Innehållsförteckning för July 2010 från Classic Boat

Is it just me or has there been a bit of London Bus syndrome on TV lately? London buses, for foreign readers, are famously descried for not arriving at the stated times. So that you wait and wait (and wait) at the bus stop and then suddenly three arrive all at once. (It helps create our sense of humour.) I think the same could be said for the recent BBC series Sea Fever, which has run during the month of May, mostly on BBC4 television but also with repeats on BBC2. The series has been fantastic for any fan of maritime history, covering a whole panoply of subjects, from a wonderfully prosaic programme on surfing in Cornwall to Dan Snow’s interesting Empire of the Seas, Tom Cunliffe’s eclectic Boats that Built…

Her non-attendance is due to fitting-out taking longer than expected because of the extremely cold weather. She was due to attend this July’s inaugural Westward Cup (see p22). She was also going to take up an annual living-history museum residence at the Isle of Wight, showing members of the public what this famous yacht was really like. This has now been postponed till next year but, as Coates points out, after the wait he has already endured, this is “a minor hiccup by comparison”.…

More than 50 Dunkirk Little Ships set out from Ramsgate in clearing rain on 27 May in commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the Dunkirk evacuations. All had taken part in the epic rescue in June 1940. As this issue of CB went to press they were still motoring in formation on their 8-hour Channel crossing to Dunkirk, escorted by Royal Navy frigate HMS Monmouth. On board the Little Ships were members of the Classic Boat team: editor Dan Houston, news editor Steffan Meyric Hughes and photographer Ray Little; their reports will appear next month. This is the tenth of the fiveyearly crossings since the late Raymond Baxter started them in 1965. He is to have a street in Dunkirk named after him. Flypast as Anne is launched Anne, the…

This year’s BCYC regatta, 17-24 July, will feature a new sponsors’ area next to the Cowes Yacht Haven buildings, reports Martin Smith. The aim of Panerai, the event’s new title sponsor, is to form a social hub for the regatta where crews can meet after racing and watch screened footage of the day’s action. The inclusion of a major sponsor for the first time in the event’s nine-year history should see much more of a focus for the for entertainment around the Yacht Haven area, though the prizegiving dinner will still be held at the Squadron on the last Friday. As we went to press, 15 boats had confirmed entries, but the BCYC expects numbers to at least equal last year’s record of more than 60 including, it is hoped,…

The 15sqm yacht Vixen, designed by Knud Reimers and built in 1937, has taken up this year’s new Uffa Fox Challenge and will sail from Cowes on 17 July, to Trosa near Stockholm, writes Olle Appelberg. The journey, in the wake of Uffa Fox’s solo voyage of 1930, is also an environmental mission. Luke Yeates and crew will almost ‘sit on the water’ and will experience the water quality much more directly than in a modern yacht. They will collect water samples daily(!). Professor Lena Kautsky at the Stockholm University Marine Field Station at Askö will analyse the tests and compare them to data from 1930, when Uffa made the trip. Once in the Baltic, Vixen will be one of four British yachts at the Royal Palace Regatta at Trosa…

Shun and sà-nùk in Thailand Pitaksinchai Shipyard (PSS) is just across the border in Thailand. To reach it, we need to find the entrance to a muddy, minor river. When the 106ft (32.3m) Summers & Payne Cariad was restored at PSS in 2008, her shipwrights surveyed the Chebilang estuary and produced a set of waypoints. Applying these to an ancient Thai chart of dubious datum, we use the flood to short-tack the narrow channel. Bamboo withies mark the edge of the mud – or so we think, until we see a local fisherman hurling them into the water indiscriminately. Not withies after all, but fish-trap markers. Swallowed by a mangrove forest, we feel our way upstream. Although small, Chebilang village is home to several hundred wooden fishing boats. The traffic…

The resurrected Big Class is burgeoning and this year will see the Solent enter the modern classic Big Class racing calendar with the major regatta that the home of yachting deserves. It’s come to pass that the charms of the Mediterranean Sea so well suit the working lives of today’s large classic yachts – not to mention the lifestyles of their owners – that over the years that the class has been growing, spectators in more northern waters have been given little opportunity to experience the charms of seeing today’s cla big class yachts going head to head. The 2001 America’s Cup Jubilee remains the most notable exception to this – and is still talked about in revered tones by those who were there – though since then, a notable…

The ladies who launch The 2010 Antigua Classics regatta is over; my boat and my body are still recovering and I’m still wondering quite how all of this came about. For me this regatta was a realisation of a three-year dream. I brought Pink Lady, a 37ft (11.3m) Carriacou sloop 300 miles from Carriacou and raced her in the Antigua Classics regatta with some of my most inspiring female sailor friends, all clad in pink bikinis. Built in 1975 on the beach in Windward, Carriacou, she is the oldest sloop still afloat and the only one to compete in Antigua without winches. It took three of my girls hanging off the jib sheet to trim for the upwind legs and even more suspended from the main halyard to tighten the…

Boats and courses vary from event to event, but races are held over straight courses of between 250 and 1,000 metres in length, divided into six or eight lanes just 10 metres wide. With 120 or more teams taking part, races are held in sudden-death heats where the first two teams to cross the line qualify for subsequent rounds. Starts can be frantic affairs and preempting the gun can give a noticeable advantage if overlooked by the officials. A number of endurance events featuring dragon boats also take place around the world, including the Great River Race on the Thames in London. The bigger events in China and Hong Kong award prize money amounting to thousands of pounds, thus attracting some of the world’s major teams. Trophies are awarded for…

WINNER Amatasi 27 by James Wharram and Hanneke Boon JUDGES’ VIEW Of all the competition entries, this is the one that took us the furthest away from our preconceived ideas of an ideal inshore fishing boat. Then, when we began to look at the design without prejudice, we could see a boat that would be a delight to build, sail and fish. James is well known for his catamaran (double canoe) designs, which have proved to be very capable craft, sailing the oceans of the world. For this design he has drawn on his considerable knowledge and observations of this type of boat being used for inshore fishing in many parts of the world, and he justifiably reasons that the Amatasi 27 would be equally suitable for Eco fishing in…

Built by Simpson, Strickland of Dartmouth in 1894, steam launch Flirt was shipped to Kootenay Lake, British Columbia, Canada, where she worked as a general purpose carrier, also delivering the Royal Mail. In 2006, Capt Joe Higgs transhipped her to Wellington, New Zealand, and began the building of a replica. The current stage of the project finds the hull complete and ready to be united with her engine and boiler. Just one problem: the steep incline from the workshop to the road. The solution: a tractor with water replacing the air in the tyres to aid stability, and strong ropes around some of the larger trees further up the hill. They got her down!…

Many a blunt blade can be sharpened by an oilstone. Forget bench grinders – they’re noisy, aggressive and, for a good one, expensive. Sharpening by hand requires patience but instils tranquillity. The method is straightforward. Hold the blade at a steady angle while stroking it up and down the lightly oiled stone. Typical angles are 25° for the primary bevel and 30° for the secondary bevel. But first ensure the back of the blade is flat with a few strokes held horizontal, because a straight cutting edge is made by the meeting of two flat planes When the planes meet you’ll see a ‘wire edge’, the tiniest sliver of loose steel, removed by alternately honing the blade front and back. A light oil is essential to clear away steel swarf…

Q Engine bay limber holes are inaccessible but blocked solid with what must be years of engine oil build up. I can’t get at it to break it up and the front bilge is full of water. Rmorris301 • Have you enough access to use a flexible drive? Forbsie • Not sure chuck will fit through limbers. I expect the drill will not have enough hold to work - but I’ll give it a try. Another idea is to block the limber hole forward of the obstruction, suck out the water to get the obstruction dry, then pour in concentrated tar remover. Some are water soluble and safe but I don’t know how effective they are. Rmorris301 • Softening with a hot-air gun first may help. Oldfrank • Is there…

Waterproof camcorder Having a waterproof camera not only allows you to film and photograph (1.5m) underwater but it lets you take it to places where cameramen fear to tread, like dust storms and drinking competitions. This Sanyo Xacti HD vpc-ca9 waterproof camcorder and camera, with 5x optical zoom, has managed to earn the IPX8 waterproof rating (the highest) allowing users to capture crisp, high-definition footage and 9 megapixel photos while managing to dispense with the usual clunky rubber buttons and lack of zoom. In fact it looks so much like a normal camera that it is nerve-racking dunking it for the first time. It has a very close macro lens and is also astoundingly cheap at around only £200 but a little trickier for left handers www.sanyo.com Aquaseal Map Seal…

Irish naval architect George O’Brien Kennedy is arguably best known for his 14ft (4.3m) Yachting World Dayboat, with more than 800 built since 1949, yet it is his design of a 14ft half-decked clinker dinghy called Fuss, built eleven years earlier, that proved one of his most influential. For despite its being relatively unknown, it was responsible for initiating the production of not one but four different dinghy classes: the IDRA 14, the Waldringfield Dragonfly One-Design, the Christchurch Dragonflies and the Hardway Seabirds. Of these, two – the IDRA 14 and Waldringfield Dragonfly OD – are still in existence and sailed regularly as a fleet, and it is the latter that we are looking at this month. The Dragonfly OD came about when members of Waldringfield Sailing Club (WCS) in…

As a sailor you are likely to have used a compass. But exactly how much do you know about the Earth’s magnetic field? Often, contact with geomagnetism fills the student’s head with an odd whistling noise. Relax. There is nothing organically wrong, or at least nothing that the Dazed Kipper Manual (with Ray) can’t fix for you. Let us start at the beginning. Imagine a football with continents instead of hexagons and logos, wrapped in a tubular shrimping net, without a frame obviously, knotted at each end, the net, that is, not the football, because you can’t knot a football. The lines of the netting across the surface of the ball represent the lines of force of the Earth’s magnetic field, but not very well, because they are made of…

As a chronic sufferer of sea-sickness I admire Sir Henry Bessemer’s efforts to solve the problem with his ingeniously suspended saloon (Sternpost, CB263). He was, though, slightly off-target in believing that sea-sickness originates in the human diaphragm – it springs from the brain’s inability to resolve conflicting messages from the eye, mechanical receptors in joints and muscles, and the vestibule of the inner ear – but he was absolutely right in pin-pointing a vessel’s repetitive acceleration and deceleration as the cause of the nausea, cold sweat and headache I know too well. Having tried acupressure with a bobble on a wrist-band, antihistamines and other drugs, the only substance I find to at least hasten recovery is ginger. Ginger’s health benefits have long been recognised – hence the Latin name Zingiber officinale,…

The drama and beauty of wind, sails and sea are captured brilliantly in this work, which shows the New York Yacht Club 40ft Class (12.2m) racing, in July 1922 during Larchmont Race Week, Larchmont, New York. Here five NYYC 40ft Class gaffrigged sloops are racing, port beam view. From left to right four are identified: Rowdy No9, Zilph No12 (foreground), Pamparo No7, Maisie No5, all built in 1916 by Herreshoff Mfg of Bristol, Rhode Island, to designs by Nathanael G Herreshoff. This previously unpublished photograph is from a 6x8in glass plate negative, taken by Rosenfeld and Sons, and comes from Mystic Seaport’s collection of nearly 1 million Rosenfeld images – many now online. See more at www.rosenfeldcollection.org.…

Venture was built by George Lawley & Sons in Boston, Mass, as a flush-decked, 36ft (11m) gaff-rigged sloop. She passed through two different owners before being bought by a man named Pat West, who owned her for nearly 60 years and wrote the book Sloop Venture of Vineyard Haven, about his adventures and misadventures aboard. The book describes how Venture has been dismasted, caught on fire, washed ashore, and acted as the receiving platform for a 400lb (181kg) tuna caught offshore. When Pat grew too old to sail, he donated the boat to Nat Benjamin of Gannon & Benjamin Boatyard on Martha’s Vineyard, who carried out a complete rebuild, adding a low cabin to her flush deck. Nat owned Venture for 28 years, but sold her last year to Brianna…

The Swan 34, Carte Blanche, launched on 23 April after a full restoration at Falmouth’s Pendennis Shipyard, played a pivotal role in yachting history, writes Anne Hammick. Without her, the entire Swan marque might never have existed. When, in the mid 1960s, young Finnish boatbuilder Pekka Koskenkylä asked Rod Stephens to design a fin-and-skeg 36-footer (11m) for build in the then-new GRP, he needed three firm orders before he could go ahead. Carte Blanche (originally Casse Tête) was number three and is the oldest Swan still actively sailed. Launched in 1968, she swept the board at Cowes that year. Jem and Mor Tetley became her third owners in 1971 with another Cornish couple, and used her for round-the-cans racing and family cruising. She is still in the same ownership today,…

Flying boats are without doubt the most romantic form of air travel, not least for Henry Ford, who bought a ‘pusher’-propped Curtiss MF for his long-term paramour Evangeline Dahlinger. A Curtiss MF was also Howard Hughes’s first flying-boat experience and he later incorporated seaplanes into his pick-up routine, disappearing for days with strings of giddy starlets as the earth moved beneath their wings. Glenn H Curtiss’s fabulous machines were at the vanguard of the technology, yet today survivors are extremely rare. When a 1917 Curtiss MF came up for auction as the only lot in a special Bonhams sale it won the heart of an anonymous telephone bidder who paid £329,000. The 8.25-litre, V8-powered machine, one of just four known MF survivors, had been wonderfully preserved in a longterm museum…

This year’s St Petersburg Classic Regatta, 15-18 July, has been cancelled for lack of funds. It was to be part of the Baltic Series of classic regattas new this year (CB261), organised by CB contributor Olle Appelberg. However, the finale of the series, the Viapori Cup in Helsinki, Finland, on 14 August, has now attracted a prequel event. The cup is the biggest classic yacht event in Scandinavia, with 200 yachts in 22 one-design classes and two handicap races taking place in the centre of the Finnish capital. The nearby Helsingfors Segelsällskap, with possibly the largest classic fleet of any yacht club in Scandinavia, has now announced a day of races for the preceding day. The Baltic Series hopes to do for the Baltic what CIM has for the Med.…

Cindy Crawford’s mole Just begun the magic process of turning a pile of wood into a boat – or rather, by the time this slips silently through your letterbox and is torn to shreds by the terrier, I’ll have just finished the magic process of building a clinker boat. It started with a sheaf of plans, from which were extracted the shape of the stem and transom, and three sections, a yard or so apart. Designed at 11ft6in (3.5m) she will have stretched to just over 12ft (3.7m) by the time she’s launched. I like to give my clients a little more for their money and it’s terribly hard to make any scratch-built boat spot on the ordered length. So already this little wooden boat has taken on a life…

Eleonora Launched in 2000, Eleonora was built by Dutchman Ed Kastelein, at the Van der Graaf shipyard in Holland, constructed to exactly the same lines and using the same materials as Westward, regarded as the world’s fastest schooner at her launch in 1910. From the design board of Nat G Herreshoff and built at his factory in Newport Rhode island, with renowned skipper Charlie Barr at her helm, Westward conquered all before her. Eleonora follows closely the original scantlings and interior design as the original Westward. Owner Zak Zbynek is the driving force behind the Westward Cup and has put up the trophy, named after Eleonora’s original, which will be fought for in perpetuity. Mariquita Mariquita, (‘ladybird’ in Spanish) lay as a houseboat in the creeks on the British East…

Ron Mitchell has marine art in his blood, and though he admits to not being much of a sailor he’s been obsessed by ships and books on rigging since he was a child. With the acclaimed historical marine artist William Frederick Mitchell on his mother’s side of the family, and his uncle a talented wildlife painter, it was no surprise that Ron became an artist too. But it was a meeting in the mid-1980s with the renowned marine artist Steven Dews, who hails from the same town, Beverley in Yorkshire, that gave Ron the confidence to concentrate on his own marine painting. “I’d done a lot of painting by then and got a PhD in History of Art, but when I met Steven, he gave me a few pointers about…

The Shipyard Raid – an annual sail and oar race on Canada’s West Coast founded in 2005 by Tad Roberts – followed a scenic route from Gabriola Island in Canada’s northern Gulf Islands, south to Port Townsend, Washington, for its first three years (CB 229). It had almost all the elements of the perfect raid. All that was missing was the wind. In 2008, Tad went looking for wind and charted a new course north from Gabriola to Quadra Island in the rugged Desolation Sound – about 122 nM over eight days that tested rowing prowess, as well as sailing and seafaring skills. News that the 2009 raid would follow the same course was enough for me and my 14-year-old son Nigel to enter with our Wayfarer Surfbird. The record…

LAUNCHINGS 1 Hope, the Sandown Bay Cutter featured in April’s Yard News, was launched as planned on Easter Saturday, to the accompaniment of a hog roast, ample liquid refreshment and 250 guests, off the Duver at St Helens, Bembridge. Launched by owner Jeremy Gulley’s mother Shirley, Hope hit the water with Jeremy and boatbuilder Chris Attrill aboard. They executed a demonstration sail before the weather broke. Jeremy describes Hope, a strip-plank replica 1900s longshoreman’s boat, 27ft 8in (8.4m) on deck, as “a big dinghy that doesn’t want to capsize” and “great fun”.…

The restoration of Dunkirk Little Ship Anne – a remarkable tale to be told in detail next month – has inspired her owner Kes Travers to put the work on a business footing – he’s set up a wooden-boat restoration company called Spirit of Dunkirk Ltd at his base just off the A1 near Duns in the Scottish Borders. “I’ve got a great team here, and I didn’t want to break them up,” he told YN. “We also have a massive shed – it’s an old ostrich farm – so we can work undercover, on a soil floor to keep the humidity right.” He’ll undertake any type of work, on GRP boats as well as wooden ones – but there’s a risk he might become his own best customer –…

The cutting edge blunts quickly on tough boatbuilding timbers, and a blunt tool is the most dangerous on the bench. For sharpening plane irons and wide chisels the width of the primary bevel itself provides a steady guide to the correct angle on the oilstone, but for narrow or unevenly worn blades it takes an experienced hand to prevent the tool pitching. One solution is to use a honing guide. This neatly engineered device has a screw clamp holding the blade firmly at the correct angle and a broad wheel for rolling up and down the stone. The honing angle is set simply by adjusting the length of blade protruding – an inch (25mm) or less for the 25° primary bevel of a chisel, and then something over an inch…

Supplied in a plastic case, this Draper Value 71271 kit contains five combination spanners in the lid, while in the base you’ll find a 230mm water pump pliers, 150mm pair of pliers, 12 x 1/4in sockets from 4mm to 13mm and 6 x 3/8th in sockets 10mm to 17mm, 1 x 3/8in reversible ratchet, 1 x 1/4in socket spinner, a 10mm plug socket, an extension bar, female to male 3/8in to 1/4in converter and a Hex drive bit holder. A host of different screwdriver bits from flat to pozi and torx, plus two stubby screwdrivers. A useful tool kit for a small boat that keeps it all together and at a modest price: £15.41 www.ccw-tools.com 5-piece mini piler set Small and beautifully formed set of five pliers all with rubber-coated…

The trouble was that the rest of the crew were men, and had difficulty with the practice of executing more than one activity at a time. Hence the moment when Will was explaining the mathematics behind the sextant’s sun sight, below at the chart table with Capps, and there was an almighty bump: the sound of boots flying up the companionway, boat in reverse and some time meandering out of a maze of rocks that lay just below the calm blue surface of the water. Relying on one source of information when navigating at sea is foolhardy, especially in Svalbard (80oN) which provides particular challenges: the area is not well charted, and those few charts available in the northern sector are not GPS verified. Indeed the majority of the Nordaustlandet…

25 JUNE Helford Annual Pursuit Race Helford, Cornwall – L’Aber Wrac’h, Brittany Tel: +44 (0)1326 231006 (Helford River Sailing Club); helfordriversc@aol.com 25-27 JUNE Penzance Golowan Traditional Boat Festival Cornwall, Tel: +44 (0)1736 360214, scarletoharlott@hotmail.com 26 JUNE Heybridge Basin Regatta Nr Maldon, Essex John Sjollema, Tel: +44 (0)1621 856503 26-27 JUNE Scottish Traditional Boat Festival Portsoy, Aberdeenshire, Scotland Tel: +44 (0)1261 842951 www.scottishtraditionalboatfestival.co.uk contact@scottishtraditionalboatfestival.co.uk 1-4 July Crinan Classic Crinan, Argyll and Bute, Scotland Tel: +44 (0)7766 277818 / +44 (0)7887 931921 www.crinanclassic.com 3 July Rowhedge Regatta Essex, Roy Barrett, Tel: +44 (0)1206 729468 royb832@aol.com 3 July Thames sailing barge match Gravesend, Tel: +44 (0)1202 552582, www.sailingbargeassociation.co.uk 3 July Rowhedge Regatta Essex, Tel:+44 (0)1206 729468, royb832@aol.com 3-4 July Felixstowe Regatta Suffolk, Tel: +44 (0)1473 326405, www.felixstoweregatta.co.uk Classic class for the first time…

RAWANAH: Griffiths one-off Rawanah is a one-off Maurice Griffiths design, built of pitch pine on oak by Kings of Pin Mill in 1935. She has the historical bonus of appearing in the book Little Ships and Shoal Waters, when Griffiths and his friend – for whom he designed the boat – took her from Oban to East Tarbert and back. She was sold in 1958 and remained in the same family until 2000 when her current owner John Cochrane bought her. He has taken her to the Hebrides, the Orkneys and the Faroes, around Ireland and through a Force 10. “She’s yet to take a wave in the cockpit,” says John. He describes her as the ideal cruising boat, with stability owing more to her full hull shape than ballast. She’s…

Gipsy Moth IV, probably Britain’s most famous yacht, has been put up for sale for £250,000. It’s by no means the first time the iconic yacht has faced an uncertain future. The 53ft (16.2m) Illingworth and Primrose ketch that took Francis Chichester around the world solo, and into the history books, in 1966/7, was the first round-the-world yacht designed specifically for the task, and perhaps the last to play a central role in such a popular tale of British patriotism. Chichester was knighted for his accomplishment and on his return became a national hero on a scale unknown by today’s sailing heroes. After the voyage, the boat was kept in a concrete cradle at Greenwich, south-east London, as a tourist attraction. She rotted there for decades, in the shadow of…

This 14-16 April, Southampton Courts of Justice heard evidence relating to work done at the Isle of Wight yard of Clare Lallow. The case is between boat-owner Rod Moody and the yard. Moody took his yacht Mandamus, a 31ft (9.3m) bermudan sloop designed by Anderson Rigden and Perkins of Whitsable and launched in 1947, to the Cowes yard for repairs in 2008. He partially withheld payment on completion of work, with which he was dissatisfied, notably the joins betwen deckbeam ends and carlines, where there were reportedly gaps showing. One question asked in court was whether Mandamus merited classic status. Witness Alan Staley, boatbuilder, and CB asserted the view that she does. The judge is still deliberating. His verdict.…

It seems to be a custom of keelboat classes to celebrate milestones like centenaries more than once: conception of the class, year of design, year of first build, and so on. This time, it’s the turn of the Yarmouth One Design, a nine-strong, remarkably indigenous class of 20ft 10in (6.4m) keelboats based at the Royal Solent Yacht Club in Yarmouth, enthusiastically sailed by two-man crews. The first party was a celebratory black-tie dinner in the house next door to Royal Solent YC, and owned by YOD sailor John Caulcutt. The house originally belonged to royal portrait painter Arthur Cope RA, who initiated the class in 1910, though the first was not built until later. The menu – lobster thermidor, absinthe sorbet, roast beef and parmesan soufflé – was also straight…

Pendennis Shipyard, in partnership with Antigua Classic Week, has announced a new transatlantic race for the Olympic year, 2012. A number of yachts have expressed interest in a race to the UK after the Caribbean season, which includes the St Barth’s Bucket and Antigua Classics. The proposed race will start immediately after Antigua Classics in April, thereby leaving Falmouth in Antigua to sail to Falmouth in Cornwall, so that the boats will in the UK in time for a summer of special regattas and, of course, the Olympic Games.…

A crowd of more than 350 wellwishers gathered on 15 May, for the noon launching of the classic Sparkman and Stephens racing yawl Bolero following an 18-month restoration and refit at Rockport Marine in Maine. The 73ft (22.3m) Bolero was originally built for John Nicholas Brown, commodore of the New York Yacht Club, by the Henry B Nevins yard of City Island, New York. She was launched in 1949 and took first place in several Newport Bermuda races. At Rockport Marine, shipwright John England and a crew of up to 20 people performed a complete restoration of the vessel, as well as a significant systems upgrade. Rockport Marine notes that Bolero came to the yard with many broken frames and that further inspection found that the horn timber and deck…

A fighting 40 back on form “Herreshoff was no flake.” So skipper Jonathan Greenwood observed to me after a few years of racing one of Cap’n Nat’s New York 40s, Rowdy, the boat that’s been making such a splash on the Med classic racing circuit. However, the boat Jonathan originally took on at the behest of owner Graham Walker, former America’s Cup and modern racer who decided to head classic, was certainly not the powerhouse she is today. That took a mix of a few other important ingredients: the right choices, the right crew, attention to detail… and a careful look back at what Nat Herreshoff had originally intended. “The delightful part was that the more we returned her to Herreshoff’s original design, the faster we went,” added Graham. Since…

ANTIGUA 2010 Roy Boughton, sailing with Duncan Gray, ‘JC’ and Jacob de Camp aboard Guiding Light, took first place overall in the Vintage Class of the Antigua Classic Yacht Regatta, having scored two seconds and two firsts. Earlier, Guiding Light won first place in the Concours d’Elegance in the Vintage Personally Maintained yacht category. But it wasn’t enough for the committee to recognise the boat; they chose also to recognise the man who sailed her, for singlehanding Guiding Light across the Atlantic, displaying exemplary seamanship under adverse circumstances: Roy was awarded the Arnie Fritzel prize, the committee citing a sound vessel for strength and safety at sea. It was a long road getting there, but the victories were sweet. Guiding Light is a 12-ton Gauntlet auxiliary cutter (#503) built in…

Dragon boat racing is popular the world over but in China it’s a national obsession. Ray Little went out to cover a major championship – and a British-led team that triumphed despite unfavourable conditions By now, surely, most people are familiar with the Chinese export that is international dragon boat racing, but what may not be so well known is that for sheer spiritual significance, nothing matches the dragon boat within the psyche of the Chinese people. In their homeland, the long thin boats, powered by up to 100 oarsmen and adorned with elaborately carved dragons’ heads, are believed to date back over 5,000 years, while racing festivals are known to have been run for more than 2,000 years. Such is the clamour surrounding today’s big dragon boat events, which…

While thousands gathered to watch the grand Tall Ship classics such as Sedov, Mir and Christian Radich arrive in Gydnia, Poland for the start of last year’s Sail Training Association’s Tall Ships races Baltic series, no-one could have predicted the amount of interest that Tre Kronor af Stockholm created during the five-day port visit. Tre Kronor af Stockholm (Three Crowns of Stockholm) is the newest complete tall ship to have been built in several years and although launched over two years ago, this was the first time she’d ever raced. But it wasn’t really her potential racing pedigree that caused the curiosity; it was the fact that she was so new. Many of the Class A vessels racing on the Sail Training International circuit such as the fourmasted, 397ft (121m) steel…

Forty years ago Eel, the first Humber yawl cabin yacht designed by George Holmes (CB1) washed ashore at the yard of Anderson, Rigden and Perkins in Whitstable in a storm. A young Alan Staley, who was serving his apprenticeship there at the time, remembers to this day holding planks in place while she was screwed and banged back into shape. Now, Eel sits in Alan’s boatyard on Faversham creek. Much has happened in between of course, not least the 2001 bombing of the World Trade Center in New York. It seems a long way from the electricity pylons and big skies of North Kent, as we drink tea in Alan’s yard, but that cataclysmic event holds perhaps the most likely explanation for the subsequent and complete disappearance of Eel’s owner.…

Stage 7 Sea trials After Merlin’s mast was stepped, much had to be done to get her ready for sailing. The bottom ends of the standing rigging were made off, the other spars put in place, the running rigging reeved, the bobstay and sprit stays connected, the mast boot fitted, and the mainsail bent on and laced to the comb along the top face of the boom and to the gaff. Initial engine trials were carried out and temperature, oil pressure and boat speed readings were noted at various revolutions per minute. With the boat in the water and the mast wiring connected, Greenham Regis were now able to come down from their Lymington office to commission all the instrumentation and navigational equipment that they had supplied. One morning in…

The padsaw has not changed for over 150 years, and for certain kinds of work its combination of simplicity and versatility remains unchallenged. Better quality examples may feature exotic woods, but the typical padsaw consists of a turned beechwood handle (the pad) through-slotted to receive a retractable blade and fitted with a brass ferrule enabling the blade to be locked at the desired length by a pair of cheese head machine screws. Working in the tight spaces of a wooden boat, where a backsaw proves too big and the frame of a coping saw is restricting, the padsaw is especially handy for cutting curves. By first boring a hole in the piece to insert the narrow blade you can even cut inside a panel – useful for fitting a vent,…

Lawrence motor boat heads for museum When I heard that there was a place available on the final voyage of former Air Sea Rescue launch Seaplane Tender 206, I was eager to accept. I felt that, as I’d written the story of her history and rebuild (CB, last month) it would be fitting to see her into the next phase of her life as a dry exhibit at the RAF museum at Hendon. I really wanted to be part of the trip when her saviour and rebuilder, Phil Clabburn, handed her over. There was no reason to suspect there might be any difficulty: she’s a noble little craft with a distinguished war record, well restored and a capable sea boat – capable, in fact of a steady 25 knots and…

Garmin’s 5000 touch screen technology makes this one of the most user-friendly systems on the market. You simply touch a mark for instance and its characteristics appear in a box on screen. You can also scroll down through charts by stroking the screen but easily retrieve your position with the Find Ship key. Garmin updates electronic charts daily, and provides chart updates every six months for 50 per cent of the original price. It also adds upgrades to the operating software for all equipment to ‘future proof the electronic system on board, free of charge from the website. Plotter dimensions are: 10.1inW x 6.8inH x 4.2inD (256 x 173 x 107mm). There is a single SD card port to load charts and data. The system can show tides, currents, marine…

Scurvygrass: Lime juice of the saltmarsh Scurvygrass stands out among traditional shipboard victuals not only for its nutritional value but for the terrible disease it evokes. Down the years scurvy has been the scourge of the long-distance mariner. When fresh fruit and vegetables are in short supply, as was usual aboard old sailing ships on passage, the body grows deficient in ascorbic acid, or vitamin C, and cannot make effective proteins for holding the tissues together. In 1740, ‘just nine generations ago’, George Anson’s fleet with 2,000 men sailed from Portsmouth to attack Spanish assets in South America and over the next four years 1,400 of the men literally fell apart as scurvy took hold. Old wounds reopened, gums bled and teeth fell out as the men died in agony.…

LETTER OF THE MONTH supported by Old Pulteney Whisky How we stretched and otherwise altered Amaryllis Regarding your article ‘Stretching Amaryllis’, CB260; cruising began for me at the age of seven when my father, Bert Rigden, built and launched Silver Spray (renamed Amaryllis in the late 40s) from a cradle on Whitstable beach. She cruised the Thames Estuary before and after the war and, after the move to Ramsgate, to France, Belgium and Holland. Racing during Kent Week, she wore the homemade distinguishing flag of Amaryllis the shepherdess holding her crook. My father made many alterations over the years, first extending the ‘sawn-off ‘ counter to a full counter with curved bumkin to enable the fitting of a topmast backstay. The sloop rig changed to cutter with Wykeham Martin furling…