Innehållsförteckning för Apr-10 från Classic Boat

The Danes, once having been Vikings, should be a happier bunch. Having conquered and sired their way around Northern Europe and way beyond in centuries past you’d think they’d be relaxed as schnapps on Sunday about the way of the world. Aren’t they responsible for the very word ‘blonde’? Yet it seems they have caught the same disease of all past conquerors of repute; they’ve drawn in their metaphorical horns and, in rueful rumination, have discovered health and safety – see our report on p12. This story, about ‘your boat not being safe to come into my port, because it doesn’t tick all the boxes that I tick’, seems bizarre in the extreme. OK, so this is about charter vessels but what are we saying here? A skipper will be…

Three regattas along England’s South Coast in 2012 will see, for the first time in history, more than four J-Class yachts racing in a fleet together. The regattas, planned by the J-Class Association, will take in Falmouth (27-30 June) and the Solent (19-21 July), where the yachts will repeat the race around the Isle of Wight first played out in 1851 for the Hundred Guinea Cup, a race now better known as the America’s Cup. In 2008 there were four J-Class yachts in the world: Shamrock V, Velsheda and Endeavour (all restored 1930s Charles Nicholson originals) – newly joined by Ranger, a 2002 steel replica of the Starling Burgess original. The unprecedented boom in new J-Class building in the Netherlands over the last two years means that by the time…

At the same time as the restoration of Charterhouse, coracle and curragh builder Peter Faulkner started building a cwrwg on St David’s Day (1 March) in the Ocean Lab at Fishguard Harbour. Visitors to Beale Park in 2006 might remember Peter building a coracle on our stand. The cwrwg is the Welsh version of the larger curragh, and the build will be the first reconstruction of such a craft. When finished, the cwrwg (pronounced currig) will be used to investigate the traditional fishing methods of its era. It will then undertake a coastal voyage from Fishguard along the west Welsh coast to Cardigan, in the wake of the Celtic saints of antiquity.…

Two classy daysailers developed independently on either side of the pond have near-identical rigs and design briefs. British designer Paul Spooner’s 32ft (9.8m) Sundowner shows hints of the American Sharpie, while American Ezra Smith’s new 31ft (9.5m) catboat draws from GL Watson and English smacks. Both Spooner, lead designer at Fairlie Restorations, and Smith, a superyacht interiors designer, have the same target client: wealthy, largeyacht owners who want a small, no-fuss daysailer to poke around the beautiful harbours and estuaries their larger craft take them to. Spooner Sundowner “This is a boat to fill a hole in the market,” says Spooner of the Sundowner, a double-ended, shoal-draught boat with a cat or cat yawl rig. “The trend towards performance in daysailers loses the relaxing side of sailing,” he adds, referring…

SPECIAL REPORT BLACK FLAG PROTEST A sea-battle has broken out between the normallypeaceable nations of Denmark and the Netherlands. Conducted chiefly in the offices of bureaucrats and lawyers, it has grave implications for the viability of Dutch traditional charter ships, and indeed for sailing and Tall Ships of other nations like the UK. In effect, the Danes have banned the large Dutch traditional charter fleet of schooners, clippers and the like from entering their ports, through a decision not to recognize Dutch national safety certificates – a serious restriction since Denmark has always featured heavily in their itineraries. National safety certificates are, for traditional ships, a recognized substitute for certification under SOLAS, the international Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea. Although not a legal requirement, all countries worldwide…

I can’t sleep for excitement. It’s like Christmas Eve as a child. We have spent the last three nights in Stockholm, and I have fallen in love with this sophisticated and attractive city. But what is keeping me awake is the prospect of sailing a yacht on the Baltic for the first time tomorrow, something I have been promising myself for years. In the morning, an efficient electric train takes us out of the Stockholm suburbs. “They all speak English in Sweden,” everyone told us. Indeed they do, except for train guards, it seems. Also, Swedish place names are not pronounced quite how you’d expect. Yet, despite not knowing a word of Swedish, other than “hej” and “tack” (hello and thank you), Colin and I manage to arrive in Åkersberga,…

Girl power is not new to Antigua: the event itself is run by a husband-and-wife team, and in 2005, editor Dan Houston stumbled upon Ibis, a 122-year-old Whitstable oyster dredger owned by Helen Davies, of the late band Sex Slaves from Hell. The tradition continues this year: as well as an all-female crewed Spirit 46 sloop, there’s going to be the pink boat... Kirsty Morrison first went to Antigua Classics in 2007, arriving from Bequia on the 62ft Herreshoff schooner Perception, and sailing her back to Martha’s Vineyard afterwards. “I could not believe the wealth and variety of boats and had to keep pinching myself that I was racing among them. Although the larger boats, the Js especially, were breathtaking, what really caught my eye were the beautiful little brightly-coloured…

Testing boats built outside the main run of production can be a test of patience: you often have to wait years for the prototype to be built. In fact, the Secret has been popular for a decade or so in Australia, where over 40 have been sold, but there were none in the UK. And so it was that every year at the Beale Park Boat Show, I’d wander over to find Max Campbell, trademark pipe in mouth, and ask impatiently when he’d finish his first 20ft (6m) Secret type gaffer, the boat that would act as demonstrator for his newly-formed company, Whisper Boats, the UK distributor for the Aussie firm Scruffie Marine owned by Essex ex-pat Derek Ellard, the boat’s designer. Trailer-gaffers have proliferated greatly since the success of…

Up in the northern area of Rotterdam in the Netherlands, surrounding a little brook called the Rotte, which gave the city its name, is a lake district called Bergse Plas, a remarkable natural area and a perfect place for leisure boats. Sailing these protected waters gives a splendid view of the modern Rotterdam city skyline with its everincreasing number of striking highrises and the famous Erasmus bridge dominating the far distance. Overlooking one of the smaller lakes is the restaurant Lommerrijk, which nowadays is also home port for the saloon boat Vrouwe Romein. The restaurant’s owner, John Laan, always wanted to do something with, or on, the water. Taking out guests for a boat trip seemed a excellent plan. The vessel would have to be in keeping with the style…

30 APRIL – 3 MAY Pilot Gig Worlds Isles of Scilly, Tel: +44 (0)1720 422670 www.worldgigs.co.uk, 100+ rowing gigs 8-9 MAY Cock o’ The Bristol Channel Barry YC, Tel: +44 (0)1326 270511 polthurne@btinternet.com For pilot cutters over 40ft. Tern Cup for under 40ft. Plus passage race 10 May, Barry-Swansea 12-14 MAY Pilot Cutter Association Races The cutters will be in Swansea for three days of racing. If you would like to crew on a cutter, phone Anna Brunyee, Tel: +44 (0)7971 414599 General info, Tel: +44 (0)1326 270511 polthurne@btinternet.com 23 MAY 2010 Jester Challenge Plymouth UK to Newport Rhode Island, USA 50th anniversary race of the first OSTAR, won by Francis Chichester on Gipsy Moth III. Fleet of about 100 classic and modern yachts under 30ft (9.1m) www.jesterinfo.org 27-30 MAY…

25 APRIL Beaulieu Boat Jumble Beaulieu, Hampshire Tel: +44 (0)1590 612345 For a list of UK boat jumbles, visit: www.boatjumbleassociation.co.uk 4-6 JUNE Beale Park Boat Show Nr Pangbourne, Reading Tel: +44 (0)118 976 7498 18-20 JUNE South Wales Boat Show Swansea, Ben Sutcliffe Tel: +44 (0)7796 457307 30 JULY – 1 AUGUST North Wales Boat Show Bangor, Gwynedd Tel: +44 (0)7796 457307 10-19 SEPTEMBER Southampton Boat Show Mayflower Park, Tickets, Tel: +44 (0)1784 473377 7-16 JANUARY2011 London Boat Show Excel Exhibition Centre, London Docklands Tel: +44 (0)8442 090333 29 APRIL – 8 MAY 2011 Liverpool Boat Show www.liverpoolboatshow.co.uk…

Baltic BALTIC REGATTA CIRCUIT NEW classic series (see CB261) Tel: +46 8559 21830, www.sailtrust.org 7-10 JULY Classic Baltic Race Sandhamn, Sweden 8-10 JULY Hanko Regatta Hanko, Finland 15-18 JULY St Petersburg Classic Regatta St Petersburg, Russia 3-8 AUGUST Trosa Tullgarn Royal Palace Regatta Trosa, Sweden 13-14 AUGUST Viaporin Trophy Helsinki, Finland JULY/AUGUST Baltic Sail Gdansk, Sassnitz, Halmstad, Klaipeda, Rostock, Karlskrona, Gävle, Swinoujscie: linked festivals Tel: +48 (58) 323 6736, www.balticsail.info Belgium 72-30 MAY Oostende voor Anker Tel: +32 (0)59 701199, www.oostendevooranker.be Denmark 12-14 AUGUST Svenborg Classic Regatta Tel: +45 6222 5104, www.classicregatta.dk 7-12 SEPTEMBER Limfjorden Rundt Tel: +45 6222 5104, www.classicregatta.dk www.limfjordenrundt.dk Finland JULY (TBC) Loviisa Small Ships Race Tel: +358 40 718 9897, www.loviisa.fi France 4-6 JUNE Tregor Classique Regatta Trebeurden, N Brittany, Tel: +33 (0)2 9623 6400 www.yctrebeurden.free.fr.…

23-24 APRIL Apalachicola Antique and Classic Boat Show Apalachicola, Florida Tel: +1 850 653 9419 www.antiqueboatshow.org Info@apalachicolabay.org 1 MAY 36th Annual Wooden Boat Show Tel: +1 252 728 7317 www.ncmaritimemuseum.org 1-2 MAY Keels and Wheels Concours d’Elegance Houston, Texas www.keels-wheels.com 14-16 MAY Bass Lake Rendezvous North California Tel: +1 714 524 2210 www.acbs-tahoe.org 5 JUNE IYRS Graduation Day Newport, Rhode Island Tel: +1 401 847 1018 www.moy.org 11-13 JUNE Classic Crusin’ weekend Branson, Missouri Tel: +1 402 770 5400 www.heartland-classics.org 18-20 JUNE St Michaels Antique and Classic Boat Festival Chesapeake, Maryland, Tel: +1 410 437 8108 www.chesapeakebayacbs.net JUNE (TBC) Antique and Classic Boat Show Arlington, New Jersey www.lhacbs.org 25-27 JUNE The Wooden Boat Show Mystic, Conneticut Tel +1 207 359 4651 www.thewoodenboatshow.com 8-11 JULY Chris Craft Rendezvous Port Orchard, Washington…

Nigel Sabin, recent graduate of the Boat Building Academy, Lyme Regis, decided to eschew metal fittings or glue in the building of his project dinghy. Instead, she’s held together with wooden trunnels (or trenails, if you prefer), held in position with ash wedges. The boat is an 8ft (2.4m) long traditional clinker Norwegian pram, designed by BBA instructor Mike Broom and built chiefly in yellow cedar and European oak. Nigel hadn’t intended to build a boat when he joined the course, but, as he says, “I gradually became fascinated by the concept of making one without any materials other than wood and which depended entirely for its structural integrity upon the fit of its components and the quality of the build.” Trunnels are still used in India and the Far…

The first stage of the deck construction was to fit the oak deck beams. While the camber of the deck was nothing like as pronounced as the curve of the hull frames, it was still advantageous to be able to select the timber for each beam so that the grain followed the shape of the camber as closely as possible. Once the beams were cut to shape, they were fastened to the beam shelf with 1/2in diameter copper rivets. Substantial oak lodging knees were then fitted in the angles between most of the deck beams and the top plank, with spacers filling the space above the beam shelf. Carlins Next to be fitted were the fore-and-aft carlins between the beams wherever openings in the deck such as hatches and the…

In terms of UV the summer of 2009 was more normal than of late – plenty of sunshine in early summer, a decent amount in late summer too but dismal and wet in July when the sun ought to have been at its most punishing. On balance though, our test pieces were not let off lightly. To gain a CB ‘Pass’, a product must manage 18 months without the integrity of the finish rupturing or eroding. This puts its performance well above the usual annual maintenance cycle. Three of the original contenders had to be retired from the test because they failed to meet these criteria (details in CB251). One of them, a teak oil, was withdrawn as such products, although cheap and easy to apply, need to be refreshed…

Topsail spar stowage QI have two topsails for my gaff-rigged Leigh cockler. One is small and not a problem, the other is quite a bit larger and needs spars to set. Where do other people stow their spars for the topsail when not in use? Also do they stow the spars with the topsail secured? Trying to find a decent spot before I make the spars and clutter up the cabin with yet more gear… AndrewF How do you reef? If you use points and have twin topping lifts the received wisdom is to fit lazyjacks and drop the topsail on its spars into the lazyjacks. This is really easy. If, like me, you use roller-reefing, things are more awkward and the common solution is to roll the topsail round…

The little fishes WHITEBAIT The little fishes Meet Larry and Wanda – two whitebait caught in January when going stowboating with Maria (see p28). Whitebait in Europe, and especially a place like the Thames estuary, is an umbrella term for the fry of a variety of fish, including young herring as here, sea bass, eel, plaice, whiting, shrimp and even jellyfish. Indeed we caught all these, it seemed, in our boxful at the time. The brown-backed sea bass were quickly thrown back into the sea where they lay dazed at the surface for a few seconds before the genetic programming kicked in and with a shake of the tail they disappeared back into the brown water. But we kept these blue backed young herring – mostly just a couple of…

Don Street’s Iolaire AROUND THE WORLD Iolaire, the 1905 Harris Brothers yawl owned for over half her long life by ex-USN submariner and Caribbean pilot Don Street, is finally ready ready to change hands, as Don, now 80, is finding that the mast is “growing taller”, the winches smaller and the anchor heavier. Famously engineless for many years, the teak-on-oak yawl now has a diesel-electric system, fitted in 2007, and with her 6,000-man hour refit carried out in 2005, Don reckons she’ll go without structural repair for another 20-30 years. According to her Don, she’s easily handled – something he’s proved by taking her a dozen times engineless (see CB209) up and down the Thames to St Katharine Docks and Limehouse Basin. She’s also crossed the Atlantic 12 times and…

The Reg Freeman hundred pounder The £200 2½-tonner offered for restoration in Getting Afloat (CB259) could indeed be a worthwhile project as the boat in question is a Reg Freeman hundred pounder! Built as a stock boat for just £100 ready to sail away by Johnson and Jago at Leighon-Sea and designed by local designer Reg Freeman, rigged to the owner’s requirements of bermudan or gaff, sloop or cutter, and complete with anchor, chain and warps, the hundred pounder is a true ‘little ship’. Thirty or more were built before the Second World War. These boats always look bigger than their 17ft (5.2m) waterline – 18ft (5.5m) overall – and because they were intended for Thames Estuary sailing, draught was limited to 3ft (0.9m), which meant they could go almost…

As we went to press, the 87ft (26.5m) engineless brigantine Tres Hombres was between the Canaries and Cape Verde islands, en route to deliver medicine and other aid to the earthquake victims of Haiti. Tres Hombres, CB235, is a sailtrading Tall Ship owned by three young Dutch men (hence the name) who hatched their grand plan after meeting at boatbuilding school. The hull, which was given to them free of charge, is oak on steel, and was originally a fishing boat. When CB met Dutchmen – Arjen van der Veen, Andreas Lackner and Jorne Langelaan – in 2007, the ship was still undergoing a €350,000 refit. This took a longer than expected; Tres Hombres left Den Helder, Netherlands, for Copenhagen, last December on her maiden cargo-carrying voyage, with food, wine…

The gaff yawl Gwenili was built in 1910 at Bordeaux Bastide in France by builder a La gorce Fils. Little of Gwenili’s early history is known, but after a photo of the boat appeared in this magazine two years ago, a man named Michael godley contacted the current owner Martin goodrich to say he remembered crewing on the yacht in 1939, with owner Michael Fellowes, both of whom had to cut their Breton cruise short to join the raF. From 1955 onwards, the yacht was owned for an amazing 47 years by schoolteacher John humby, who sailed her every year bar 1971 – which was a refit year. Martin has owned Gwenili since 2004 and has sailed in oga events and to holland and France. Gwenili, 38ft 2in (11.6m) LoD,…

Five years on from Windermere’s 10-knot (11.5mph) speed limit, the lake is more placid but controversy continues, writes Mike Taylor. Development Director for Cumbrian Tourism Richard Greenwood, against the move from the start, estimates a loss of £5-7 million a year in revenue from powerboat users. Similarly, the number of lake users registering with the National Park Authority has dropped by around 500 over since 2005. “It’s a loss of the area’s sporting heritage,” adds Richard. Ted Walsh, race committee chairman of Windermere Motor Boat Racing Club, established in 1925, reports a 30 per memberhsip drop. “We’re treading water,” he says. The club now hires out its beautiful Voysey-designed clubhouse for events to make ends meet and has moved its racing to Barrow Dock. Local lake user Paul Senior says,…

William IB Crealock, yacht designer, author and sailor, died last September at home in Carlsbad, California. From one-off custom designs – one of his favourites being the lovely 65ft (19.8m) schooner Kailuani – to production classics like the Westsail 42/43, Bill Crealock gave form to cruising for generations of sailors. His Crealock 37 remains a design capable of major ocean crossings, praised by owners for delivering them in safety and comfort. Fortune magazine twice selected Pacific Seacraft – builder of the 37 and several other Crealock designs – as a producer of America’s 100 best products, and Pacific Seacraft boats have featured in Ferenc Mate’s The World’s Best Sailboats. The Crealock 44 found favour with us in CB67. Among his many designs were sailing dinghies, preliminary sketches for a charter…

Sporadic maintenance Love to hear about your maintenance routine,” said Captain A Morgan (my neighbour in these pages – you know, the bloke with the sporran full of sawdust). Luckily his words arrived by email, so Cap’n Morgan didn’t see the bout of stuttering they induced. Routine is an uncomfortable word aboard Siandra. We might dream of regular haul-outs, businesslike varnish sessions and predictable facilities, but our lifestyle rarely offers such luxury. For starters, there’s no ‘off-season’ for full-time liveaboards: whether you’re on the move or not, the boat is constantly in use. Small jobs are squeezed in here and there, often driven by the law of ‘demand-and-supply’. If the winches start to grumble, you give them a service. When your towels acquire that ‘boaty’ smell, you clean the bilges.…

Sweden is not cheap. The exchange rate is not very favourable. We found it best not to dwell on this. But alcohol was less expensive than we had feared, and not very hard to get hold of. It is about twice as expensive as in the UK and not all shops sell the more potent brews, but this did not stop us drinking quite a lot of it. We had heard that the Baltic summer can be very warm, but we did not really believe this, so took lots of warm clothes we never wore, and spent most of the week in swimming shorts. We were also warned about mosquitoes and ticks, but Sweden is nowhere near as bad for midges as the west coast of Scotland. But Miona did…

Photography by Emily Harris I would love to write that it was a ‘moonless night, starless and bible black, the cobblestreets silent... and invisible down to the sloe-black, slow, black, crowblack, fishing boat bobbing sea...’ But I can’t say that because it’s the first full moon of 2010 tonight and the rags of high cloud have sailed off south like so many prayer flags from the frozen north, carrying their charges of ice and snow down across the latitudinal scale; missives to ameliorate the heat of globally-warmed air. They seem to have polished the stars as they went; many constellations from Orion to the Zodiac stand proud in their quarter, and Alcor, above Mizar on the tail of the Great Bear, is as bright as a wink from a scholar.…

All Whisper boats have long keels – it’s a major part of their DNA. The advantages over a centreboarder are weatherliness in shallow water and simplicity. The 12ft (3.7m) Shimmy is the smallest of the range, but a lot of boat for its length, and, with its keel, weighs a hefty 110kg. The trade-off is that four can go for a daysail and two can overnight on the sole. Her rig is unstayed lug, she has built-in oar storage and can accommodate an outboard. Next size up, 15ft 6in (4.7m), is the original Scruffie, designed as the ideal knockabout dayboat. Her designer claims she’ll accommodate eight for daysails; alternatively, she’s available with a cuddy cabin. She weighs 250-300kg. The Stornaway is an 18ft (5.5m) yawl weighing 300-400kg, with cabin, cuddy…

Before making his final decision to buy Vrouwe Romein, John Laan had to be sure she would be able to reach the restaurant, via a few fixed bridges. He knew the height of the boat from the waterline, so he checked the fixed bridges for their clearances. It appeared she could pass all of them with a few inches to spare. After quite a long period of restoration, she was launched and set off to Rotterdam. However, approaching the last fixed bridge before the restaurant, he found she could not pass, because of the rise in the water level. The level of the water varies from time in the different seasons. The local body of surveyors of the dykes was informed, and they activated surrounding pumping stations to lower the…

17-24 JULY British Classic Yacht Club Panerai Cowes Regatta Cowes, Isle of Wight David Orton, Tel: +44 (0)1159 465467, M: +44 (0)7817 296838 www.britishclassicyachtclub.org, davidorton3@aol.com Ninth edition of this rally, which always attracts large classics in numbers. The usual fleet of large BCYC yachts will be present as always – last year they numbered around 60. This year, the event is, for the first time (and it’s a first for any UK event) sponsored by keen classic sailing sponsors Panerai. If past experience is anything to go by, this endorsement will mean a glitzier event with more press coverage. It’s also likely that some of the bigger yachts in town for this year’s Westward Cup (see main events listing) will come along as special guests, just as the 2007 event…

Sail Training International, Tel: +44 (0)23 9258 4661, www.sailtraininginter national.org 8-11 APRIL Garibaldi Tall Ships Regatta Genoa, Italy 16-19 APRIL Race: Genoa to Sicily 9 MAY – 7 JUNE Historical Seas Tall Ships Regatta Volos (Greece), Vama (Bulgaria), Istanbul (Turkey), Lavrion (Greece) 10 JULY – 10 AUGUST The Tall Ships Races 2010 Antwerp (Belgium), Aalborg (Denmark), Kristiansand (Norway), Hartlepool (UK) 10 AUGUST North Sea Tall Ships Regatta Hartlepool (UK) to IJmuiden, Netherlands 19-23 AUGUST Sail Amsterdam (Netherlands) Tel: +31 (0)20 681 1804, www.sail2010-nl/en Tall Ships feature prominently at this big festival of the sea 25-29 AUGUST Sail Bremerhaven (Germany) Tel: +49 0471 946 46430, www.sail-bremerhaven.de Tall Ships feature prominently at this big festival of the sea…

www.cim-classicyachts.org 6-11 APRIL Les Voiles de Saint Barth Saint Barth, Antilles +59 0590 278727 www.lesvoilesdesaintbarth 7-9 MAY Ladies’ Cup Monaco Tel: +377 9310 6300 www.yacht-club-monaco.mc 7-9 MAY Calanque Classic Marseille, France Tel: +33 (0)4 9170 2582 www.yachting-club-calanquescassis.com 24-30 MAY Régates Impériales Ajaccio, Corsica, France www.regates-imperiales.com 30 MAY-1 JUNE Coupe de Printemps du YCF Ajaccio – Antibes, France Tel: +33 (0)4 704 10 00 www.ycf-club.fr 2-6 JUNE Les Voiles d’Antibes Antibes, France Tel: +33 (0)4 9334 4247 www.voilesdantibes.com 11-13 JUNE Porquerolles Classic Porquerolles, France Tel: +1 (0)4 9458 3449 17-20 JUNE Les Voiles du Vieux Port Marseille, France Tel: +33 (0)4 9154 3203 www.lesvoilesduvieuxport.com 23-27 JUNE Vele d’Epoca a Napoli Napoli, Italy Tel: +39 081 764 6162 www.leveledepoca.it 26 JUNE-8 JULY Trophée Bailli de Suffren St-Tropez, France–Malta Tel: +33 (0)4 9497…

Getting ready for an Easter launch is this new Sandown Bay Cutter, Hope, built by Isle of Wight boatbuilders H Attrill and Sons of St Helens, and based on a turn-of-thecentury boat, Sheila, owned and raced by Chris Attrill’s grandfather. These longshoreman’s boats were traditionally used for fishing during the winter and cleaned up for charter and racing during the summer. They were shallow-draft, beamy and roomy beach boats, but built with a turn of speed in mind. The new verson, strip-plank, 27ft 8in (8.4m) on deck, with an 8ft 1in (2.5m) beam has been built with pleasure rather than hard work in mind for local fisherman and sculptor Jeremy Gulley. Here she is in a capsize test, from which she righted with 6in (15cm) of freeboard and stayed stable.…

A welcome visitor to the CB stand at the Boat Show was Polish sailmaker Tadeusz Wojtowicz from Gdansk. His firm, Sail Service (en.sailservice.pl) has been making sails for 20 years – for ships tall and small. He’d be very happy to talk to UK sailmakers about co-operative projects, and issued an invitation: “If you or anybody else is interested in visiting Poland in the summer time we are ready to arrange the visit and show you some Polish classic yachts.” Apparently there are meetings in Ryn on 9-11 August and in Mikolajki, 27-29 August.…

Hatch trick WATERTIGHT HATCH Among the many things in need of improvement when Magali and I bought Sigfrid, our 34ft 6in (10.5m) steel ketch, was the companionway hatch. This had been made from plywood, presumably by the boat’s original owner, and at some stage during the intervening years, coated with a polyester gauze and rubberised paint to try and keep it waterproof. When this failed, various rubber flaps had been tacked in place to try to cure the leaks in what was an intrinsically bad design. When we decided to refurbish the whole of Sigfrid’s coachroof, fitting a watertight hatch was obviously high on our list of priorities. Initially, we assumed that finding a suitable design would be straightforward. There are, after all, plenty of sailing boats with satisfactory hatches,…

When the results of Series 1 CB march 2008 and Series 2 April 2009 are amalgamated we find we’re building a useful body of CB ‘Pass’ products. So, for the first time, here they are all together. Series 1 and 2 CB ‘Pass’ Products and their star ratings (*) The star rating The star rating works as follows. By implication, all star ratings are CB ‘Pass’ products. * excess of 18mths. ** excess of 30mths. *** excess of 42mths. **** excess of 54mths. (*) Distinction (Z): Based on coverage rate at number of coats required, not cost per litre.…

Boatbuilder, feral cat and an abandoned Buchanan This story starts in the rain forest of Guyana where I had been living for two years. An old friend came up the Barama river with the news of his recent acquisition – a 1940s 42ft (12.8m) Philip Rhodes in need of serious attention. Within 24 hours my bag was packed and we were on our way downriver – headed for Trinidad to fix my friend’s boat. By the end of my first month in the boatyard in Trinidad, I’d noticed Dhanu. Dumped at the back of the yard, bushes were growing up around her keel, and the caulking cotton was hanging out of the seams. With the peeling paint and rust stains streaking the hull and a couple of planks sprung from…

A history of Arctic exploration It was an Arctic explorer, William Scoresby Senior, who invented the crow’s nest – placing an inverted barrel at the masthead of a whaling ship so that a lookout could spend time aloft without freezing up completely. This book is full of such fascinations and links and celebrates the explorer’s continuing interest in those frozen wastes to the north. It’s a huge book and seems packed with information, as it has to be to distill hundreds of years of polar wanderings by those who had to know what was at the top of the world. It’s also an artwork part work, with hundreds of paintings, photos and ancient and modern maps forming a collection across the whole of the Arctic regions. The book begins with…

Luders 16 For the Luders Marine Construction Company of Stamford, CT, an order for 10 boats to a new design from Fishers Island Yacht Club, New York, couldn’t have come at a better time. The Great Depression of the 1930s had plunged America into hard economic times and the firm was suffering. The Luders 16, as the new design became known, however, provided not only much-needed work, but also became one of the company’s bestsellers. Designed by AE (Bill) Luders, the new one-design was developed for use by Fishers Island YC’s junior sailors to give them a bigger and more challenging boat to move up to. It was similar in design to a 6-Metre, featuring long, elegant overhangs, an attractive sheer, fin keel and a tall, narrow rig. Planked in…

Peggy Bawn’s waterline plate The adoption of a new measurement rule in 1886 was a watershed event in yacht design, perhaps more so than any other change before or since. Until that date yachts were measured for handicapping with a modified version of an ancient tonnage rule hull, intended to assess the cargo-carrying capacity of merchant ships by approximating the volume of the hull. The new formula was first proposed in Britain by Dixon Kemp in England in 1880, and while the Seawanhaka Yacht Club in America was the first to use it in 1882, it was eventually adopted throughout Britain and Ireland in 1886. It simply measured actual sail area (SA), multiplied this by the length on the waterline (LWL), and divided the result by an arbitrary constant. The…

It is rare that a complete harbour in the Solent comes onto the market but the latest episode in Bembridge Harbour’s recent troubled history (see CB248) sees this delightful backwater put up for sale by estate agents Chesterton Humberts for £3 million, reports Robin Gates. Included in the 135-acre freehold are the foreshore, four marinas of various sizes, 108 trot moorings, the winding approach channel from the Solent and as much mud as you can dig – because herein lies a small problem. Local marine businesses claim the harbour has become so silted up as a result of poor maintenance by the present owners – the Bembridge Harbour Improvement Company (BIC) – that it may not be accessible to boats for much longer unless urgent dredging is undertaken. On top…

In the austerity of post-war Britain, many yachtsmen took to the water cheaply by converting lifeboats: both those stored on ships and RNLI rescue craft. Last year, Marian, the Fishguard lifeboat from 1909-1931, converted to a yacht in the 50s, started her journey back to original. She was returned to the people of Fishguard and given back her RNLI name, Charterhouse, by the Lomas family, who’d owned her for 63 years, converted as the yacht Marian. She’s now sat next to the current RNLI station on ground lent by ferry operator Stena. The project will be overseen by local boatbuilder Robert Rees and helped by a volunteer team that includes the local youth club – fitting, as it was young people who first bought the boat. Charterhouse was Britain’s first…

A unique Riva that was the most powerful ever made ever when it hit the water in 1966 has sold for a record £508,000 at a Florida auction. The 1966 Super Aquarama was specially built for adventurer and motor racer Cal Connell, inventor of the GRP waterski and founder of Crusader Marine. In his quest to boost performance, Connell favoured the American route of extra horsepower – loads of it. Connell ordered hull number 125 as a platform for his twin 396cid (6.5-litre) Chevrolet big-block V8s, each producing a prodigious 400bhp. With 800bhp on tap the hot-rod Riva could achieve 54mph. In 2004, the boat was damaged in a Florida hurricane and subsequently restored by Riva World in Holland. It fetched top price at the Mecum Auction Company sale this…

A new sailing event aims to follow Uffa Fox’s 1930 voyage from Cowes to Stockholm, arriving in time for the first Trosa Tullgarn Royal Palace Regatta. Organised by the new Scandinavian Classic Yacht Trust, whose director Olle Appelberg describes it as a “1,000-mile raid”, it will start from Cowes on 24 July, at the end of this year’s British Classic Yacht Club Regatta, joining German yachts in Kiel. Uffa Fox made the trip in Vigilant (pictured) a new light-displacement 22sqm. It took him 17 days out and 12 days back. This trip plans to go via Terschelling, the Kiel Canal and Bornholm, arriving by 3 August. Details on www.sailtrust.org.…

The cough mutiny Astrain of false modesty is often found in columnists; they pretend to be just like you and me, prone to the same mistakes and foibles. Admitting cockups in print just allows them to confess without embarrassment, and get paid too. In that respect, although I write a column, I don’t feel more competent to give advice than any number of those who read my stuff. Less so, for these days my sailing is limited to twice-weekly dinghy racing and two weeks’ cruising the Hebrides. All weather dependent. Last November, however, found me in Turkey at the start of a delivery trip to Malta which I undertook in order to top up my level of experience and give some justification for giving the kind of sage advice expected…

EVENTS PREVIEW 2010 It’s April, and British yachtsmen are making ready for the coming season, with thoughts turning to scrapers, paint and antifoul. Four thousand miles away in the Caribbean, the sun is high, and on the West Indian island of Antigua (population 70,000, number of beaches 365), preparations are underway for the 23rd annual Antigua Classic Yacht Regatta. It’s been firmly established as one of the top classic events since 1988 – but in fact, its roots go back even further, to the 1960s, when a group of charter skippers initiated an annual end-of-season race to Guadeloupe and back. Antigua Race Week was born out of this and formalised in 1967. Over the next two decades, though, the fleet became increasingly modern – and fast. It was the era…

The historical authorities on stowboating are the late John Leather, who wrote of it in his early book Gaff Rig and also in The Northseaman, and Hervey Benham who chronicled the exploits of the stowboaters in a later book, The Stowboaters, in 1977. Stowboating has been around since the 15th century. In 1488 Parliament issued a decree trying to stop it, offering a £10 reward for information against stallboats, as they were then known. An Act against it was passed in 1558, but to little effect – the fishermen arguing that the sprats were a different (sub)species of herring; though whitebait are the fry of a number of fish species (see p75). Parliament’s eco concerns were ignored and stall, or stowboating – the practice of hanging a long, narrow-mesh net…

Building the replica When the idea of building a replica gundalow was first mooted by a few citizens of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in around 1977, the guiding principle was a historically accurate replica of their unique cargo-carrying riverboat, using traditional materials and methods, to be used as an educational resource. The Piscataqua Gundalow Project was the name given the project by those citizens who wrote the many grant applications. The boat, to be called the Capt. Edward H Adams was, according to Molly Bolster, executive director of the Gundalow Company, intended to create “a travelling exhibit that could educate school groups and the public about this unique type of vessel that was so important to the Piscataqua region.” The first chips flew in February 1979 when two 140ft (42.7m) pine…

A vicious winter and a rotten recession have done nothing to dampen the global events calendar: it’s bigger than ever. There’s the five-yearly Dunkirk Return this year, and Jester Challenge celebrates 50 years since the first OSTAR: 100 boats of up to 30ft (9.1m) are already registered to leave England for New England in May. The Solent is once again the place to be this July: The BCYC regatta has really come of age this year, with sponsorship from Panerai, giving it the same cachet as the glamorous Mediterranean regattas, while concurrently the smaller Metre boats and classic keelboats will be racing in Cowes Classic Week, now in its third year and gradually gaining in stature as a traditionalists’ alternative to Cowes Week. Also in the Solent in July will…

www.oldgaffersassociation.org The Old Gaffers Association, c50 years old, is by far the most active classic and traditional sailing body in the UK. They are fond of reminding us that they’re not all old and not all gaffers either, and welcome new membership from sailors – both quadrilateral and trilateral. The OGA is divided into regions covering the country. In the list below, which is a small sample of what the OGA is doing this year, TS means ‘trailer sailers’, EC means ‘East Coast’, SOL means ‘Solent’, DEV means ‘Devon’ and NWA means ‘North Wales’. Other areas are: MCP (Medway Cinque Ports), NI (Northern Ireland), SCO (Scotland), and NL (Netherlands). Wherever you live, there are OGA events nearby. 7-9 MAY (TS) Rally at Clywedog Mid Wales. Mike Stevens, Tel: +44 (0)1792…

For details of international events, visit: www.classic-boatrallies.co.uk 17-18 JULY Pageant of Power Cholmondeley Castle, Cheshire Rod Champkin, Tel: +44 (0)1603 507554 30 JULY – 2 AUGUST 21st British Classic Motorboat Rally Windermere, Lake District Chris Barker, Tel: +44 (0)1253 813007 13-15 AUGUST Cardiff Bay Classic Weekend Steve Carpenter, Tel: +44 (0)1243 527875, www.cmba-uk.com Main annual rally and AGM for the Classic Motorboat Association 40-50 boats 16-19 SEPTEMBER Falmouth Rally National Maritime Museum, Falmouth, Cornwall Tim Parr, Tel: +44 (0)1841 520023, www.cmba-uk.com Rally, trips and other events, 15+ boats 17-19 SEPTEMBER Autumn Weekend Loch Lomond, Stirlingshire/Dumbartonshire Chris Barker, Tel: +44 (0)1253 813007, www.cmba-uk.com Informal event – 15 boats expected…

Canada 29 JULY-1 AUGUST Mahone Bay Festival Nova Scotia, Tel: +1 902 624 0348 www.mahonebayclassicboatfestival.org General regatta with a good show of classics 20-22 AUGUST Montreal Classic Boat Festival Montreal, www.fbcmontreal.com 26-29 AUGUST Vancouver Wooden Boat Festival Vancouver, Tel: +1 604 519 7400 www.vancouverwoodenboat.com Caribbean 6-11 APRIL Les Voiles de St Barth NEW A new pre-Antigua event including a classics class www.lesvoilesdestbarth.com 15-20 APRIL Antigua Classics Week Tel: +1 (268) 460 1799 www.antiguaclassics.com Southern hemisphere 11-14 FEBRUARY 2011, Hobart, Tasmania Australian Wooden Boat Festival www.australianwoodenboatfestival.com.au…

This time of year, the workshops of Suffolk Yacht Harbour, the marina at Levington on the River Orwell, are fairly stuffed with an array of tasty classics. In this photo, front left, is Lora, built 1910 and in for a conversion back from bermudan to her original gaff rig to celebrate her centenary. Next to her is an Otter class motor cruiser, Julia Gee, from one of YN’s favourite designers, J Francis Jones. Back row from left is Toccata, an S&S Finisterre class; Gudgeon, a Mylne yawl (new counter and engine), and – hidden behind the Otter – lurks a Knud Reimers sloop, Cameleon, in for heavy structural repairs. Outside in the yard, Croix des Gardes, the Henri Dervin sloop, is having her keel rebedded and her floors and mast…

Alinda V, the 78ft (23.8m) teak on wrought iron ketch designed by Alfred Mylne and built by Alexander Stephen and son in glasgow in 1934, is currently undergoing an extensive refit and restoration at Southampton Yacht Services. Based in greece, she has spent some 50 years under the care of two generations of the same family, her present captain, Panayotis tsanis having taken over from his father some years ago. As well as repairs to hull and deck, and re-engineering of mechanical and electrical systems, a new teak deckhouse and new joinery in figured European oak will follow the original designs as closely as possible. Completion is planned for this summer.…

For removing wood with satisfying speed nothing beats the drawknife. Down the years it has appeared with adjustable and folding handles, chamfer guides and various degrees of curvature designed for specific tasks, but what I like about this one, handed down from Grandad, is what the drawknife epitomises for me: simplicity. Forged from flat steel bar with tangs for ash handles perpendicular to the cutting edge, in the British style, it remains as solid as the day it left the smithy. A large drawknife can be an intimidating tool but a 6in (15cm) blade such as this quickly becomes one with the user. Unencumbered by sole, fence or depth stop it lets you see exactly what you are doing and is capable of roughing out rounds and hollows otherwise awkward…

Random orbital sanders It’s that time again when even as the snow is still blowing in flurries one’s mind starts to think of fettling the boat. This means paint, but before painting can be thought of there is all the preparation to do and that means scapers and... sanders. We thought we’d look at sanders, which come in all shapes and sizes, starting with random orbital sanders. Tradesmen have for years used air-powered versions but for those without the use of compressed air there are plenty of electrically powered models in the shops and catalogues. These sanders have a rotating circular pad that also orbits upon a sanding disk held usually by Velcro-like hooks and eyes. Holes in both the pad and the sanding disk facilitate dust extraction. In professional…

Rewind handheld VHF radio The thing that sets the Cobra MR HH415 LI apart from the competition is its Rewind feature, whereby recent transmissions are stored in the unit and can be replayed to clarify what was said. The Cobra has all the other features you’d expect from a VHF, such as tri-band watch, scanning and dedicated channel 16 button, but the replay system is a new one on us. At any stage during a transmission, the button marked REW can be pressed to hear again the last 20 seconds of what has been said. Though the REW feature must be turned off if this is to be stored for longer. It’s a useful trick and the unit stands up well to the competition in other areas too – there…

12: Meet your instructors Here at Dazed Kipper HQ we reckon that everyone in the country should learn to sail. There is a basic reason for this, namely that members of our island race should be able to visit Abroad without getting their feet wet. Unfortunately, bureaucrats have got hold of sailing instruction and started to measure it, instituting the well-known series of exams that commences with Competent Cradle and progresses via 36 intermediate stages to Burial at Sea. At DKHQ we believe that bureaucracy will never be a substitute for character. With a view to this, we are pleased to be publishing details of the Dazed Kipper Instructors’ Collective with Ray, aka The Academy Ray is of course too well known to require introduction. His philosophy of seamanship is…

Rebuilding the cockler Mary Amelia Another venerable East Coast working boat gets restored to sailing condition. By Robert Simper Lawrence 0f Arabia and the Air Sea Rescue TE Lawrence’s part in establishing an air sea rescue service, taking hull design to war-winning speeds Return to dunkirk The Little Ships are servicing their engines... hell, some of them are putting in new ones as the d-day for this quinquennial event draws closer Plus: Electric boats: the case for and against Further adventures of Cato and Dhanu from Ben Jefferies, electric navigation in the Arctic and more May issue on sale 15 April 2010 Subscribe now! Tel: +44 (0)1444 475675…