Indholdsfortegnelse for June 2018 i Classic Boat

IN ASSOCIATION WITH SUPPORTED BY Seeking your nominations Nominations are open for the Classic Boat Awards 2019! Please nominate yachts and motor boats, as well as Classic Boater of the Year candidates, over the coming year. cb@classicboat.co.uk…

“Even in this day and age people look at me on our boat and think that I must be the long-suffering wife. Very few people look at us and assume we are in it together. But I assure you we are. When we decided to buy Rafa we both wrote down what we were prepared to pay and then submitted a compromise we were happy with. Mine was the lower bid as my head said our boat at the time was more than sufficient for our needs but, for the first time (where a transaction is concerned!), my heart won out. Who am I to stand in the way of a boyhood dream? We brought her back to Lymington and stood and looked at her in the boatyard for a…

RISING WATER AT MORSTON Rising Water at Morston is by Alistair Butt, a member of the Royal Society of Marine Artists, born in South Africa and now working from a studio in his garden in the Midlands, capturing coastal scenes in a sought-after photo-realist style. The Sea Pictures Gallery is in Clare, Suff olk, specialising in maritime-inspired art. Framed oil on board, 49cm x 40cm. £750, not including shipping seapicturesgallery.com SHADOW BOOT New in the Henri Lloyd range this season, boasting soft inners and a supple leather waterproof outer for a hard-to-resist mix of practicality and comfort. £210 henrilloyd.co.uk HARBOR OF SPIES This novel tells of a young man’s moral journey in colonial Havana during the American Civil War, a world of spies, blockade runners, and slave traders. Many of…

Simon Hawksley is definitely not the only person to have read an article on the twice-yearly launch day at the Boat Building Academy in Lyme Regis and thought: “I fancy having a go at that.” But it’s a reasonably safe bet that he was the only one to subsequently quit a lucrative career in the oil industry, relocate 550 miles south from Aberdeen with his girlfriend Laure (who had, in fact, bought Simon the copy of Classic Boat in which the article appeared) and sign up for the course. “I read the article and thought it sounded fantastic,” Simon recalls. “But I never believed I’d get the chance to do it myself.” It was two years after that moment of inspiration, aged 34 and with the oil industry in decline…

The Tilley Endurables Falmouth Classics takes place over the weekend of 22-24 June, with boats based in the town’s Falmouth Haven marina. The event, now in its 31st year after an anniversary celebration last year, is timed to coincide with the Falmouth International Sea Shanty Festival, ensuring things are lively in the town every evening as well as on the water in the day. There are two official stages with bands playing, but meanwhile sea shanty singers regale passers-by from almost every street corner and in every pub, those present usually encouraged to sing along! On the water, the fleet that Falmouth now attracts, after a few lean years in the early 2000s, is as spectacular as anywhere and perhaps more varied, with every kind of classic from work boats…

1 Use a collage effiect to add interest (and cover up mistakes). A good way to use up old charts 2 Fill a sketchbook The drawings on the last page will be better than the first (as long as you’ve filled in all the pages in between!) 3 Get the basic shapes down first, masts, hull, waterline. You can add colour later if you want 4 Drawing from a model boat is useful (at least they stay still!) 5 Notice the spaces in between the sail shapes – if you get these ‘negative spaces’ right, the rest will be right too 6 Compare proportions Measure height of mast in relation to length of hull 7 You don’t have to sketch a whole scene (or even a whole boat). Zoom in…

29FT BUZZARDS BAY 18 Classic Boat covered the story of Besherte when she was launched back in 2013. She’s a 29ft Buzzards Bay 18 from the hand of the Wizard (Nat Herresho?) and a rare beast too. Apparently only five were built back in 1903/4 for the Beverly Yacht Club. She’s the second of the type built by Artisan and features edge-glued cedar planking over steam-bent oak frames with a laminated mahogany backbone. She has a Beta 14hp diesel hidden from view within the cabin. The mast is carbonfibre painted to resemble Sitka spruce, and the boom and gaff really are Sitka spruce. The point of the carbon mast is to allow Besherte to go without running backstays. “This feature, in combination with a full-length jib club, makes the entire…

Routing the head off a nail After 17 years ashore, the timber of the Victory Class yacht Boreas had dried out, leaving the copper rivets, which held the planks and frames together, slack in their holes. As they were corroded through age we decided to refasten the entire boat by removing all the old nails and replacing them with new ones of a stouter gauge. My first idea was to carefully grind off the inner end of the nails where they had been riveted over the roves, and to punch them back until they could be withdrawn from the planks with a pair of round-ended pliers. This turned out to have a couple of drawbacks. Firstly a lot of the roves were very corroded and had sunk into the planking,…

Bruno Troublé is something of a sailing legend in France. He competed in two Olympic Games – in the Flying Dutchman class in 1968 and in a Soling four years later – and then skippered three French challengers for the America’s Cup, in 1977, 1980 and 1983. “We had a tough battle against the British challenger Lionheart in 1980,” he told me. “We beat them 4-3 after collisions in every race. We were then beaten 4-1 by the Australians in the challenger final. Not very good but still the best America’s Cup result for France.” He also took part in three Admiral’s Cups and he won the Quarter Ton World Championships in 1981. In recent years he has turned his hand to the rescue of old boats, and Universal Rule…

Boatshed is a global business. How many boats are for sale at one time? Currently we have nearly 2,000 boats for sale. We will only sell a boat if we can see it, so we need to have someone local to undertake our photography and inventory gathering exercise, as well as do the viewings. Can you guarantee the condition of each boat you list? Boatshed is all about transparency. The great thing with our process is you can pay a deposit, inspect the boat, sea trial it and if for any reason you don’t want to proceed with the sale, your deposit is refunded in full. Is the wooden boat market healthy? There is a market trend for people wanting to own an individual boat. A cookie-cutter approach to boat…

The 11th edition of Cowes Classics Week expects close to 200 yachts to compete at Cowes, the spiritual home of yachting, for spectacular Solent racing and Cowes yacht club hospitality. The 2018 Notice of Race is available on the website at www.cowesclassicsweek.org and entries are now open. “It contains all the spectacle of a major international event, with friendly but serious competition on dedicated race courses, first class race management, as well as excellent socials.” said Doug Harckham, Past Captain of the Daring Class. “Cowes Classics gets better and better every year. The RLYC and Cowes Clubs has successfully captured the family atmosphere that made the fifties and sixties regattas; Cowes Week; Clyde Fortnight, and Menai Straits fortnight so great.” said Brian Corbett from the Old Gaffers Association. In addition…

I am half-way through proof-reading a book. It’ll be out about the time this appears, called How to Build a Boat, which was the title I chose for my book about how to build a boat, but this is a better book than mine would ever have been, filled with mysterious stuff about how a clinker boat goes together, interwoven with a moving, at times humorous, personal narrative. This chap, he’s a former Times writer, has a rather more interesting tale than mine to tell, including attempting twice to row the Atlantic, finally ending upside down in a hurricane in a survival suit with the zip open (it’s all in the book). The author, his name is Jonathan Gornall, decided to build a 10ft clinker dinghy for his three-year-old daughter…

JOHN LAMMERTS VAN BUEREN CAMBRIA Don’t take it too seriously. If you want to prove you are the world’s best sailor, then buy a Dragon and win the Gold Cup! If you come to the Med with your classic, then enjoy being surrounded by the world’s most beautiful boats and the lucky bunch who get the opportunity to race them. Every day ‘our’ Nicola cooks up a ridiculously yummy dinner for the whole Cambria crew (24 of us). No restaurant can beat the joy or offer a better place to dine than with friends on board after a day on the water. Ashore, the best place? Well, wherever we are, we somehow always end up at the Irish around midnight. MIKE HORSLEY EDMISTON It was the year after the fatal…

LUDHAM, NORFOLK Looking after 14 bright-finished cabin yachts… If keeping a wooden yacht ever feels like trying to keep a grand piano in your back garden, then spare a thought for the historic Hunter’s Yard. They have 14 cabin yachts, seven dayboats and a few dinghies. The cabin yachts are 24ft (7.3m) or 28ft (8.5m) long, bright finished in traditional one-pot varnish, and will have spent the last season being enthusiastically enjoyed by hire parties, who are occasionally less than careful – or competent. The routine, for the three permanent boatbuilders and one general hand, goes a little like this: boats are emptied and hauled out up the greased-plank slipway. Every removable wooden item is brought out for scrubbing (“I lost count after 50,” says Hunter’s Philip Bray), then the…

Seen alongside a barge-like wooden jack or jointer, side rebate planes recall the plank-on-edge cutters of the 1880s, and this pair, made in Birmingham by Henry Martin & Thomas Shaw, is of similar vintage. Side rebate planes fine-tune the widths of dados and grooves by taking shavings o. the walls, a job no other plane can touch. That need arises if the end of a bookcase shelf proves too tight in its housing, for example, or a sliding locker door is binding. The shelf or door itself could be planed, but not if finished with a precious veneer, or if the component must slide past the tight spot into position, in which case the fit would be mostly loose. Side rebate planes were made in matched pairs, left and right,…

25-27 MAY ST MAWES PILOT CUTTER REVIEW Pilot cutters from far and wide congregate for fun racing and shoreside banter, barbecues and locally brewed beer classic-sailing.co.uk 26-27 MAY BRIXHAM HERITAGE REGATTA With its roots in the sailing trawler races held in Torbay since the early 1800s, now boasting a healthy fleet of 30 brixhamheritagesailing.org.uk 30 MAY – 3 JUNE LES VOILES D’ANTIBES The Panerai-sponsored ‘season opener’ this year coincides with an interesting new classic yacht show in the Côte d’Azur town voilesdantibes.com and antibesclassicyachtshow.com 25-29 JULY DOUARNENEZ One of the biggest festivals of sail in the world, both on the water and quayside. More than 1,000 boats including a sizeable British Isles contingent make the pilgrimage tempsfete.com EVENTS UPDATE COWES SPRING CLASSICS 11-13 MAY Season starter, a new event this…

After a trouble-strewn delivery trip back from deepest Holland and a 14-month, unplanned refit, my wife and I finally put Rafa back into the Lymington river. It was almost 50 years to the day that she was originally launched into the very same river at Berthon Boat Yard. After all the stress and effort, we hope she is in very much the same condition, with the same ethos and fittings as the designer, Robert Clark, and her builders intended. But this story really begins 40 years ago in Scotland where I grew up. Aged 10, a week on a Westerly 32 with my brother and my dad’s boss, cruising from Ardfern, up the Sound of Mull, Loch Sunart, Ardnamuchan and back. From empty anchorages to being knocked down, it was…

CHARLES MILLER LTD Three models, one survivor Three fine builders’ models tell stories of heroism, tragedy, loss, service, and even more remarkable survival, for against the odds one of these three vessels is still working for its living today. It’s not the magnificent 187ft (57m) GL Watson-designed steam yacht Mingary, (above left) built in 1889. Designed for sumptuous leisure she soon found service in war. Mingary was hired by the Navy in 1915, fitted with armaments, had the grim duty of sweeping for survivors of the Battle of Jutland and after being badly holed, limped back to Rosyth and sank on her mooring. She was raised in 1919, sold to Egypt for commercial service but sank in a collision in 1927. The exquisite builder’s model was estimated at £10,000-15,000 for…

For blue water sailors, it's a point of departure or arrival. For cruising sailors, it's a goal or a haven. For small boat sailors, it's a vast, sheltered playground. For superyachts, it's a date in their diary. For many commercial ships it's been their place of build. For yachting historians, well, we'd be here all day. Falmouth, Cornwall, is not one of the most famous and best-loved harbours in the world for nothing. These waters have hosted maritime history for centuries and they continue to do so. As we prepare for the town's wonderful local classic regatta on 22-24 June, over the next few pages we look at what vessels and events have gone before. Your whistlestop tour of nautical Falmouth begins here… The town's historic roots lie with the…

Back in 2006 we owned a wooden motorsailer. On the mooring next to us was a beautiful GRP sloop with a sweeping teak coachroof: we didn’t know what she was but we agreed that when the children were old enough for us to manage a more powerful boat, that was the one for us. It transpired that she was a Nicholson 43, so when the time came to move on the search began. Sarah was for sale in Wales and the delivery trip back to Scotland over a wild couple of days in January 2010 confirmed that we had made the right choice. Bangor in Northern Ireland to Ardfern in Scotland took only 12 hours on port tack. As one long-time owner once said to me: “I’ve had several boats…

“Which Med regatta should everyone see? The Number One has to be Les Voiles de Saint-Tropez. Even though there are those guys from the moderns [the Wally fleet], they just make the classics look better. The Med scene is often perceived as exclusive, for big boats and affuent owners with professional crews only. Is that the case in your experience? Heavens no! There are dozens of beautiful little boats that race year after year; lots of crews sleep and eat aboard – different strokes for different folks, and there’s room for all. Your favourite regatta memories? Hundreds and hundreds…sheltering with a terrible RIB in the lee of a little island and only venturing out into 30 knots when a boat would fly past; working in the van behind the beer…

A few years ago, we published a short report on the Koalen 17, the newest trailable cabin sailing yacht from French small boat designer Francois Vivier. The range has now grown, with the addition of the Koalen 18 and 26. This means we can now talk about the Koalen boats as a range. The look of these craft is derived from the traditional fishing boats of Northern Brittany, with, as Vivier notes “the plumb stem and moderately raked transom”. Construction is based around a very strong skeleton of multiple bulkheads and stringers, over which the plywood planking is laid. Planking in the garboard area is traditional fore-and-aft, but the rest is laid vertically, a build method that Vivier believes is faster than strip plank or clinker ply. The boats can…

The turn off from the ambitiously named Land’s End Road (it’s a lane) into Elephant Boatyard is a portal to another world. A hairpin bend takes you down a short, steep hill into a yard that has attained, over the decades, near-legendary status among Solent sailors. It’s a rambling site that has grown organically since it was founded in 1951 by Mike Richardson, and its feet are firmly in the water, with the office and the Ferry Inn restaurant afloat on a disused ferry made fast to the land. Boatbuilding here goes back further than 1951 though; a lot further. The yard is named after HMS Elephant, a 74-gun third-rate ship of the line built here in 1786 and Nelson’s flagship during the Battle of Copenhagen in 1801. This was…

CIRCE S&S that won line honours in the 1951 Fastnet and true to her name is still in bewitching form after a major refit COBLES PAST AND PRESENT The north east’s classic workboat is enjoying a long-overdue revival GOLDEN GLOBE RACE 50 years after the historic Sunday Times event, the race for madmen is on again. Full preview of the runners and riders PLUS… Sailing on the William Atkin-designed Ilda in Italy, we report from the front line at Antigua Classics, a handsome Dunkirk Little Ship on the French canals, and much more… JULY 2018 ON SALE Friday 1 June, 2018 (or why not subscribe!)…