide traditional sailing boat and 1978 Drascombe Dabber in good Memory 19’Yacht gaff sloop with Deben Lugger with covers, spray 1993/94 Cornish Crabber 17’ with road Anglia Brokers are a 2007 well established small sailing boat with spray hood, covers, cushions and 4-stroke and break-back road Mediterranean beautiful, well lovely condition with nice tan lugsail, cover and second alternative sprit-sailand rig easy+the original. ter-rigged withon covers, Suzuki 2.5HP 4-stroke lovely copper52ft Fleur du Lys bycondition Dagless 86ft Thames Sailing Barge,1926 41ft Silverleaf by John Bain 1935 condition with new cover,with rudder/tiller 2-berth cabin. In very condition hood, Mariner 4HP 4-stroke trailer, hood and refurbishment services, brokerage and4-stroke are alwaysrecent on covers/spray hand with builders based in the UK near Bury St Edmunds. easy-launch road trailer road trailer. Includes recent cover, Honda 2.3HP outboard, Easy-launch trailer.Gulets. and Easy-launch road trailer last year. with Mariner 5HP 4-stroke outboard launch road trailer. Suzuki 4HP 4-stroke outboard. 52ft Fleur du Lys by Dagless 86ft Thames Sailing Barge,1926 41ft Silverleaf by John Bain 1935 1961coated Essex £69,500 Steel, Essex POA. Suffolk. OIRO £50,000 maintained yachts and traditional 19m Luxemotor motor barge, trailer. underside, Cornish Crabber 17’ in £7,000 Suzuki 6HP and2006 £2,950 outboard and Essex combination road trailer. £5,250 advice and help. We provide traditional sailing boat marketing and £3,750. new road trailer. £10,950. £7,950 Anglia Yacht Brokers are a well established small sailing 1961 Essex £69,500 Steel, POA. Suffolk. OIRO £50,000 2003Luxemotor Essex. OIRO £175,000 52ft Fleur du Lys by Dagless 86ft Thames Sailing Barge,1926 41ft Silverleaf by John Bain 1935 boat 19m motor barge, £2,750 with copper£12,950 4-stroke and break-back road inlovely condition 2000 Cornish 2006 GRP Kittiwakebuilders 16’ gaff 2001 Sea Otter 1961 Essex £69,500 Steel, Essexin POA. Suffolk. OIRO £50,000 2003 Essex.Crabber OIRO £175,00022’ £10,950. based the UK nearDavid Bury StMoss Edmunds.

barge, 5,000

refurbishment services, brokerage and are always on hand with coated underside, Suzuki 6HP trailer. Wehigh provide traditional15’ sailing boat marketing and Cedar lovely condition with Yanmar rigged sloop. A Alex. very end in lovely condition. adviceand and help. Please askroad for 4-stroke break-back £12,950 refurbishment services, brokerage and are always on hand with

1GM10 diesel, Bespoke road fit out with lots of hard wood trailer. advice and help. Please ask Alex. work. Complete with trailer and upped rating to £12,950 andfor bronze category B. break back road Please ask trailer for Alex. The sea is still clear, the sky is still blue,cover the exand perience is still incr edible £37,950 £8,995.

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South Coast One Design 35ft Berthons W.Solent Edwardian Heard 28, 1984 Gaffers & Luggers Deck seating Kaya Guneri V South Coast One Design 1961. Sussex £11,500Heard 28, 1984 Gaffers & Luggers Yacht Essex OIRO £40,000 32ft Gaff Ketch 1903 Essex £29,500 35ft Berthons W.Solent Edwardian 1961.Coast SussexOne £11,500 EssexW.Solent OIRO £40,000 South Design 32ftKent Gaff£19,950 Ketch 1903 35ft Yacht Berthons Edwardian Heard 28,Essex 1984£29,500 Gaffers & Luggers We are an New accredited RYA Training Centre, Sussexlug £11,500 NewDeben DebenLuggers Luggers beingbuilt builtto toorder order for balanced Roach 10’ dinghies 1989 Drascombe in lovely 2010Drascombe Swale Pilot 16’ in lovely condition Kent Mk3 £19,950 YachtCoaster Essex OIRO £40,000 Essex £29,500 1991 Winkle Brig 16’ Lugger Dayboat in lovely 1991 with Mercury with 8HP New being New1961. Balanced Lug 10’ Roach Dinghiesbuilt to

Come and see us at theCome Southampton Show 11th Boat - 22nd and see us at Boat the Southampton ShowSept 11th - 22nd Sept

conditionand withlightly upgraded covers, condition used.buoyancy, With Mariner Suzuki outboard,trailer. Road trailer outboard and4HP easy-launch £5,250 £3,250

a secondand suitbreak-back of larger sails. 2-stroke roadComplete trailer. with Spray hood, covers, Mariner 4HP 4-stroke £6,750. and Easy-launch road trailer £6,950

quality attention to We detail inc VAT. £3250 inc VAT. have 2assured forMay Maydelivery. delivery.Prices from £14500with builtand toorder. order. demonstrators in stockin from £2950 Prices from £14,500. Inc VAT £3,250. Inc VAT. and operate from a UK base Ipswich. have two demonstrators in stock from Please callWe or visit the website for more, £2,950.

at please quote Classic Sailor for a sand u e ark! of up to 25% for this year! Anglia Yacht Brokers are a well established small sailing boat builders Se le discount P e based in the UK near Bury St Edmunds. We provide traditional sailing boat marketing andGaffer refurbishment services, brokerage always Gaffer Dunkirk Little Ship, Osborne 35 19’ Golant 2007, As newand 25ftare Gostelows a th Jun e on Mussel hand with advice£6,950 and help. Dunkirk Please Little ask for Alex. Cutter Ship, Osborne 35Essex £19,950 19’ Golant Gaffer B 2007, - 5 As new 25ft Gostelows Gaffer 1937 Essex POA 1959 17m Dutch Essex 1935 d

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MJLewis_DEC_CS.indd 1 MJLewis_DEC_CS.indd 1

road trailer.

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Crabber 17’ inYACHT SHARES2006 FORCornish SALE IN A CLASSIC Anglia Yacht Brokers are a well established small sailing boat s amongst the syndicate, lovely condition with copperLowestoft Est 1975 Due to changing circumstances amongst the syndicate, builders based in the UK near Bury St Edmunds. or sale in the International underside, 6HP Due changing circumstances amongst theInternational syndicate, theretoare acoated number of shares forSuzuki sale in the We provide traditional sailing boat marketing and there are a4-stroke number of shares for sale in road the International and break-back 12M, Sceptre. refurbishment services, brokerage and are always on hand with 12M, Sceptre. trailer. nd very keen sailor, and advice and help. Tom Smith, a Yachtmaster and very keen sailor, and £12,950 ailing boat… BUT“I’m I COULD! “I’m Tom Smith, a Yachtmaster and very keen sailor, and thought I couldn’t afford a 70ft sailing boat… BUT I COULD! assic wooden International Please ask for Alex. thought I couldn’t afford a 70ft sailing boat… BUT I COULD! I bought nger. Twenty years later, I a share in Sceptre, the classic wooden International I bought a share in Sceptre, the classic wooden International 12M, 1958 America’s Cup challenger. Twenty years later, I sailing this iconic yacht!” •CupCity & Guilds Level 3 later, I • Learn transferable skills, in a working 12M, 1958her America’s challenger. Twenty years still enjoy good looks and love sailing this iconic yacht!” still enjoy her good looks and loveDiploma sailing this- iconic yacht!” • IBTC sought after & boatyard environment 9th share, plus an average You can too, for £12,000 for a 19th share, plus an average recognised by yards around the world • Joinery & Short Courses also available – have a look at www. You can too, for £12,000 for a 19th share, plus an average annual tails, photographs, and subscription of £2,500 – have a look at www. annual subscription £2,500 – have a look at www. sceptre1958.co.uk forofmore details, photographs, and sceptre1958.co.uk for more videos of this beautiful boat.details, photographs, and videos of this beautiful boat. a boat share, but there are You may not have considered a boat share, but there are oach to going sailing: You may not have to considered a boat there are many advantages this approach toshare, goingbut sailing: ail with, lower costs, share many advantages topeople this approach to going sailing: No trouble fi nding to sail with, lower costs, share a yacht. No finding people to sail with, lower costs, share the trouble responsibilities of owning a yacht. the responsibilities of owning a yacht. enjoy the following:

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On Sceptre, you will also enjoy the following: Sceptre, also enjoy the following: ghbred boat thatOn eats up the you mileswill - Eighteen friends to go sailing with - Working together to Superb sailing in a thoroughbred boat that eats up the - Eighteen friends to go sailing with - Working together to storic yacht - It’s not a time share, so sail when you can (depending onmiles qualifi cations, schedule Superb sailing in a thoroughbred boat that eats up the miles Eighteen friends to go sailing with Working together to maintain and improve a historic yacht It’s not a time share, so sail when you can (depending on-qualifi cations, schedule de a new main sail, jib roller reefing, new navigation instruments and many other improvements maintain and improve a historic yacht It’s not a time share, so sail when you can (depending on qualifi cations, schedule etc) Recent upgrades include a new main sail, jib roller reefing, new navigation instruments and many other improvements etc) and Recent a new jibonroller reefi ng, new instruments and many other improvements ww.sceptre1958.co.uk thenupgrades ring me toinclude book a trial sail,main Tom sail, Smith 07576 909141 for anavigation chat. Interested? Visit www.sceptre1958.co.uk and thenBoatbuilding ring me to book a trial sail, Tom Smith on 07576 909141 for a chat. International Training College Interested? Visit www.sceptre1958.co.uk then ring me Lowestoft, to book a trial sail, TomNR32 Smith3LQ on 07576 909141 for a chat. Sea Lake Road,and Oulton Broad, Suffolk. CLASSIC SAILOR 67

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Sailing skills: Anchoring How much cable will prevent drag? The type of anchor you deploy to get a good night’s rest in bad weather conditions is important but equally so is the amount and type of cable you veer explains Trevor David Clifton

HMSO AND UKHO

id-summer on The Algarve, a lovely place to be, lovely boat too; I was teaching a Day Skipper/Competent Crew course aboard a Rival 38. The sun was shining, the sky was blue and there was a gentle, cool breeze coming in over the sea. But we knew that the gentle, southerly wind was rising – forecast to reach gale force later. I estimated that we had six or seven hours before it wouldn’t be sensible to be out sailing, but that was more than enough to make a passage from where we were, in Vilamoura, to Faro Harbour, fifteen miles to the southeast; and it would give the crew the unusual opportunity, on this coast, to gain some experience of beating to windward in a lively sea. We cast off. Tracy and Tony, the two Day-Skippers, took turns to navigate and ‘sail the ship’. The plan was to anchor for the night in the lee of the island of Culatra. We did get a little damp beating through the waves, but the sun was still shining and the water was warm so it was fun.

Tracy was at the helm, laughing, as we raced in through the harbour entrance, surfing on the rolling waves, she didn’t want it to stop, but the alternative to following the channel round to the north-east was going aground on a sandbank! So we turned onto a gentle reach, making for a shallow bay a mile or so ahead.

Paying out the chain

The sun was just setting when we swung the bow into the wind and lowered the anchor. The foredeck crew worked hard to pay out the twenty metres of chain that the Day-Skippers had calculated was required – plus another five ‘for luck’ – before making it fast. We switched on the all-round white light at the top of the mast, rigged the anchor ball, then noted some reference marks that would still be visible after dark, which we could use to check that we weren’t dragging. Lights were glimmering from the holiday bungalows along the shore; ahead of us, and about 45° off the port bow, a motor-sailer was already anchored.

We ate dinner in the saloon. Mood music was the sound of the wind whistling in the rigging. By ten o’clock it was howling; the boat was now swinging on an anchor chain which was bar-taut. We had another twenty-seven metres of chain in the locker. I decided to let nearly all of it out to reduce the angle between the chain and the sea bed and lessen the chance of dragging. When I looked up I thought that the anchored motor sailer was a bit closer than when I last looked – but I couldn’t be sure. She was showing no lights and she too was swinging on her anchor.

More than one anchor

Some text books recommend setting two anchors in heavy weather, one off each bow, about 45° apart. I’ve tried this twice and on both occasions the boat continued to swing from side to side hanging first on one anchor and then the other, so it didn’t work for me! They were a pain to set and recover, and if the wind direction changes one of them becomes

redundant anyway. Another ‘Two Anchor Set-up’ talked about but not often tried or tested is the tandem anchor rig, where one anchor is somehow attached, in-line, to another. I’ve tried that too, with two anchors of the same size. The result for me was that the anchor nearest the boat was lifted and thus became no more than a ‘kellet’ or ‘chum’ – a weight intended to improve the angle of pull.

Ratio of cable to depth

Talking of which, the length of anchor cable deployed is really important: the current recommended ratio of length of cable to depth is 4:1 for chain and 6:1 for rope. The assumption that the catenary curve in the cable (where the weight of the chain itself creates a curve like the cables in a suspension bridge) will ensure that the pull on the anchor is horizontal is only true if you anchor in light winds. When it blows really hard the chain will almost certainly be pulled out straight. The diagrams opposite illustrate why, in a real blow, 8:1 would be a lot better!

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When I looked up I thought that the anchored motor sailer was a bit closer than when I had last looked

The motor sailer was definitely getting closer. We tried the VHF radio but not knowing the vessel’s name made that a shot in the dark – literally. We shone our spotlight on her companionway doors, flashed it on and off and even tried our ‘ship’s foghorn’! Eventually someone emerged onto the deck. He looked around, went below again and switched on the navigation lights. That was the last we saw of him, but the boat was getting closer to us

with each swing. It wasn’t a good time to be hauling up the anchor to look for a better spot!

On deck wearing lifejackets

I got the crew on deck, wearing lifejackets, and we rigged fenders along the side nearest the approaching motor sailer, but the wind, by now, was so strong that it flipped the fenders straight back over the rail! But she swung by. The nearest she came was about ten metres away – but that was close enough

under the circumstances. Slowly she disappeared off astern dragging her useless anchor with her. I couldn’t raise anyone on the radio and I knew that there were extensive mud and sand banks and shallows to leeward so I didn’t think the crew was in mortal danger. We watched a circular hole in the cloud layer pass from south to north not far to the west of our position; shortly afterwards the wind veered by about 45°and gradually eased. We went to bed.

Morning radio reports included stories of tiles being blown off roofs in cities in southern Portugal and coastal Spain. We ate breakfast on deck in the sunshine. The motor sailer was aground on a sandbank about a mile to the north-east. “Why do you think she dragged?” Tony asked. “Probably not enough cable veered and possibly an unsuitable anchor.” I answered. Some anchors are better than others and some are more suited to particular conditions. Ours was a 35lb CQR which is a good all-round anchor but which has been around since the early nineteen-thirties! Lots has been written about new anchors and anchor testing and lots of what is written is arguable. There is a good discussion on www. petersmith.net.nz where a series of modern, new generation, anchors are discussed in detail. But clearly a lot of an anchor’s effectiveness is down to the type of cable you veer and how much scope you will let out. CLASSIC SAILOR 69

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Sailing skills: Anchoring – how much cable to veer

How much cable?

We should all accept the 4-x chain and 6-x rope rule for laying out cable for our maximum expected depth. But how do we calculate that? We need to determine the minimum depth in which to anchor. We’re just after HW so the key thing we need to know is how much the water will drop between our time of arrival and the next low water. So for this we have to work out how much the tide will drop. This is the difference from our almanac between height of tide (HOT) now and LW. Incidentally many experts don’t mention the height of the vessel’s bow roller above the sea; this should be added on to the depth of water in our calculations. The height of tide when we

A HANDY RECKONER TO DETERMINE DEPTH AT THE NEXT HIGH WATER HOT of the next HW (from the tide table) EG: 3.0m Subtract HOT at time of anchoring. EG – 2.8m Result is the rise of tide between time of anchoring and next HW = 0.2m + 4.0m Add the depth at time of anchoring. EG: Result is the expected depth at the next HW 4.2m arrived in our intended anchorage was around 2.8m, an hour or so after high water. The low water prediction was 1.0m, so we could expect the water to go down (fall) by 1.8m; with our draught: 1.7m, plus a safety clearance of 0.5m, we needed to anchor in no less than 4m so as not to ground at low water. So we anchored in 4 metres. So, for a 4:1 ratio of depth to length

of chain we calculate like this: HOT 2.8 Minus HOT at LW – 1.0 Equals a fall of = 1.8 Plus draught + 1.7 Plus Ht of bow + 1.0 Plus safety margin + 0.5 = 5.0 Chain: depth ratio x 4 = 20

HW = High water LW = Low water HOT = Height of tide

We also need to check the HOT at the next HW to check that we have laid out enough scope if we are still anchored at the next HW. See our handy reckoner for that above. A few metres of chain will improve the holding of an anchor rope. It helps ‘weigh down’ the cable thus improving the angle of pull on the anchor and is resistant to chafe from rocks and stones on the seabed.

Some traditional anchoring and etiquette advice from Francis B Cooke in his book Cruising Hints When a vessel has taken up a clear berth, any anchoring after her must not encroach upon that berth, taking into consideration her own radius of swing. If she does so she gives the firstcomer a foul berth and would be held responsible for any damage that might ensue through the two craft colliding. It will be seen that the berth belongs to the first-comer and any vessel that brings up too close to her must either shift or take the consequences. Provided that there is plenty of room to swing clear under all conditions of wind and tide, there is nothing to

prevent a vessel riding to a single anchor, but in a congested anchorage – and there are few recognized anchorages that are not crowded nowadays – there is not sufficient room for her to do so and she should lay out a kedge. Apart from the legal aspect, it is selfish and unsportsmanlike to ride to a single anchor in a crowded yacht anchorage, thus causing inconvenience and danger to the property of others, and an owner who does so will very soon get himself disliked. When mooring, the kedge should be laid out astern on the quarter on the

opposite side to the anchor hawse; the yacht will then ride first to the anchor and then to the kedge as she swings each tide. If the two anchors were laid out ahead from the bows, the yacht would take up nearly as much room as if riding to a single anchor. With wind against tide, unless the yacht be wind-rode, it is advisable to give a sheer to prevent her fouling the anchor, in other words, to lash the tiller a little to one side or the other. In such circumstances the boat should be sheered to windward if the breeze is not dead aft. Should the wind, however, come

over the transom, she may be sheered either way. If, however, you bring up in a crowded anchorage, you should sheer the same way as other craft; there is usually a local rule about this. But every ship is entitled to a clear berth, that is to say, room to swing to the tide or wind. If she is riding to a single anchor that involves a clear space with a radius of her own length plus scope of cable, with a bit to spare to allow for the fall of the tide. If she is moored with her kedge out she will remain in practically the same spot with a bit to spare. FBC 1948

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Joints: Tee Halving

The technique for making a Tee Halving joint as demonstrated by IBTC’s Ian Cook. Words and photos by Richard Johnstone-Bryden

alving joints are straightforward to make with hand tools. There are several derivatives including cross halving, tee halving, mitred halving and dovetail halving joints. The Tee halving joint effectively combines the skills required in the making of cross halving and corner halving joints. It is used for framing and consists of two pieces of wood that do not have to be of the same thickness. However, a flush finish is important. Fig 1 To clearly illustrate the techniques involved in the making of a cross halving joint, Ian uses two short pieces of wood. The face side of each piece of wood is clearly marked with a pen mark. Fig 2a-d Begin by placing one piece of wood above the other to mark out the shoulder line for the lap on the joint’s vertical piece of wood using a pencil and set square. When marking out the lap it is important to leave a little waste above so that it can be trimmed flush with the horizontal piece of wood once the two halves have been joined together. 1

Fig 3 Ian marks the depth of the lap with a marking gauge from the “face side” of the wood. To ensure that he has marked the exact mid point, he uses the marking gauge to check that the mid point is accurate when the gauge is applied to both faces. In this case there is a small discrepancy so Ian measures in-between the two points left by the marking gauge to determine the exact mid point. When he checks this by applying the gauge to both faces it confirms that the third dot in the middle is the true centre point thereby determining the exact depth of the lap to be cut in vertical half of the joint.

Fig 4 Ian concludes this stage by marking pencil lines on the waste wood to be removed. Fig 5 Ian places the vertical half of the joint in a bench hook and uses a fine tooth tenon saw to cut the shoulder line slightly to the waste side of the pencil line thereby enabling him to make fine adjustments later on to achieve a tight fitting joint. Ian then places the piece of wood in a vice to saw down to the shoulder.

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Joints: Tee Halving

To make the sawing easier he mounts the wood in the vice at an angle of approximately 45º so that he can maintain a vertical cut while he saws down to one edge. As he does so, Ian saws slightly to the wasted side of the indicated line before turning the wood round in the vice to repeat the procedure for the opposite side. To conclude this stage he straightens up the wood in the vice and saws down vertically to the shoulder. Fig 6a-e Having removed the bulk of the waste wood with the tenon saw, Ian uses a chisel to trim the lap’s bottom face to the exact depth that is required. He begins by placing the chisel on the scribed line and removing the outer edge of the remaining wood at an angle of approximately 45º towards the middle. Due to the depth of this waste wood this leaves a large raised central section which is progressively removed in thin strips using the chisel. It is better to exercise caution by taking off small strips rather than succumbing to the temptation of trying to remove a larger amount in one foul swoop and going too far. Fig 7a-d Ian uses the long side of the chisel to check that the lap’s bottom face is true. Having detected some minor imperfections, Ian runs a pencil along the edge of the chisel until it is covered in lead. He then rubs the edge of the chisel along the lap’s bottom face until the lead

highlights any remaining imperfections. The highlighted ridges are then removed with a chisel to create a flush finish.

Fig 8 Removing the remaining minor imperfections that were highlighted by the pencil lead. Fig 9 Ian places the vertical piece of wood on top of the horizontal half of the joint to mark out the shoulder lines using a pencil and set square. Fig 10 Ian uses the marking out gauge to scribe the depth of the recess on the horizontal half of the joint. Fig 11a-b Ian places the horizontal half of the joint in a bench hook and uses a tenon saw to cut the first shoulder line slightly to the waste side of the pencil line thereby enabling him to make fine adjustments later on to achieve a tight fitting joint. Fig 12 To make it easier to remove the bulk of the waste with a chisel, Ian cuts a number of relief lines, known as saw kerf, into the waste wood using a tenon saw to create several small slices. Fig 13a-c Using a chisel to remove the bulk of the waste wood, Ian begins by removing the slices of wood at an angle of approximately 45º towards the middle. Once the process has been repeated for the other end a ridge of waste wood is

Description and practical demonstration of the techniques by Ian Cook, joinery instructor at the Lowestoft, Suffolk, based International Boatbuilding Training College (IBTC). Further Information: International Boatbuilding Training College, tel 01502 569663, email info@ibtc.co.uk, website www.ibtc.co.uk 72 CLASSIC SAILOR

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It is better to exercise caution by taking off small strips rather than removing a larger amount and going too far 9

13a

left in the middle which is then removed to create the rough shape of the recess. Fig 14 Ian uses the chisel carefully by working inwards from the scribed line left by the marking gauge to remove the final thin layers of waste wood.

11a

11b

13b

13c

18a

18b

Fig 15 Ian uses the side of the chisel to check that the bottom face of the recess is true. He is satisfied with the results and then checks if the inside face of the recess is square using the squared off external edge of the joint’s vertical half. Fig 16 When he checked the inside face of the recess, Ian discovered some minor imperfections which he eliminates with the chisel before using the joint’s vertical half to check that the inside face of the recess is absolutely square. Fig 17 The moment has arrived to check the fit between the two halves as Ian eases the vertical half into the recess of the horizontal half. The recess is a perfect fit Fig 18a-b Ian makes sure that the inside face of the lap is absolutely square using a set square. He scribes a true shoulder line using the set square and chisel before removing minor imperfections. He then checks that the lap’s inside face is true by using the external squared off edge of the joint’s horizontal half. The tight fit proves it. Fig 19 The two halves have been joined together. The joint is finished off by removing the lap’s protruding excess so that it is flush with the upper edge of the joint’s horizontal half. CLASSIC SAILOR 73

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Blocks and Baggywrinkle CS visits Barton Marine to see how their new classic blocks are built while Des Pawson explains baggywrinkle Barton is a well-known British company based in Whitstable, on the north Kent coast. They’ve been going 65 years and specialise in blocks, cam cleats, winches, cars and deck furniture as well as rigging solutions like a headsail roller. Barton was the first company to use tufnol as a block material in the 1950s. The new range of Victory Heritage wooden blocks has caught our attention and it was good to learn that teething problems with sourcing the wooden cheek elements are now sorted. There are four blocks in this range, all using the tried and tested delrin ballbearing systems which spread the load

around the central pin while hugely reducing friction. The smallest is a dinghy block for 8mm (5/16th in) line which can take a rolling load of 245kg (540lbs); breaking load 700. The two medium are for 10mm (3/8th in) and 12mm 7/16th in) line and there is a larger 140mm 14mm line version for schooners with a rolling load of 1200kg and a breaking load of 2500kg! The larger block uses a secondary inner sheave of torlon needle rollers to further spread the load and speed up rope handling. It’s a clever design – hiding an ultra modern performance block within a traditional ashcheeked skin.

We met Barton CEO Suzanne Blaustone and her management team at the factory and asked them if we could have a go at actually assembling a block. They seemed happy at the idea and so was your editor until it was pointed out that you’d be expected to make about 40 of these in as many minutes. The trickiest aspect is getting all the delrin balls in place, using a funnel tool and then a clamp to secure the sheave in place – and it’s double sided. All was going fairly well – the parts clip nicely into place, until we had to tighten the brass cap nuts, and we scratched our sample! Needless to say we were not offered a job!

Above right: Dermott Bealey, Rob Lyne and Suzanne Blaustone in the producrts room. Production officer Pete Pollard, right, demonstrates the assembly process

Des Pawson explains what baggywrinkle is (though not where the name comes from) and how to make it

‘B

aggywrinkle’, now there is a word to ponder. Just what is the origin of this word used to describe that shaggy collection of rope yarns applied to parts of the standing rigging to try and stop chafe, the enemy of sails and running rigging? I cannot find any reference to the use of this word or any of its variations (Bag-a-wrinkle, Boogy Winkles, Baggy Winkles, Bagy Wrinkles)

until the 20th century, yet chaffing gear of various sorts has been around for a very long time. Perhaps it came into being with the advent of wire standing rigging, as it is possible that earlier chaffing gear was fixed to masts and spars rather than hemp standing rigging, which would tend to rot under a moisture-retaining collection of ropeyarns. Dan Houston suggests that odd useless short lengths of rope are called

wrinkles and that they are collected in a bag prior to making up into chaffing gear hence Bag of Wrinkles. Whatever its origins it does the job, but takes a long time to make in useful quantities. Why not call a party and get your friends to race one another to get yourself a decent quantity of the stuff. Because of the way that it is made up, it is sometimes called railroad sennit. In fact it could be said that

baggywrinkle is made from railroad sennit. The late Tom Berry, mat maker from Appledore in North Devon, used

Making Baggywrinkle: Set up two lines of marline streched tight separated with a length of notched wood, then lay the ‘thrum’ underneath

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1 The larger block taken apart showing its constituent parts. The sheave features a double bearing with roller and ball bearing races to distribute load and ease friction. 2 The inner sheeve does not need to turn like a normal block and is held in place by a bolt. The wooden side cheek is supported by a stainless “frame”. 3 Filling the outer sheeve with plastic ball bearings – there are two races of these, one each side of the sheeve. 4 Halfway finished: torlon rollers and outer sheeve in place. 5 The wooden cheeks are routered to hold the stainless frame.

6 With the frame on, the block is effective and will work efficiently – the wood is cosmetic. 7 and 8 Bronze cap nuts lock the whole thing in place and are tightened using a handy tool which Barton supplies. 9 Ooops! Using a different tool we managed to scratch the varnish!

the lines, bring its ends up and push down between the lines. Then push to the ‘closed’ lines (left in the photo) and repeat, repeat, repeat...

baggywrinkle stitched round the outside of a rope mat to give an interesting border. It will also make a fine mane on a dummy horse for the ‘poor old horse’ ceremony, when sailors celebrate the time they have worked out their pay advance and are on to earning actual wages. To make baggywrinkle what you need is plenty of tarred marline or synthetic line 2-3mm in diameter or together with offcuts of 3- or 4-strand rope cut to lengths of 150-300mm (6-12in) depending on how bushy you want your baggywrinkle.

Braided rope is not much good as you cannot easily unlay the yarns in it. Historically it would have been a natural fibre. Hemp is fairly soft, manila and sisal a little stiffer, but there is no reason why you should not use a synthetic. It may depend on what old stuff you can lay your hands on. It is fine to use new rope but it seems a bit of a waste. Once you have your material unlay the rope into its strands and then, if you want, unlay again down to the yarns. These short pieces are often called thrums.

Take two lengths of perhaps 4-6m of the marline, put them side by side and tie them together, perhaps 300mm from the end, which will be the tail to be used to attach your baggywrinkle to the shroud. Stretch fairly tight between two fixed points, such as posts or a hook and a post; they can be less than 4m apart if one end has the extra yarn wrapped round it. Put a piece of wood with a notch at both ends between this pair of lines, to keep the pair apart and aid with the tucking of the thrums. Lay the thrum underneath the pair of

lines, pull the ends up to get the middle, then tuck them both down between the pair of lines, this makes a kind of cow hitch. Push up tight to the knot and repeat, and repeat and repeat, to make your bggywrinkle. Keep on until you have enough (you will need plenty), then release the finished piece and tie off tightly. You can now wrap the furry strip round and round your shroud, making a fine bushy set of baggywrinkle to protect your sail, make your ‘poor old horse’ or stitch it round the outside of a mat to give that extra something. CLASSIC SAILOR 75

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On watch special: folding knives The sailor’s clasp knife is a part of his dress at sea. Here we have put by Guy Venables and Dan Houston

he main advantage of a folding knife is that it can be always in your pocket and therefore to hand whenever you need it. That is providing that it’s in a pocket that isn’t under a pair of sallopettes, or lost in one of the hundreds of pockets it’s now possible to wear in modern sailing gear. Although not as quick to action as the sheath knife it also is unobtrusive, won’t snag on rigging and some can be opened one handed. The blades can be many different shapes and vary from Sheepsfoot to a Wharncliffe. It is important that they lock so they don’t close on your hand and the ones better suited to sailing don’t have a pointed tip so you don’t stab yourself when working on a heaving foredeck or burst a liferaft at an inopportune moment. That said, as a general purpose knife a point of some sort can be handy, so within the best design for sailing come many compromises. A rope cutting serration, for example, is good for cutting rope but difficult to sharpen and unsuited to finer tasks like finishing splicing or food cutting. Legality: “It is illegal to carry a knife in public without good reason - unless it’s a knife with a folding blade 3 inches long (7.62cm) or less.” “Lock knives are not classed as folding knives and are illegal to carry in public without good reason.” It is the “good reason” clause here that might rely on an understanding policeman and could be argued, especially given the necessary of a locking blade whilst sailing, that there are potential life saving qualities of having a knife onyou. The received wisdom is to keep it in your sailing bag before getting on a boat.

Pusser’s Dirk 2 piece navy clasp knife

This is a smaller 2.5in (65mm) stainless copy of the famous Royal Navy issue clasp knife (which had grey ally scales and a handy screwdriver tip beneath the lanyard ring). It’s a lovely knife – super sharp and good in the hand and although they do not lock the blade and spike have solid opening engagement, so normal use should never present a problem. A great Sheffield-made knife for a young sailor who is going off on a Tall Ship. sheffieldknives.co.uk £36 80 CLASSIC SAILOR

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several classic and current models to the test

Blade types 1. Normal straight dull back curved edge, for slicing chopping and piercing. 2. Drop point: convex dull back allows finger pressure over the point. 3. Clip point: often with a concave back and a second edge - designed for piercing. 4. Sheep’s foot: Straight edge and dull back curving down. Good control with fingers on the dull back. Useless for piercing. 5. Wharncliffe: like a sheep’s foot but a more gradual curve. Typically with a thick blade; favoured by sailors.

6. Spearpoint: symmetrical and typically with a central spine. 7. Needle point: sharply tapered for daggers or stilettos. Pretty dangerous on board ship.

8. Tanto or chisel point: typically dull on the back and tip, though lower version is often sharp. Not used by sailors. CLASSIC SAILOR 81

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On watch special: folding knives

Opinel 7 Carbon steel

Myerchin Gen2 Captain Pro wood handle

Gerber Remix Fine Edge

Gerber freescape

Ask a French yachtsman what his favourite knife is and it is invariably this: The old faithful, with, here, a carbon steel blade which can be made very sharp. This blade is just under three inches and has a locking collar built into its cylindrical bolster. We love these knives for their rustic charm and reliability – this one was 7 euros at a French market. If you are worried about the point then two minutes on a belt sander gives you a rounded shape - but then you can’t use it to pick up a piece of cheese! opinel.com/en £5.99 (at Decathlon)

Although sporting a dangerously sharp point this knife has a unique advantage so we included it. When up the rigging with our finger through the eye hole we found we could work with both hands on another job without dropping it, wearing the knife like a forefinger ring then proceeding with cutting, in effect making it a no handed knife! It locks open and clips onto a belt. (they do also now make a drop point which would be better suited.) www.gerbergear.com From around £36

We are in awe of this knife which defies the basic rule that a folder is always inferior to a fixed blade – the one handed opening is always smooth and once open the knife sits in the hand like an extension of your hand. The powerful German marine stainless 3/4 serrated blade has enough carbon to keep it hard and sharp and this thing cuts the edge of thin paper cleanly. There is a shackler on the blade which is nearly 4mm thick at that point. One of its best features is the locking 3in (75mm) blade and spike which gives a lot of confidence. myerchin.co.uk WF300P model: £80.59

This is a drop point bladed folding knife that tries to address everything. It has partial serration allowing for cutting rope with ease, while the top end has the fine edge for more delicate work. It can lock open or closed, has a really good grippy handle, can be opened one handed ambidextrously and comes with a sheath that keeps the knife near at hand on a belt loop or cross strap. It’s also very light. www.gerbergear.com £43.99

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Knife sharpening.

Red sailboat safety knife

Here’s a Teflon coated stainless steel bladed safety point knife with a fully serrated edge and shackle key. It locks open and has a solid plastic grip. It’s designed to fit in most dinghy tops of buoyancy aids and is Inexpensive and functional. This is the sort of knife to keep in your grab bag and the shackler aids one-handed opening. But the serrated edge is hard to sharpen and mostly suited to cutting rope – it’s OK with an apple but does not feel the same as a straight edge. www.sailboats.co.uk £17.95

The sharpening of knives is a contentious issue, as soon as you’ve cracked it someone else will come along and tell you different but here are some guidelines for you to try out. Knife sharpeners that you drag through a v shaped slot are fine and they do sharpen your knife but they tear a blade’s edge, you lose metal, it bluntens quickly and there’s little finesse. Better to hone the knife properly. There are expensive systems to sharpen knives to an exacting edge (17 degrees) but with a bit of practice the humble kitchen steel, often with its bone or antler handle, now readily available in all charity shops, is best. Once you get used to holding the knife at the correct angle you can give life back to a blade with a few swipes. (Never let anyone else do this for you, they’ll inevitably hold it at a different angle and negate plenty of hard work.) If your blade is really blunt you COULD buy an expensive ceramic steel or you could simply upturn a ceramic cup and run the blade over the unglazed circle on the bottom (if you can find a ceramic cup on a boat!) For perfection you might use a glass steel rod but I was taught by the hicks in America that a free alternative is to roll down a car window and to use the curved top edge of the reinforced glass. GV

SOME KNIFE HISTORY Farmer’s Sheepfoot pocket knife

The shepherds of north country Britain wanted a knife to trim the hooves of their sheep and this characteristic blade shape was evolved to fit the purpose. The blade can be held easily by the fingers and the lack of a point made it less easy to injure the kicking ewe. Sailors took these knives to sea for the same reason; the blade can be opened in the cold and wet. This pattern is still handmade by Arthur Wright in Sheffield. With a 2.5in (70mm) blade and rosewood scales it is a lovely sharp knife, of heirloom quality and rarely out of our pocket. knives-and-scissors.co.uk £24.50

Basic folding knives go back before Roman times and examples with bone handles have been found from the mid iron age - 600 BC. Mass production first began in Sheffield around 1700 and included examples like the folding knife, or razor, above, by Wm Marsh working in Sheffield (1693 - 1710), displayed at the Sykes Gallery for steel cutlers in Sheffield. Stainless steel, invented in 1914, was not really hard enough for knives before the 1940s; the Royal Navy carried on issuing its carbon steel clasp knife until the 1980s. Also known as the pusser’s dirk this was issued to seamen as Admiralty pattern 301, with horn scales from 1910 to 1937 when it became 301B with alloy scales. These are now collectors’ knives but still make great sea tools. If the blade gets loose you can pean the rivet snug with a hammer. CLASSIC SAILOR 83

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On watch special: folding knives

Gill Marine Tool

Swiss Army Spartan Knife

George Ibberson heavy duty shackler

Captain Currey Lockspike Bosun

This is a knife that is trying hard not to look like a knife. Unfortunately the sharpest thing on it is the marlinespike. Although that does not lock, the shackler and 2.3in (60mm) scalloped serrated blade do, but the latter is as dull as a bored friend. The hook release cutter fared OK with stuff like paracord and we do like the chunky feel of this in the hand with its grippy red scales. Comes with a belt pouch. www.gillmarine.com £29

The famed Ibberson is really tailor made for the sailor. The 2.3in (60mm) serrated blade is a traditional sheep’s foot, there is a separate shackle key and a squared body marlin spike (which makes prising open knots easier) bottle opener, screwdriver and clip lock, all in satin stainless scales. Ibberson has a 250 year tradition in Sheffield and was one of the first firms to make a stainless steel blade in 1914. eggintongroup.co.uk Around £35

It’s fashionable for sailors to knock these little pocket tool kits –and you really should not use the awl as a marline spike or to open shackles. But the blades are super sharp and the screw-drivers are often the only ones on hand, and of course the bottle openers... how many times have we used these after a race for that. As an auxilliary then, to your deck knife... these are a great daily friend. swissarmy.com From £17.05 online (Amazon)

Captain Charles Currey’s original design (from when he was disabling mines and needed a non-magnetic knife) in 1945 became the bedrock of his company and is largely the same today. We’ve used one of these since childhood and it remains sharp and fit for purpose. The only change is a hole in the top of the blade to facilitate opening when frostbite sailing. At 6mm wide with 2.5in (65mm) blade it stays comfy and unnoticed (til you need it) in your pocket. captaincurrey.com £29.95

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On watch: Christmas kit Compiled by Guy Venables

FreeGo folding light bike

The problem has always been to make a light folding electric bike. Hey presto, the pedal assist FreeGo Light, at under 19kg. 20in wheels, 5-speed variable controller, range up to 25 miles, a top speed of 15.6 mph, disc brakes and lockable battery housed within the frame. For us lot it’s the best yet. £1249 Stockists: freegoelectricbikes.com

TUFF Phone T400

The TUFF phone is a shock proof waterproof phone with everything the modern sailor could need and a bit more. For instance, when your co-sailor takes out his cracked iPhone you can offer him salvation by putting his sim in the TUFF phone along with yours. 4G capable,13 Megapixel camera, Gorilla Glass touchscreen, waterproof up to 1m for 60 minutes, great battery life,16GB upgradeable memory and Android 5.0. We used it with a nav app and it could have been a chart plotter. It’s sophisticated and un-clunky and at only £288 it’s much better value than pricier rivals. www.tuffphones.co.uk

HotRox

This is a reusable rechargeable electric hand warmer, simple, safe and easy to use. Unlike all others you can turn them on and off. Put it in your boots or pocket and they can last up to 6 hours at a time. We passed them from one watch to the other on a night crossing and it was most comforting. £19.99 www. thehotrox.co.uk

Shackleton Skiddaw Jumper

Minox binoculars 7x50 dc

Not only are these excellent light gathering binoculars but they house a plethora of useful features enabled by a digital readout projected on the lenses in Terminator style red l.e.d. These include digital stopwatch, altimeter, digital compass, digital barometer with recording function, thermometer and a tilt function to work out the height of an object. They are fully waterproof, antifogging and with grippy rubberised armouring. Around £350, 30 year warranty. Minox.com

This is a recreation of the iconic jumper worn by none other than Ernest Shackleton himself. 100% British wool ,basket weave chest pattern, raised neck, iconic and very comfortable. The company has the support and involvement of the Shackleton family, notably his grand-daughter The Hon. Alexandra Shackleton. All of their other kit is gorgeous too. £145 www. shackletoncompany.com

And... If nothing here grabs your fancy why not have a look at the RNLI shop (.org.uk) and help those who might (God forbid) help you. Their hampers look excellent.)

Formcard

A perfect stocking filler for the self sufficient sailor. These are wallet sized moldable bio-plastic sheets that can be used for absolutely anything. Simply place them in hot water, mold them to fix, cover or replace anything at all and then, when you’ve finished you can remold them by simply heating them again. At last! Plastic,that the last thing you want to do with, is to throw it away! www.formcard.com from £5 for a pack of 3. CLASSIC SAILOR 85

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Off watch: Books Great books for sailors, would-be sailors and those who love the romance of the sea. These books are not just for Christmas!

Notable Boats

Nic Compton’s marvellously eclectic and well written collection of 40 boats and the sailors who made them famous – either as a type of design or simply for a feat of achievement. Some favourites but lots of surprises. Bite size stories in a coffee table or big loo book format with great illustrations by Peter Scott. £20 Published by the Ivy Press

Trad Boats Galore! Lloyd’s Register of Yachts

It’s happened! 94 years of Lloyd’s Registers have been scanned and squeezed into a searchable (by year) single USB memory stick. Apparently nobody anywhere has a complete collection of Lloyd’s so this is a way to be swanky and be able to discover the history of almost any old yacht. £95 www.yachtinghistorians.org.uk

Naval Architect John Perryman gathers several years of photographs of the Breton Douarnenez festival in a coffee table softback format which conveys, in images and pithy captions, the rich life and style of sailors who maintain old workboats as a way of getting afloat. Lots of information here. £16.95 The Pierhead Press

Knot Craft and Rope Mats

Reeds 2017

If you bought Des Pawson’s Complete Book of Knots a few years back you’ll be surprised to find there are more, and more specialised types of ropework, to be described and written up in the way only Des can. This is a beautiful book, richly illustrated and inspirational. Features Lucy Lavers’ (p52) Bow Pudding! £16.99 Adlard Coles

Heavy Weather Sailing

Now in its 7th edition this is the bible for the offshore sailor and a good, nay essential book to digest before planning a cruise anywhere out of coastal waters. Split in two halves with general explanatory advice from experts and then chapters on real storm experiences. £35 Adlard Coles

The almanac is a great Christmas gift to any sailor or boat owner - covering western Europe from Morocco to Germany. There is a version online but for most this hefty 1058 page tome is still the navigational aid when it comes to cruising home and foreign waters. From around £35. reedsnauticalalmanac.co.uk

Alpha Bravo Charlie

So many of us now know the phonetic alphabet, isn’t it time to teach the young! This book aims to do just that with a colourful layout designed to appeal to pre-school age children and laid out alphabetically with explanatory paintings, flag, phonetic letter, morse, sound signal and the semaphore! It really is rather good! £12.95 from uk.phaidon.com

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Cowes-Torquay 1961–1978

Forgotten Songs and Stories of the Sea

It sounds like the title to a Mastermind special subject, and this is indeed an encyclopaedic compendium of notes and entrants, placings, timings and photos of boats from this golden age, the first 18 years of this offshore powerboat race. Superb artwork of winners. £20. charleslawrencechiswick.co.uk

This is as much a compendium of fascinating stories as a collection of songs (the songs sadly have no tunes). But you’ll find yourself reading and reading it. It’s well written and full of stuff you almost certainly haven’t heard of! Softback 252 pages £10.39 pen-and-sword.co.uk

That Hamilton Woman

The pocket hardback takes its title from a classic black-and-white Hollywood movie from 1941 starring Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier. But this is the almost incredible story of Emma Hamilton, Admiral Nelson’s famous mistress, and it shows her part in his fame and success. Superb! £12.99 seaforthpublishing.com

Holmes of the Humber

Softback reissue of Lodestar Books’ first title, now with an introduction by Ian MacMillan (the Bard of Barnsley). George Holmes, sailor and friend of Albert Strange was also a yacht designer, notably of the canoe yawl. And Tony Watts has collected his drawings and articles. £25.00 lodestarbooks.com

Messing About in Boats

Nautical Chic

Charming and evocative account of leisure sailing – and a bit of work on boats – in UK waters in the 1930s and 40s recounted with humour by naval surgeon John Muir. This is the ideal Christmas fireside antidote to Tilman, with an introduction by Sam Llewellyn and cover illustration by Martyn Mackrill. £12.00 lodestarbooks.com

Published last year this 224p coffee table hardback artwork charts the effect of sailors’ clothing on the wider fashion market. And the way it juxtaposes images of salty old fishermen and models in a couture equivalent of their garb is quite illuminating! Some great ideas here if you’re ever going to get a crew uniform! £24.95 thamesandhudson.com

Hand, Reef and Steer

We did review this recently, but make no apologies for repetition because it is a great book for anyone contemplating using or using gaff rig and full of good seamanly advice for others. Tom Cunliffe updates this version with coverage of more modern gaffers and the big class. £25 in paperback from Adlard Coles

The Sea and the Snow Philip Temple’s Tilmanesque adventure to sail to, and then climb, a volcanic peak on Heard Island in the Southern Ocean. It costs £15, but free if you buy all of Lodestar’s 16-book Tilman collection (see p46!) lodestarbooks.com

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Over the Yardarm Christmas spirit Guy Venables samples a superior selection of spirits to give, receive or keep, and chucks in a couple of cocktail concoctions guaranteed to cheer In order to avoid buying awful booze for your loved ones this Christmas (to the security guard at Rowlands Castle Building supplies, your ears must be burning) here’s our Christmas list of the choicest morsels we’ve sampled this year. Sipping gin has been the big news, with some folks making them from oak aging the gin in barrels. This is justifiably more expensive because some of it disappears into the wood or the ether for the angels to get drunk on. It also softens the harsh edges and when done right it really does sip like an old cognac (it can be overdone and make it taste of an old sheet of mdf). So here’s my exhaustive year’s fieldwork of floating in the spirit world.

Vidda Tørr

(Tørr meaning ‘dry mountain plateau’) A thrilling Norwegian gin infused with foraged local botanicals. To drink it is like being transformed to the edges of mossy forests with chopped pine, heather and crisp clean air. It is a masterclass in balance, flavour and evocative taste. All of this shines through in a gin and tonic. Our absolute top choice for gin of the year. Available from, for instance, www. masterofmalt.com £41.92

Sacred Christmas Pudding Gin

HMS Victory Navy strength gin

In a unique partnership with the National Museum of the Royal Navy, the Isle of Wight distillery has produced, under licence, a unique Navy Strength Gin. It’s wonderfully stiff (at 57%) but absolutely rammed with character and flavour and not too sweet as is the current trend. It’s £27.50 for 35cl. However if you’re lucky and very rich you might get your hands on a bottle of their limited edition oak aged collection that has been aged in a barrel that has one stave actually made from HMS Victory herself. A rare and excellent sipping gin and a piece of history that is being released in stages and very special Christmas present at... gulp... £345. www.isleofwightdistillery.com

Here’s an undeniably seasonal tipple from that ever so inventive crew at Sacred Gin made by mixing a 30lb secret family recipe Christmas pud, steaming it for eight hours and macerating it with English grain spirit for two months and redistilled. A real labour of love and one of pure alchemy. What comes out is a tasty yet subtle gin and tonic (garnish with a cinnamon stick and a slice of orange) a surprisingly subtly hinted martini or an ice cold little gin sipper. Great unusual one-off present for that gin lover. £33.85 www.sacredgin.com

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“Is life worth living? It depends on the liver...”

Rock Oyster whisky

Of all the whiskies I’ve sipped this year one stood out as a favourite. That being the small batch Rock Oyster from Douglas Laing. It has elements of all the finest whiskies blended into one and yet makes perfect sense. Firstly it tips the balance upwards nicely at a warming 46.8% then comes the juxtaposition of the sea salt and the honey, the peat smoke and the liquorice, finishing with a very long pepper. It’s the words of their Master Blender Fred Laing that sum it up far better than I in saying “If I could select just one dram to transport the Whisky enthusiast to the Islands of Scotland, it would be Rock Oyster.” £40.64 or how about a £4.99 miniature for a stocking filler? www.douglaslaing. com

Angostura 5 yo

Trinidad rum “to buy for.” I’ve always been a fan of Angostura, their 1919 being an old favourite. Here’s a rich light-heavy golden rum matured between five and eight years in charred American Oak Bourbon barrels that sips with a rich vanilla fullness way beyond its price. Ideal in cocktails and equally at home sitting in a brandy bowl on my stomach in front of the fire. It’s now my staple rum and more expensive rums can taste cheaper. £23.35 at www. thewhiskyexchange.com

Rumson rums

Rumson’s have cunningly gone out to the Caribbean, brought back some great rums and blended and bottled them in Salem USA. The result is a selection of well thought through rums to suit all palettes.The standard golden is a really soft, well balanced mixing rum that blends perfectly with lime bases. Some of you may have met us and sampled their wares at Southampton Boat Show and the most popular is their coffee infused rum, black. sweet and smooth with a big roasted coffee flavour and a vanilla and butter finish. Ideal over ice. They also do a spiced rum, mercifully uncomplicated, and their Grand Reserve is exceptional. Only available in the US at the mo so bring some back if you go. www.rumsons.com

COCKTAILS OF THE YEAR Army and Navy

Pour this for anyone over 70 and they’re likely to gaze, wet-eyed, into the distance remembering long ago romances. Coming from the era when cocktails were a subtle adult art form rather than the children’s painting set we’re served nowadays, this is a long forgotten classic. For it you will need Orgeat, an almond based sweetener that is poured unchecked into Mai Tais by heavy-handed ‘mixologists’ making them sweeter than Kendal mint cake. Used sparingly it can be subtle and balancing. (You can make it yourself, which always tastes fantastic.) The drink itself is a grown-up unimproveable classic. As always, use the best ingredients you can afford. 50ml Gin 15ml lemon juice 10 ml orgeat syrup Shake over plenty of ice and pour. Garnish with a lemon zest twist if that’s how you roll.

The Last Word

Marka

From the same people that make Vidda comes Marka, a cask matured Norwegian bitter that can only be compared to Fernet Branca (there is little else similar). It is however very different. The warmth hits you immediately. Roots, pine logs, mosses and myrtle are all balanced with a peppery fire and a hint of honey. It tastes of the Norwegian outside and is, in fact, such a treat on a cold winter evening that it was hard to put down during the tasting. Absolutely five star. £28.95 www. masterofmalt.com

I used to get people to bring half finished bottles to my cocktail parties that they’d found in the backs of granny’s cupboard. One time a magician friend brought along Green Chartreuse and a flavour utterly separate from all others was introduced to me. Overdo it and it’ll taste of rotting piles of grass cuttings, get it right and it’s a divine sock to the senses. This is the best Green Chartreuse cocktail. Bar none. One of the main advantages is that all the ingredients are the same measure meaning you can make and drink them for longer and use any vessel as the measure, whereas making and drinking complicated cocktails becomes increasingly difficult. 20ml gin 20ml Green Chartreuse 20ml Maraschino or a good clear cherry liqueur 20ml fresh lime juice. Shake vigorously over ice and pour. (I do however use double this amount of gin. Try it both ways.) And remember... “Is life worth living? It depends on the liver.” Godfrey Church Bottoms up and a Happy Christmas from the whole Classic Sailor team. CLASSIC SAILOR 89

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Off Watch Free safety app, half models and a year planner

Paul Dolton half models

Safe Skipper: free boating safety app for the UK

Safe Skipper, which promotes and sells mobile apps for navigation and seamanship online, has teamed up with Towergate Insurance to provide an online free app called Safe Skipper. Dedicated to keeping people safe at sea, it is about preparation, communication and emergencies (see panels above). Always a good idea – if you are passage planning – to go through those safety procedures and as something for your phone or portable device it’s a good aide memoire. But in an emergency it does rely on your electronic equipment working at the point you are really going to need the advice it carries. So be aware of that. It is produced by Simon Jollands and Stuart Batley, who are said to have a wealth of boating knowledge being involved with major sailing events and the production of sea safety videos for the RNLI (Royal National Lifeboat Institution). See more at safe-skipper.com.

After a career in the Royal Navy then a boatbuilder and more latterly as the developer and builder of the Sea Feather range of wind vanes and self-steering gear Paul Dolton has ‘retired’ to turn his hand to half-modelling. Based in Paignton, South Devon, Paul has once again taken up working with wood – mainly clear pine – and then mounting the models on mahogany backs to create a contrast, as shown above with his model of a typical Bristol Channel Pilot Cutter. Afficianados of half models will agree there is nothing quite like it for appreciating the fine lines of a vessel and some collect them. Paul says he is open for commissions. See more on our Go-to Guide online or contact him direct: paulrdolton@gmail.com

Claudia Myatt’s 2017 Year Planner

Some of us really couldn’t manage our lives without it. The whole year, plus some space for notes, phone numbers and suchlike on a single A2 sheet of card. It’s a nice balance between wall space (or back of a door perhaps) and date space, though you might need small writing or abbreviations to get all your engagements in. It has moon phases, and looks pleasingly boaty. Sent rolled in a tube, £8.99 for one, £14.50 for two, including postage. Lots of other nice stuff on her website:claudiamyatt.co.uk 90 CLASSIC SAILOR

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Shoreside Places we love

Sale: Pin Mill, Suffolk

On the banks of the River Orwell on the Shotley Peninsula and next to King’s boat yard here’s a perfect spot for any keen sailor. The house is a 400-year-old 2-bedroom house with a cellar and a walled front garden. It’s in need of renovation with the possibility of adding more accommodation using the existing external store. A bit of a project which requires modernization that could also have rental potential. Offers in excess of £400,000. www.bythewaterside.com

Rent: Oysters, Bosham

Want to avoid awful Christmas family get togethers? Then escape to historic Bosham. Situated actually on the water at high tide this is the perfect holiday for those of us who like to muck about in dinghies or just sit in The Anchor Bleu watching poorly parked cars disappear in the rising tide. Three bedrooms, waterside terrace, and smack on the edge of 30 miles of navigable channels and sandy beaches. From £595 per week. www.watersideproperties.com

Shoreside properties in Suffolk and Sussex to buy and rent, and a historic pub in Leigh-on-Sea on the Thames Estuary

Run ashore Send us your favourite pubs! Address p15  The Crooked Billet, Leigh-on-Sea

The building itself was owned by Lord Admiral Sir Richard Haddock commander of the British Navy in the Court of Charles II and most of the original 16th-century house still survives. It is a popular community pub in a cobbled street on the seafront of Leigh-on-Sea where you can watch the fishermen and trawlers sail out to their grounds. The name goes back to a tradition of hanging a crooked stick outside a house to indicate there was an excess of homebrew on the property that they were willing to sell. Being CAMRA’s real ale pub of the year TWICE it is a hallowed and infamous pub amongst pubbers and does an excellent fish and chips too. We lost the will to leave. 51 High st, Leigh-on-Sea 01702 480289 www.nicholsonspubs.co.uk CLASSIC SAILOR 91

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Artist of the month Colley Whisson

iving in Australia it was inevitable that Colley Whisson would turn his brushes towards the sea. (His great grandparents sailed to Australia in 1910 on the Corinthic bound for Hobart, coming from Whissonsett in Norfolk.) His career spans 30 years during which time he has perfected the swipe of the flat head brush to convey slabs of light and dark forming shapes with stark shadows that only occur in hot countries, his pallet being often muted by the sun bleached subject matter. (You can see him painting on youtube.) His work commands modest pricing at the moment, these pictures ranging from £715 to £1060 so why not invest in something you can enjoy every day? www.colleywhisson.com

Colley Whisson paints a wide range of natural and landscape subjects; these are three of his marine paintings

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Big Blue Zoo Animal stories from the maritime world

Greenland sharks have broken the record for longevity

he Greenland shark has become the oldest known backboned animal researchers say, “weighing in” at around 400 years old. Scientists used radiocarbon dating to discover the age of 28 of the animals, and estimated that one female was about 400 years old The team found that the sharks grow at just 1cm a year, and reach sexual maturity at about the age of 150. The previously known longest living vertebrate, the bowhead whale can live for around 211 years, which is less than the lower new estimate of a Greenland shark’s lifespan. “The Greenland shark’s eye lens is composed of a specialised material - and it contains proteins that are metabolically inert,” explained Julius Neilson of Copenhagen University. “Which means after the proteins have been synthesised in the body, they are not renewed any more. Because radiocarbon dating does not produce exact dates, they believe that she could have been as “young” as 272 or as old as 512. It means she was

born between the years of 1501 and 1744, but her most likely date of birth was in the 17th century.” Because of their extreme longevity, Greenland sharks may still be recovering from being over-fished before WW2. The sharks’ livers were once used for machine oil, and they were killed in great numbers before a synthetic alternative was found and the demand fell. Greenland sharks were once thought to be deep dwelling, slow moving scavengers. But more recently scientists found they can kill and eat seals and they’ve been discovered in shallow waters of Svalbard and around Sable Island in the North Atlantic, where they are thought to use low visibility, together with a highly developed sense of smell, to attack their unsuspecting prey. They have a unique jaw with surprisingly small teeth for an apex predator. Those on the upper jaw grip their prey while the lower set are positioned like a reciprocating saw. Their unprepossessing appearance is often remarked and they have been likened to a cigar with fins.

Top: Greenland sharks have been spotted circling under holes in the ice cap, possibly waiting for a seal. Until recently it was thought they could not catch such prey. They are widely distributed, far left, but mainly associated with the colder northern waters of the Atlantic

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A very very high end 15’ in lovely condition. category B. cover and break back road trailer with electric motor,covers coversand and Sons for thewood artist Archie White, Concord won with electric motor, category B. cover and covers and category B. covers and 2000 Cornish Crabber 22’ in 2006 GRP Kittiwake 16’ gaff 2001 David Moss Sea Otter £7,750 category B. break back road trailer with electric motor, 1GM10 diesel, Bespoke road fit out with lots of hard strip/epoxy construction with a 2000 Cornish Crabber 22’ in 2006 GRP Kittiwake 16’ gaff 2001 David Sea Otter 2000 Cornish Crabber 22’ in 2006 GRP Kittiwake 16’ gaff 2001 David Moss Sea Otter £7,750 1GM10 diesel, Bespoke road 22’ in “Corriemhor” 2000 Cornish Crabber 2006 GRP Kittiwake 16’ gaffof the Year award 2001 David Moss Sea Otter Classic Boat’s restoration £37,950 £8,995. road trailer. Much-loved 4-berth T.24 seeks new home. Owner “Spratt” trailer. £37,950 £8,995. Perfect for some coastal cruising in style! Currently on her lovely condition with rigged sloop. A high end 15’ in lovely condition. Cedar £37,950 lovely lovely condition with Yanmar rigged sloop. very high end 15’ in condition. Cedar £37,950 road trailer and upped rating to and bronze work. with standing luglovely yawl rig. trailer. Complete lovely condition with Yanmar rigged sloop. AA very high end condition. Cedar lovely lovely condition with Yanmar rigged sloop. Avery very high end 15’ in condition. trailer and upped rating toYanmar inComplete 2010 with her owners James15’ and in swallowing hook afterCedar 47 years. Built 1969. GRP hull, Swampscott Dory built topresent very high standard,comes trailer near Aberdeen, we can deliver to the new owner. fit out 12’ £7,750 £7,750 hard wood strip/epoxy construction withand 1GM10 diesel, Bespoke road with lots of hard wood strip/epoxy construction with 1GM10 diesel, Bespoke road fit out with lots of electric motor, covers and category B. cover and break £7,750 1GM10 diesel, Bespoke road hard wood strip/epoxy construction with “Corriemhor” 1GM10 diesel, Bespoke road hard wood strip/epoxy construction with aaaacoachroof, teak trim, marine-ply deck (renewed 1993) category B. back road trailer with electric motor, covers and Ellie Boyd. Sadly the time has come for them Corriemhor is ﬁtted out for coastal cruising and enjoys a with sailing gear,air bags and oars.

Much-loved 4-berth T.24 Avon seeksinc. new home. Owner “Spratt” Perfect for some coastal cruising in Currently on her Yanmar 1GM10 regularly serviced, Excellent trailer and upped rating to and bronze work. with standing lug yawl rig. Complete standing lug rig. Complete trailer and upped rating to and bronze high level of equipment: £16,000 to work. part withComplete her but right person this trailer. £37,950 £8,995. trailer and upped rating to trailer and upped rating tostyle! Complete with standing yawl rig. Complete Easily car ,used forfor onethe week only,as new. £37,950 road trailer. swallowing hook 47 years. BuiltOtter 1969. GRP hull, 12’ toppable Swampscott Dory built toGRP very high standard,comes Badger : 19ft Johnincluding Leather design built by Cyrilowner. White trailer Aberdeen, we can deliver to the new Sails well. Hullafter sound, coachroof needs 2000 Cornish Crabber 22’ in 2006 Kittiwake 16’ gaff spinnaker. 2001 David Moss Sea Forcategory more info onnear the Romilly our sail around Mull 2000 Cornish Crabber 22’ in 2006 GRP Kittiwake 16’ gaff 2001 David Moss Sea Otter is an opportunity to own a rare and beautiful B. Super little boat cover and break back road trailer with electric motor, covers and category B. cover and break back road trailer with electric motor, covers and marine-ply deckelderly, (renewed 1993) and£2,500 coachroof, £7,750 category category B. B. Corriemhor ﬁtted out for coastal cruising and enjoys a with Yanmar with sailing £7,750 gear,airsloop. bags andAoars. repainting, gas-cooker hence price ono. teak trim, 1967. Clinker centreboard Gaff cutter, andof aBrightlingsea, Force 8, is see www.roxane-romilly.co.uk lovely condition rigged very high high end end 15’1GM10 in lovely lovely condition. Cedar lovely with Yanmar rigged sloop. A only,as very 15’ in condition. Cedar Only£995 vessel rich history. Orwell, Yanmar regularly serviced, Avon Excellent £37,950 £8,995. trailer. high levelStephen of £16,000condition £37,950 £8,995. road trailer. Ideal project. Mooring Felixstowe Ferry, own cradle ininc. Yard. Easilywith caratoppable ,usedLying for one weekSuffolk. new. £37,950 road Please contact Booth1GM10 £37,950 large cockpit, seats fiveequipment: persons comfortably. Sailed diesel, Bespoke road fit out with lots of hard wood strip/epoxy construction with 2000 Cornish Crabber 22’in in fitTelout 2006lots GRPof Kittiwake gaff 2001 David Moss Sea Otter spinnaker. Sails well. Hull sound, coachroof needs Contact: Peter Hough 1GM10 diesel, Bespoke road with hard wood strip/epoxy construction with aa 2000 Cornish Crabber 22’ in 2006 GRP Kittiwake 16’ gaff gaff 2001 David Moss Sea Otter Contact james@jamesboyd.co.uk. For more info on the Romilly including our sail around Mull 2000 Cornish Crabber 22’ in 2006 GRP Kittiwake David Moss Sea Otter 01473 659572 2001 or timvoelcker@gmail.com 2000 Cornish Crabber 22’ 2006 Kittiwake 16’ gaff 2001 David Moss Sea Otter Stephen.booth@crondall-energy.com Super07840979473 little boat GRP £7,750 £7,750 £7,750 for and the last six years, the accommodation requires repainting, gas-cooker elderly, hence price £2,500 ono. trailer and upped rating to Yanmar and bronze bronze work. Complete with standing lug yawlcondition. rig. Complete a Force 8, see www.roxane-romilly.co.uk lovely condition with Yanmar rigged sloop. A very very end 15’ in lovely condition. Cedar trailerlovely and upped rating to work. Complete with standing lug yawl rig. Complete condition with rigged sloop. A high end 15’in inlovely lovely condition. Cedar very high lovely condition with Yanmar and rigged sloop. A end 15’ Cedar

lovely condition with Yanmar rigged sloop. A very high Ideal endproject. Mooring 15’ inFelixstowe lovely Ferry, condition. Cedar Only£995 upgrading.Please Storedcontact ashoreStephen October to April. Instow, own cradle in Yard. Booth 1GM10 diesel, Bespoke road fit out withback lots of of hard wood strip/epoxy construction with category B. diesel, cover and break road trailer electric motor, covers and of 1GM10 diesel, Bespoke road fit out with lots wood strip/epoxy construction with aa aa category covers and 1GM10 Bespoke road fit out with lots of hard wood with strip/epoxy construction with Contact: Peter Hough Telout 07840979473 1GM10 diesel, Bespoke road fit with lots hard wood strip/epoxy construction with 01473electric 659572 ormotor, timvoelcker@gmail.com North Stephen.booth@crondall-energy.com Devon £5,000 MJLewis 01621 859373 trailer and upped rating to and bronze work. Complete with standing lug yawl rig. Complete £8,995. £37,950 road trailer. trailer and upped rating to and bronze work. Complete with standing lug yawl rig. Complete £37,950 £8,995. road trailer. trailer and upped rating to and bronze work. Complete with standing lug yawl rig. Complete trailer and upped rating to and bronze work. Complete with standing lug yawl rig. Complete category cover and and break break back back road with electric motor, covers and £7,750 category covers and £7,750 cover road trailer trailer withelectric category B.B. electricmotor, motor, covers and category cover and break back road trailer with electric motor, covers and £8,995. £37,950 road trailer. £37,950 £8,995. road trailer. £37,950 £8,995. road trailer. £37,950 trailer. £7,750 £7,750 £7,750 £7,750

Anglia Yacht Brokerage AngliaYacht Yacht Brokerage Anglia Brokerage 1999 Storm 15’ with balanced lug 1990 Drascombe Dabber Mk2 Mk2 in in Tel. Tel. +44 (0)1359 27 17 47 sales@anglia-yacht.co.uk www.anglia-yacht.co.uk

Tel. +44 (0)1359 27 17 47 sales@anglia-yacht.co.uk www.anglia-yacht.co.uk rig. Complete with15’ cover, exceptionally tidy condition condition with 1999 Storm withelectric balanced lug 1990 Drascombe Dabberwith Mk2 in Mk2 1990 Drascombe Dabber 1999 Storm Mk2inin in www.anglia-yacht.co.uk Tel. +44 (0)1359 27 17 47 sales@anglia-yacht.co.uk 15’ with balanced lug 1990 Drascombe Dabber Mk2 Tel. www.anglia-yacht.co.uk cover, Honda 2.3HP outboard 4-stroke and and combi road trailer. cover, Honda 2.3HP 4-stroke and Tel. +44 (0)1359 27 17 47 sales@anglia-yacht.co.uk www.anglia-yacht.co.uk rig. Complete with cover, electric exceptionally tidy condition with Tel. condition with

exceptionally tidy condition rig.with Complete condition with with tidy 1999 Storm 15’ balanced lug cover, 1990 Drascombe Dabber Mk2 in roadexceptionally trailer. £2,250 road trailer. outboard andwith combi roadelectric trailer. cover, Honda 2.3HP 4-stroke and and 4-stroke cover, Honda 2.3HP outboard 4-stroke and exceptionally tidy condition with rig. Complete with and combi road trailer. cover, Honda 2.3HP 4-stroke cover, electric exceptionally tidy condition with Hurley 22 – Cariola Morgan Giles Teign and Dart Design Drascombe An early Maurice Griffith’s design 36ft Bermudan cutter, £4,450 Drascombe Dabber Mk2 in – Built 1969 and 1999 Storm 15’ £4,450 with balanced lugOne 1990 Dabber Mk2 in £2,250 road trailer. Drascombe Dabber Mk2 in 1999 Storm 15’ with balanced lug 1990 Drascombe Dabber Mk2 in cover, Honda 2.3HP 4-stroke and and combi road trailer. £2,250 Fin keel owned by present owner for 40 years, well Beautiful 16ft6ins dinghy, clinker mahogany on larch one of two built. Draft 4’7” pitch pine,outboard mahogany and road trailer. cover, Honda 2.3HP 4-stroke and road trailer. exceptionally tidy condition condition with with rig. Complete with cover, electric exceptionally tidy £4,450 rig. Complete cover, electric exceptionally tidy condition with equipped, maintained andDabber regularly Mk2 sailed.in Anti builtwith incombi 1947. Recent renovation work and ready to teak. Pretty nearly all original 1936, the last yacht built trailer. £2,250 road £4,450 1990 Drascombe Dabber Mk2 in 1999 Storm 15’trailer. with outboard and road trailer. cover, Honda 2.3HP 4-stroke and balanced lug 1990 Drascombe fouled June 2015; surveyed May 2013. sail. On good roadrig. trailer. £1,200. Forwith morecover, details by Leslie Harris of Burnham on Crouch. Tiller steering, outboard trailer. cover, Honda 2.3HP 4-stroke and Complete with cover, electric exceptionally tidy condition with £4,450 Complete electric exceptionally tidy condition with £4,450 trailer. £2,250 and combi road road trailer. Storm 15’ with balanced lugriverside 1990Yard, Drascombe Dabber Mk2 in in Storm 15’ with balanced lug 1990 Drascombe Dabber Mk2 Lying Southwark, Sussex £3,500 and photos phone1999 01626 770318 Penta 28hp engine. Standing below 2006 Cornish Crabber 17’ headroom in 2006Volvo Cornish outboard and combi road trailer. cover, Honda 2.3HP 4-stroke and £2,250 road trailer. outboard and combi road trailer. cover, Honda 2.3HP 4-stroke and Storm 15’ with balanced lug sailing 1990 Drascombe Drascombe Dabber Mk2 in 1999 Storm 15’ with balanced lug 1990 Dabber Mk2 Complete with cover, electric exceptionally tidy condition within £4,450 established small sailing Anglia boat rig. Complete with cover, electric exceptionally tidy condition with £4,450 Yacht Brokers are a well established small boat Tel: 01273 557921 or email: kjchitts@aol.com £35,000. Faversham in Kent MJLewis 01621 859373 £2,250 road trailer. trailer. £2,250 road lovely with Crabber copper- 17’ in 2006 Complete with cover, electric exceptionally tidy condition condition with £4,450 lovely condition condition 2006 Cornish Cornish outboard and combi road electric trailer. cover, Honda 2.3HP 2.3HP 4-stroke and and rig. Complete with cover, exceptionally tidy with £4,450 cover, Honda 4-stroke Anglia Yacht Brokers are a well established small sailing boat builders based in the UK near Bury St Edmunds. boat £4,450 2006 Cornish Crabber 17’ in £4,450 2006 Cornish outboard and combi combi road trailer. trailer. cover, Honda 2.3HP 2.3HP 4-stroke and and £2,250 and road trailer. outboard road cover, Honda 4-stroke £2,250 road trailer. lovely condition coppercoated underside, Suzuki 6HP lovely condition coated underside, established small sailing Anglia boat Yacht Brokers are anear well established small sailing boat 2006 Cornish Crabber 17’ in with 2006 Cornish Crabber 17’ builders based in the UK Bury Stby We provide traditional sailing boat marketing and 2000 Storm 15’ with12’ balanced lug rig.clinker 1973 Longboat Cruiser Mk1 in 1983 Cornish Crabber Mk1 with byEdmunds. 2000 Storm 15’ with balanced lug rig. 1973 GRP hull, 1975 Drascombe Lugger Mk2 refurbished £2,250 1989 Cornish Coble in nice condition with 2004 Green Ocean Yachts Post Boat 14’6” Vintage circa 1920 Larch on Oak 1991 Cornish Cormorant in stunning original £4,450 road trailer. 1978 Drascombe Dabber in good condition 1992 Drascombe Lugger Mk3 1999 Devon Dabber in excellent condition established small sailing boat Anglia Yacht Brokers £4,450 £2,250 road trailer. 1978 Drascombe Drascombe with Mariner 1999 McNulty Drascombe Lugger Mk4 in 1999 Devon Dabber in excellent condition lovely condition with copperare a well established small sailing boat lovely condition coated underside, Suzuki 6HP coated underside, 4-stroke and break-back road 4-stroke and Designed by Nick Newland of Swallow lovely condition with Tohatsu 8HP outboard, cockpit and deck. Rebuilt engine 2-pack Designed by Storm Nick Newland of Swallow Bury Stasailing Edmunds. builders 2006 Cornish Crabber 17’ in1986, Locheil Lass: Skanner 19condition GRP Classic lovely condition with copperlovely condition with and trailer us in under 2010. Refurbishment included 2-pack based in the UK near Bury St Edmunds. 2006 Cornish Crabber 17’ overhauled trailer and Yamaha 4HP 4-stroke built licence from Character Boats to lug dinghy with T-frame road trailer and condition and garage kept. With Combination lovely condition with copperwith easy-launch trailer, overall cover 6HP Easy-launch road outboard, with easy-launch trailer, Honda 4-stroke We provide traditional sailing boat with new new easy-launch good condition with Mariner 5HP outboard, with easy-launch trailer, Honda 4-stroke 2000 Storm 15’ with balanced lug rig.clinker marketing and 1973 Drascombe Longboat Mk1 1983 Cornish Crabber Mk1 with bysail £4,450 2000 15’ with balanced lug rig. brokerage and are always on hand refurbishment with 1973 GRP hull, 1975 Drascombe Lugger Mk2 refurbished by £4,450 services, brokerage and are always on hand with 1989 Cornish Coble in nice within4-stroke, 1991 Cornish Cormorant in stunning original 2004 Green Ocean Yachts Post Boat 14’6” Vintage circa 1920 12’ on Oak 1978 Drascombe Dabber in Cruiser good condition 1992 Drascombe Lugger Mk3 1999 Devon Dabber inLarch excellent condition established small boat Anglia Yacht Brokers Edmunds. builders based 1978 Drascombe with Mariner 1999 McNulty Drascombe Lugger Mk4 inBoats. 1999 Dabber in excellent condition are acover well established sailing boat intrailer, the UK near Bury St Edmunds. Boats. She isDevon in lovely condition with electric coated underside, Suzuki 6HP recent sails/furling spar and easy-launch and general overhaul. Lots of history. and She is in lovely condition with electric recent sails/furling respray, bare wood newinsmall sails and 4-stroke and break-back road outboard engine. very high standard inrevarnish, Holland and stunning new tan sail trailer and Tohatsu 3.5HP outboard. and in 2015. recent sails. trailer. outboard, new overall cover and new sails. 4-stroke and built for Sandbanks Yacht Club Designed by Nick Nick Newland of Swallow and rudder rudder inlovely 2015. overall 2011 Easy-launch trailer. outboard, new overall cover and new sails. 2006 Cornish Crabber 17’ inhence trailer. lovely condition with Tohatsu 8HP outboard, cockpit and deck. Rebuilt engine and trailer us inand 2010. Refurbishment included 2-pack Designed by Newland of Swallow condition with copper2006 Cornish Crabber 17’ trailer. lovely condition with 2-pack coated underside, Suzuki 6HP overhauled trailer and Yamaha 4HP 4-stroke condition and garage kept. With Combination built under licence from Character Boats to a lug sail dinghy with T-frame road trailer lovely condition with copperwith new easy-launch trailer, overall cover 6HP 4-stroke, Easy-launch road outboard, with easy-launch trailer, Honda 4-stroke boat marketing and We provide 2000 Storm 15’ with balanced lug rig.and coated underside, Suzuki with new easy-launch trailer, good condition with Mariner 5HP outboard, with easy-launch trailer, Honda 4-stroke 2006 Cornish Crabber 1973 Drascombe Longboat Cruiser Mk1 in 1983 Cornish Crabber Mk1 with by traditional sailing boat marketing and 2000 Storm 15’ with balanced lug rig. 17’ in brokerage and are always on hand refurbishment with 1973 GRP hull, 1975 Drascombe Lugger Mk2 refurbished by 1989 Cornish Coble in nice condition with 2004 Green Ocean Yachts Post Boat 14’6” Vintage circa 1920 12’ Larch on Oak clinker 1991 Cornish Cormorant in stunning original outboard and Combination road trailer. 1978 Drascombe Dabber in good condition 1992 Drascombe Lugger Mk3 with Mariner 1999 McNulty Drascombe Lugger Mk4 in 1999 Devon Dabber in excellent condition services, brokerage and are always on hand with established small sailing boat Anglia Yacht Brokers road trailer. £16,950 outboard and Combination road trailer.with 1978recent Drascombe 1999 Devon Dabber in excellent condition Edmunds. advice builders based anear well established small sailing road trailer. floorboards. She has aSt 2011 Tohatsu 4HP marketing and and Welight provide traditional insailing theare UK Bury Edmunds. £3,500 condition. Complete with spray hood, £1,500 £3,500 £3,750 Requires re-commissioning. £5,950boat Anglia Yacht Brokers are well established small sailing boat Boats. She issailing in lovely condition with electric boat marketing and £3,750 £6,450 £5,950 Anglia Yacht Brokers are aatent, well established small boat sails/furling spar and easy-launch and general overhaul. Lots ofhelp. history. respray, bare wood newinsails and Boats. She is in lovely condition electric recent sails/furling and very high spec. Teak decks, washboards, outboard engine. trailer and Tohatsu 3.5HP outboard. very high standard inrevarnish, Holland and stunning new tan sail 4-stroke and break-back road and rudder in 2015. recent sails. trailer. outboard, new overall cover and new sails.and 4-stroke and Designed by Nick Newland of Swallow and rudder inand 2015. overall cover and 2011 Easy-launch trailer. outboard, new overall cover and new sails. trailer. lovely condition with Tohatsu 8HP outboard, and deck. Rebuilt engine 2-pack Designed by Nick Newland of Swallow trailer. lovely condition with copperlovely condition with and trailer us in under 2010. Refurbishment included 2-pack coated underside, Suzuki 6HPcockpit overhauled trailer Yamaha 4HP 4-stroke built licence from Character Boats to a always lug dinghy with T-frame road trailer condition and garage kept. With Combination lovely condition with copper£2,250. with new easy-launch trailer, overall cover 6HP 4-stroke, Easy-launch road trailer, good condition with Mariner 5HP outboard, withsail easy-launch trailer, Honda 4-stroke lovely condition with coppercoated underside, Suzuki £12,950 4-stroke and break-back road 2006 Cornish Crabber £4,500. £2,250. with new easy-launch outboard, with easy-launch trailer, Honda 4-stroke 4-stroke and break-back 17’ in £4,500. 4-stroke and Easy-launch trailer. cushions and Easy-launch road trailer. £6,950 brokerage and are always on hand refurbishment with outboard and Combination road trailer. £3,950 services, brokerage and are on hand with road trailer. £16,950 outboard and Combination road trailer. advice 2000 Cornish Crabber 22’ in 2006 GRP Kittiwake 16’ gaff 2001 David Moss Sea Otter road trailer. floorboards. She has a 2011 Tohatsu 4HP builders based in the UK near Bury St Edmunds. and help. We provide traditional sailing boat marketing and 2000 Cornish Crabber Otter £3,500 condition. Complete with spray hood, tent, £1,500 builders based in the the UK near Bury St Edmunds. £3,750 Requires light re-commissioning. £5,950 Anglia Yacht Brokers are well established small sailing boat builders based in UK near Bury St Edmunds. £3,750 £6,450 £5,950 are always on hand with refurbishment services, Anglia Yacht Brokers are aastunning well established small sailing boat Boats. She is inoverall lovely condition with electric cockpit seats and floor. 3 berths, galley, sea£3,500 and are always on hand with recent sails/furling spar and easy-launch and general overhaul. Lotsoutboard. of history.brokerage and Boats. is in lovely condition recent sails/furling bare wood revarnish, new sails and outboard engine. very high standard in Holland and in new tanShe sail trailer and Tohatsu 3.5HP and in 2015. recent sails. overall cover and 2011 Easy-launch trailer. outboard, new overall cover andwith newelectric sails. and rudder rudder in£12,950 2015. outboard, new cover and new sails. trailer. £4,500. respray, £2,250. coated underside, Suzuki lovely condition with trailer. 4-stroke and break-back road coated underside, Suzuki 6HP £4,500. £2,250. 6HP copper£12,950 4-stroke and break-back coated underside, Suzuki £4,500. 4-stroke and Easy-launch trailer. 2006 Cornish Crabber 17’ in cushions and Easy-launch roadUK trailer. £6,950 trailer. £3,950 trailer. 2001 David Moss Sea 2000 Cornish Crabber 22’ in 2006 GRP Otter outboard and Combination road trailer. 2000 Cornish Crabber Kittiwake 16’traditional gaff 2001 David Moss Sea Otter builders based in the UK near Bury St Edmunds. provide traditional sailing boat marketing and road trailer. £16,950 outboard and Combination road trailer. advice builders based the near Bury St Edmunds. We provide sailing boat marketing and are always on hand with refurbishment services, road trailer. floorboards. She has ain 2011 Tohatsu 4HP and help. We provide traditional sailing boat marketing and £3,500 condition. Complete with spray hood, £1,500 £3,500 toilet, table. S/S pushpit/pulpit, windlass, brokerage and are always on hand with £3,750 Requires light re-commissioning. £6,450 £5,950 lovely condition with Yanmar rigged sloop. A very high end 15’ in lovely condition. Cedar Anglia Yacht Brokers are atent, well established small sailing boat lovely condition Cedar £3,750 £5,950 established small sailing boat advice and help. Please ask for Alex. £4,500. coated underside, Suzuki 6HP 4-stroke and break-back road trailer. £2,250. condition with £12,950 4-stroke and break-back road trailer. £4,500. £2,250. copper£12,950 4-stroke and break-back £4,500. 4-stroke and Easy-launch trailer. £12,950 We provide traditional sailing boat marketing and cushions and Easy-launch roadUK trailer. £6,950 £3,950 refurbishment services, brokerage and are always on hand hand with £12,950 marketing and are always on with 2001 David Moss Sea 2000 Cornish Crabber 22’ inlovely 2006 GRP Otter 15’ in lovely condition. lovely condition Yanmar rigged sloop. Cedar Yanmar1gm10, very good with condition mast 2000 Cornish Crabber Kittiwake 16’ gaff 2001 David Moss Sea Otter builders based in the UK near Bury St lovely condition Edmunds. Abrokerage very high end 15’ in lovely condition. Cedar advice and help. builders based in the near Bury St Edmunds. are always on hand with refurbishment services, Please and are always on hand with ask for Alex. strip/epoxy construction 1GM10 diesel, Bespoke road fitunderside, out with with a with 4-stroke and break-back 1GM10 diesel, Bespoke lots of hard wood strip/epoxy construction with a road trailer.coated £4,500. Suzuki 6HP £12,950 refurbishment services, brokerage and are always on hand £12,950 trailer. refurbishment services, brokerage and are always on hand advice and help. trailer. advice and help. spars and sails. Twin axle trailer, Suzuki 6hp We provide traditional sailing boat marketing and marketing and Cedar strip/epoxy construction 1GM10 diesel, Bespoke road fit outsloop. with with with 15’ in in lovely condition. lovely condition with Yanmar rigged Cedar 1GM10 diesel, Bespoke lots of hard wood strip/epoxy construction with aa lovely condition A Alex. very high end 15’ lovely condition. trailer. advice and help. £12,950 Please ask for Please ask for Alex. standing lug yawl rig. trailer and upped rating to and bronze Complete 4-stroke and break-back trailer and upped work. Complete with standing lug yawl rig. Complete road advice and help. advice and help. long shaft (almost new), hardwood legs £12,950 £12,950 refurbishment services, services, brokerage and are always always on£20,000 hand with with £12,950 refurbishment brokerage and are on hand Cheverton Cavalier 30, 1966, Pleasefitask for Alex.lots standing lug yawl rig. trailer and upped rating to and bronze Complete trailer and upped work. Complete with standing lug yawl rig. Complete strip/epoxy construction 1GM10 diesel, Bespoke road out with with a 1GM10 diesel, Bespoke of hard wood strip/epoxy construction with trailer. with electric electric motor, category cover and break back covers andteak on aIpoh Please ask trailer forand Alex. category B. forB. drying moorings, cockpit and mainsail road motor, covers and Please ask for Alex. advice help.with Long keel, Bermudan sloop, Burma with electric motor, £12,950 category B. cover and covers and Please ask trailer for Alex. with Please ask for Alex. category B. break back road electric motor, covers and Please ask for Alex. standing lug yawl rig. trailer and upped rating to and bronze Complete trailer and upped work. Complete with standing lug yawl rig. Complete covers, boarding ladder. Ashore W Wales. road trailer. trailer. £37,950 £8,995. £37,950 road frames, 4 berths in 2 cabins, a beautiful long distance road trailer. £37,950 £8,995. Contact: peter.walton8@icloud.com or 01994 £37,950 road trailer. with electric electric motor, category B. cover and break back covers and Please ask trailer for Alex. Alex. category B. road with motor, covers and Please ask for cruiser designed by David Cheverton £7,750 £7,750 448437 OIRO £8,995.00 £7,750 £7,750 T: 02392 985688 (Waterside Boats) £37,950 £8,995. road trailer. £37,950

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1979 Drascombe Longboat Cruiser Mk2 1999 Sandweaver 16’16’ in gaff lovely 1983 Cornish Crabber GRP hull, New Deben Deben Luggers Luggers being being built built to to order order for 1999 Weaver 16’ Mk1 with with tan sails/gunter 2006 rigged sloop. A for New Balanced Balanced Lug Lug 10’ 10’ Roach Roach Dinghies Dinghies built built 2006 GRP GRP Kittiwake Kittiwake 1983 Sand Cornish Crabber 1999 Sand Weaver New New 1979 Drascombe Longboat Cruiser Mk2 1999 Sandweaver 16’16’ in gaff lovely 1983 Cornish Crabber Mk1 with GRP hull,high New Deben Deben Luggers Luggers being being built built to to order order for 1999 Sand Weaver 16’ with tan sails/gunter 2006 GRP Kittiwake rigged sloop. for New Balanced Balanced Lug Lug 10’ 10’ Roach Roach Dinghies Dinghies built built 2006 GRP Kittiwake 1983 Cornish Crabber 1999 Sand Weaver Adelivery. New built to New order. 2-berth in good condition with recent condition gunter rig, tan sails for delivery. cockpit and deck. engine and trailer MayMay delivery. sloop rig. She is in lovely condition and very end fit out with lots of to order. order. very high with end fit cockpit and deck. sloop rig. She issound inRebuilt hard wood May to 2-berth in good sound condition with recent built to order. condition with gunter rig, tan sails for May delivery. cockpit and deck. Rebuilt engine and trailer May delivery. sloop rig. She is in lovely condition and very high end fit out with lots of to order. cockpit and deck. very high end fit sloop rig. She is in hard wood May delivery. to order. Yamaha 6HP outboard andoverall Type Approved combination trailer.with cover and and overhaul. Lots of history. Prices from from £14,500. £14,500. Inc Inc VAT VAT complete with spray cover and and Complete £3,250. Inc Inc VAT. VAT. and general general overhaul. and bronze bronze work. work.road complete with spray hood, Prices £3,250. Yamaha 6HP outboard and Type Approved combination road trailer. and general overhaul. Lots of history. Prices fromLuggers £14,500.being Inc VAT VAT complete with spray hood, cover and 2006 and bronze work. Complete with cover £3,250. Inc VAT. VAT. Lug and bronze work. and general overhaul. complete with spray Prices from £14,500. Inc £3,250. Inc 1979 Drascombe Longboat Cruiser Mk2 1999 Sandweaver 16’ in gaff lovely 1983 Cornish Crabber with GRP hull, New Deben Luggers being built to to order orderWe 1999 Sand Weaver 16’ Mk1 with tanoverall sails/gunter GRP Kittiwake 16’ rigged for have New Balanced Lug 10’ 10’ Roachfrom Dinghies built built 1983 Cornish Crabber 2006 GRP Kittiwake 1999 Sand Weaver sloop.and A New Deben built for New Roach Dinghies from Euro Easy Launch road trailer. £3,450 £16,950 from combination road trailer. break road trailer. We have twoBalanced demonstrators in stock stock £16,950 break back back road combination road two demonstrators in Euro Easy Launch road trailer. from £3,450 £16,950 from combination road trailer. break road We have two demonstrators demonstrators in in stock stock from £16,950 break back road combination road have two 2-berth in good condition with recent built to order. condition with gunter rig, lots tan sails for delivery. cockpit and deck. Rebuilt engine and trailer MayMay delivery. rig. She is in lovely condition and high end outtrailer. with of hard wood to order. order. very highback end fit fit cockpit and deck. sloop rig. She issound in to May delivery. £2,950. £3,950 £2,950.We £3,950. £8,995. £8,995. very £3,950. sloop £3,950 £2,950. £2,950. £3,950. £8,995. £3,950. Yamaha 6HP outboard andoverall Type Approved combination trailer.with cover and and overhaul. Lots of history. Prices from from £14,500. £14,500. Inc Inc VAT VAT complete with spray cover and and bronze Complete £3,250. Inc Inc VAT. VAT. and£8,995. bronze work. work.road and general general overhaul. complete with spray hood, £3,250. Prices Euro Easy Launch road trailer. from £3,450 £16,950 from combination road break We have have two two demonstrators demonstrators in in stock stock from £16,950 break back back road road trailer. combination road trailer. We builders Anglia Yacht Brokers are a well established small Anglia Yacht Brokers are a well established sailing boat builders £3,950 £3,950. £8,995. £2,950. £8,995. £3,950. £2,950. builders Anglia are Anglia Yacht Yacht Brokers Brokers are aa well well established established small sailing boat builders sailing based UK near Bury St Edmunds. We provide based in in the thebased UK near Bury St Edmunds. traditional sailing sailing based in in the the UK UK near near Bury Bury St St Edmunds. Edmunds. We provide traditional sailing always boat and refurbishment services, boat marketing marketing and refurbishment services, brokerage and are always always boat marketing and services, brokerage boat marketing and refurbishment refurbishment and are always builders Yacht Brokers are aa well established small sailing boat builders Anglia Yachtand Brokers are well established on with advice help. Please ask for Alex. on hand handAnglia withon advice and help. Please on hand hand with with advice advice and and help. help. Please Please ask for Alex. sailing based based in in the the UK UK near near Bury Bury St St Edmunds. Edmunds. We provide traditional sailing always cruising yacht with marketing and boat marketing and refurbishment refurbishment services, brokerage and 34. are Beautiful always 35’ Buchanan Bonitoboat sloop built in 1960. 40+ year services, Cornish Shrimper “Rose”. A good example of this Teus: Contest on on hand hand with with advice advice and and help. help. Please Please ask for Alex.

present ownership. Recent Beta diesel engine. Has popular boat. Well looked after and upgraded. An high quality build and Lloyds specification. Wind been a much loved family yacht, large cockpit with1999 5 electrical systemDabber was added inMk2 2012, together generator, shore power system, recent electronics, 1990 Drascombe Dabber Storm Mk2 in 31/05/16 15’ with balanced lug 1990 Drascombe in 1990 Drascombe Drascombe Dabber 1999 Storm 15’ with balanced lug 1990 Mk2 in with 10:54 Dabber Mk2 in Anglia yacht brokerage May 2016.indd 31/05/16 Anglia yacht brokerage May98 2016.indd 98 berths. Pretty yacht, sensibly priced. Hants £13,500 She PM PM new sails, sprayhood and Shrimper swim ladder.10:54 rigging (2007); recon engine (2006), upholstery. Aft exceptionally tidy with cover, electric exceptionally tidy condition with rig. Complete condition withwith exceptionally tidy withfriendly cover, electric exceptionally tidy condition rig. condition with Tel/Fax +44 (0)1803 833899 or call on 01273-420730 comes withto a road trailer and lighting board. £9,950 cabinComplete provides great family accommodation. Email: evie@classicsailor.com and we’ll mail you a simple form ﬁ ll in. 1990 Drascombe Dabber 1999 Storm Mk2 in 15’ with balanced lug 1990 Drascombe Dabber Mk2 in and combi road trailer. cover, 2.3HP 4-stroke and cover, Honda 2.3HP outboard 4-stroke and and road trailer. cover, Honda 2.3HP 4-stroke and cover, Honda 2.3HP outboard 4-stroke and Anglia yacht brokerage May 2016.indd 98 31/05/16 10:54 PM T:Honda 01326 221657 sarah@gweekquay.co.uk £25,000 T: combi 01326 221657 sarah@gweekquay.co.uk

Let us help sell your boat! Let us help sell your boat! DOUBLE 130mm x 50mm, 80 words and picture - £100 63mm x 50mm, 30 wordstidy and condition picture - £60 exceptionally tidy withSINGLE cover, electric exceptionally with rig.aComplete condition with

trailer. road trailer. road trailer. road trailer. Email: evie@classicsailor.com£2,250 or call£2,250 on 01273-420730 and we’ll mail youroad a simple form to ﬁll in. and combi road trailer. cover, cover, Honda Honda 2.3HP 2.3HP 4-stroke outboard 4-stroke and and £4,450 £4,450 Remember subscribers are entitled to a 50% discount! £4,450 £4,450 94 CLASSIC SAILOR DOUBLE 130mm x 50mm, 80 words and a picture £100 SINGLE 63mm x 50mm, 30 words and picture - £60 road road trailer. trailer. £2,250 80 CLASSIC SAILOR- subscribers are entitled to a 50% discount! Remember £4,450 £4,450

2006 Cornish Cornish 2006 2006 Cornish Cornish 2006 CrabberCrabber 17’ in 17’ in well established small sailing established small sailing Anglia Yacht Brokers boat are a are wella established small sailing boat established small sailing boatboat lovely condition lovely condition with copper-Anglia Yacht Brokers p94_CS1216_Boats for sale.indd 94with copperlovely condition condition lovely Bury St St Edmunds. Edmunds. builders based in the UK near Bury

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MARIAN is the 2nd oldest of 18 remaining Bristol Channel pilot cutters. She is immensely strong. One of the fastest pilot cutters afloat, she can be sailed as hard as originally intended! £385,000 Lying UK T: +44 7711 527196

Dana 24: A heavy displacement yacht to take you anywhere. One of only three in Europe One owner, 15,000 miles and one Atlantic crossing. VAT paid. Comes with a stunning classic nesting sailing dinghy. Yanmar 3YM20 engine barely run in $120,000 Contact Benjy : benjy@woodenwidget.com

26’ Lymington Slipway 5 ton Bermudan sloop built in 1977. Larch on oak all copper fastened. Major refit finished 2012 including new Beta engine, new electrics and all cosmetics. Tidy boat with an interesting history. Pembrokeshire. £10,000 Tel/Fax +44 (0)1803 833899

Devon Lugger, built by Honnor Marine. Registered in 2009 and one very careful owner since purchase. Complete with roller road trailer, full set of sails and Mercury 6hp Essex £11,250 Woodrolfe Brokerage 01621 868494

There is no provenance on this lake boat other than that she was built 35 years ago and has been mainly kept in storage, on the shores of Ullswater. She has a glassfibre hull, timber trim, thwarts and foredeck, a pair of oars and has a running Stuart Turner vintage engine complete with copper fuel tank! open to offers. 017684 86514

Finesse 21 – Built 1982, sail No 71 One of the last built, cutter rig with bowsprit, long keel with lifting plate, sails new 2002 to 2004, keel bolts renewed 2006, last survey 2007, very attractive modern classic. Essex £5900 Woodrolfe Brokerage Tel: 01621 868494

Plymouth Pilot 18 1985 £14,995 Yanmar 2GM20F (2015) Ref: 213066 See lots of photos and videos on www.boatshed.com T: 01983 869 203

47 ft Stow & Sons Gaff Yawl 1895/2014 VALERIE has been beautifully and sympathetically rebuilt, commensurate with her vintage, which at nigh on 120 years makes her a genuine historical artefact. The simplicity of her finish and fit-out with the re-introduction of her original yawl rig makes her a handy craft capable of being easily sailed by a small crew. Partial completion of interior enables a new owner to specify his own arrangements; an outline option exists. £195,000 Lying UK T:+44 (0)1202 330077

Rustler 36 1985 £37,000 Reputation for blue water sailing. Lying Scotland Ref: 173415 www.boatshed.com T: 07951 339 943

Classic Dutch Grundel Yacht, 21ft, 1967, recent refit. sails, 4 stroke Mercury outboard, Sea Hopper folding dinghy. Yorkshire £5,750 Woodrolfe Brokerage T: 01621 868494

23ft Crossfields of Arnside 1912, Rivers Class Gaff Cutter. Round counter stern. Professionally restored. Royal Mersey Yacht Club requested Crossfields for a club boat so put a bowsprit on to the Jewel Class, 1905. 10 vessels were commissioned. Offset Inboard engine. Paglesham, Essex. £5,950 MJLewis 01621 859373

Laurent Giles Salar 40 built by Moody’s in 1966. Won boat of the year at the 1966 London Boat Show. Huge investment in recent years including 95hp Perkins diesel new in 2012. 2 sleeping cabins, sheltered helm position and large saloon. Suffolk £39,000

Memory 19 Gaffer – 2010 Brilliant class of gaffer for those who know... An opportunity to purchase one of the last Salterns built boats. Open cockpit for easy handling, outboard in a well for simple motoring. Fantastic Fun! £9950 T:02380 455714

Vindo 40, New engine 1980 £29.950 Engine & standing rigging renewed, cockpit rebuilt, upgraded electrics plus new batteries. Lying South Coast Ref: 224702 www.boatshed.com T: 07775 617 105

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Ohlson 38, 1975, £27,000 Yawl rigged, Long ﬁn keel, Beta 28hp new in 2008, 6 berths in 2 cabins, fully equipped with heating, hot water, full electronics package and a full sail wardrobe T:02392 985688 (Waterside)

AVOLA: 33ft Classic Gaff Cutter. Designed by J. Francis-Jones, built St Osyth Boatyard 1965. Long keel larch planking, Nanni 50hp engine. Full nav. equipment. Zodiac and ridged dinghies. Maintained to a high standard. Extensively cruised. Lying Ipswich. £35000 wrenspark@aol.com Tel: 01473 231066

Scala Nimbata skiff– Built 2002 Strip plank glass fabric epoxy construction. Carbon ﬁbre mast. Loose footed main by Batt Sails to prevent injury when sculling with sail set. Jeckells storm sail. Complete with combination launching trolley-trailer, ﬁtted cover. Reduced to £3750. T:01189 402329

Duessa; 42ft “Silverleaf”, twin engine motor yacht, 1935. John Bain design built by James A Silver Ltd. Three cabins, sleeps eight persons. Headroom 6ft 2ins. Historic vessel well maintained to a high standard. Pt one registered, whole history. Ipswich, Suffolk £45,000. Offers to MJLewis 01621 859373

Rococraft Gentlemans Launch - constructed Devon in the 1950’s. 4 m long with two rows of seating. Comes with road trailer and outboard engine. 2500 pounds ono. Call 07590 426 007 or email rupert@ debleuchamp.com

Swan 44, 1973, £70,000 Fin keel, Perkins Prima 50hp new in 1998, 8 berths in 2 cabins plus saloon, equipped for both racing and cruising, voted one of the top 40 best boats of all time. info@watersideboatsales.c om T:02392 985688

Kitikae is a 1924 gentleman’s yacht built by Brookes of Lowestoft and restored to a beautiful condition in 2007. Mahognay and pitch pine. 65ft (20m) LOA with 1937 Gardener engines. £345,000 Lying Paris: christian. gonnard@gmail.com Tel: 00 33 (0)6 37 29 53 06

West Solent One Design Halloween 1925 a remarkably original boat – of a very special class, noted not only for their stunning good looks but for some special sailing and racing qualities. Restored but still an authentic unspoilt example. Lying UK £58,000 T:+44 (0)1202 330077 (Sandeman)

Super Sovereign 35 1971 £29,995 New engine & standing rigging 2014, Upholstery still in transparent wrapping Ref: 225540 www.boatshed.com T: 07768 925 315

Windsong. Built to an American design this is a beautiful traditional yacht which will be admired in every port. Volvo penta MD2020 20hp. Price £14,000 Shoreham Contact Danny T: +44 (0)7576 377739 virendraonelove@gmail.com

30 ft Ed Burnett Gaff Cutter 1998 Zinnia, from the board of Ed Burnett, in association with Nigel Irens. High quality wooden construction by the Elephant Boatyard in 1998. Bronze custom deck ﬁttings and details make her a very special yacht. Lying UK £107,000 T:+44 (0)1202 330077 (Sandeman)

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Calendar

Send us your events! editor@classicsailor.com

Currently Emma Hamilton Seduction and Celebrity (The woman behind Nelson! See p86) Closes 17 April 2017 National Maritime Museum Greenwich, London www.rmg.co.uk Liverpool Pilots History Until June 2017 Merseyside Maritime Museum (Free) www.liverpoolmuseums. org.uk North Sea Fishing 12 November - 19 Feb 2017 Anstruther, Fife Contemporary documentary photography of the fishing industry and fishermen of the North Sea by celebrated photo-journalist Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert. www.scotfishmuseum.org.

Coming up London Boat Show 6-15 January 2017 Excel, London londonboatshow.com CS Stand: B011 OGA AGM 14 January, 4pm Wetherspoons, The Ledger Building, 4 Hertsmere Road, London E14 4AL Details: www.oga.org.uk/ events/association-agm-2017 Understanding Weather From January 5 2017 Nottage Institute, Wivenhoe, Essex. Five Thursday evenings 1930-2130hrs Course fee £70 How to interpret weather information and how to make predictions from observing the clues in the sky. Bernie Hetherington (RYA Instructor)

A fleet of vessels takes to the water at the Australian Wooden Boat Festival in February Trinity House January 16, and 30 2017 Tour the home of Britain’s lighthouse authority. 2016 now fully booked; 25 people per tour, cost £8. Tours start at 1500hrs: Booking essential. Tel: +44 (0)20 7481 6900 / email tours@thls.org Tower Hill, London www.trinityhouse.co.uk Arthur Beale talk: Never Fear, reliving the life of Sir Francis Chichester 26 January 6.45pm Talk by Ian Strathcarron, author of this new biography www.arthurbeale.co.uk Pirate Weekend 28-29 January 2017, 12-4pm National Waterfront Museum Swansea, Wales

Cutthroat crafts, Fearsome foes; Swashbuckling www.museum.wales Antigua Classics 19-25 April Antigua Yacht Club www.antiguaclassics.com Sail Caledonia 23 May - 3 June Open raid-style event for smaller (c. 5-9m) sailing boats built in traditional style; 66mile navigation from coast to coast. www.sailcaledonia.org Falmouth Classics 16-18 June Since the Falmouth Classics’ rebirth in 2013 and the decision to run the event during the International Sea Shanty Festival, the Classics

regatta has grown in stature attracting many historic classic vessels to the port from along the south coast of England, France and the Netherlands. Royal Cornwall Yacht Club Greenbank, Falmouth, Cornwall, TR11 2SP.

Waitemata Harbour www.classicyacht.org.nz

Southern Hemisphere

Classic Regatta March 3-5 2017 Premier three day Classic Yacht Regatta, hosted jointly by the RNZYS and CYA – our top sailing event of the season! Auckland, New Zealand www.classicyacht.org.nz

Night race to Mahurangi January 27-30 2017 Auckland, New Zealand Afternoon start off Devonport YC for the Night Race followed by the Mahurangi regatta and return race www.classicyacht.org.nz Auckland Anniversary Day Regatta January 30 2017

Australian Wooden Boat Festival 10-13 February 2017, Hobart, Tasmania See website australian woodenboatfestival.com.au

See classicsailor.com for more events and details and upload your own!

In Classic Sailor next issue Corinthian spirit

Defiance

We’re out at Burnham sailing with a One Design class which has stood the test of time - the Royal Corinthian One Design. A look at the boats, and the sailors who keep this great class going.

A story about keeping it basic as a lone sailor shares some of his experiences in a boat he’s sailed 50,000 miles. Next issue out in the first week in February. CLASSIC SAILOR

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Last word: fighting the urge Lucy L Ford on strenuous and sensuous on-board experiences

GUY VENABLES

ost people spend their holidays visiting castles, churches or other places of historic interest. We spend our holidays visiting the chandlers. Over the years this predictable tour must have taken us to every nautical establishment in the whole of Northern Brittany and the Channel Islands. There has to be a limit to the interest value of rope, shackles and toilet brushes. Unless of course the Skipper is harbouring a latent interest in some form of nautical bondage that 25 years of marriage has yet to uncover. On very rare occasions we might find somewhere to interest the crew, like an embroidery shop. Suddenly the Skipper can’t stand “being inside” and will “see you back on the boat”. Showering on board is a very sensuous experience. Because of the necessity to keep the ‘heads’ hatch closed while at sea, the nylon shower curtain never dries out and for the entire trip takes on a permanent odour of ‘gone-off school swimming kit’. This lovely piece of damp nylon, which “you-must-use-otherwise-the-door-will-delaminate” takes on serpent-like characteristics, entwining itself amorously around your naked body as you attempt to squirt yourself with either too hot or too cold water and shower gel. Because of the permanently damp, swamp-like environment of the compartment, mosquitoes abound. These nasty little creatures take great delight in sampling the ample juiciness of your most inappropriate regions. Thus you come out of the shower with more bumps than when you went in.

Before it is even possible to get the knickers off one has to get rid of about four layers of heavy weather sailing gear

But the most erotic experience of all is ‘pole dancing’ while visiting the heads in a heavy sea. Before it is even possible to get the knickers down, one has to get rid of about four layers of heavy weather sailing gear. The heads compartment, with all the aromatic qualities of a mediaeval midden, is the last place that you will want to rid yourself of your sailing clobber, and then wear it again. Why? For the very same reason that you replaced the bathroom carpet at home, with tiles. ‘He’ can’t aim straight! Now if he can’t aim straight on terra-firma, he certainly won’t have ‘aimed straight’ on a rolling sea! Outside the heads is a pole, I think it holds the mast up. In a heavy sea, it holds me up and I have had to perfect the art of a one-handed, one garment at a time, striptease. Finally you have rid yourself of enough clobber to jam yourself into the stinking broom cupboard. The boat is slamming around so much that the only way to get your knickers off is to brace your feet against one bulkhead and your back against the other. With one hand on the ceiling to stop, you from being thrown sideways, all there is left to do is … wriggle. The smell by now is so nauseating and the motion of the sea so bad that you want to throw up. But before you can sit on the throne and relieve the agonising pain in your bladder you have to get the toilet lid off without the contents jumping out. At this point the boat usually falls off a wave. You are thrown forward and bang your head on the door. But what’s worse is trying to get the knickers back on. Perhaps this is the real reason that most women do not like sailing?

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