Innehållsförteckning för August 2010 från Classic Boat

Spent a bit of time in northern Germany recently, attending a rally-regatta which sails with a couple of stops down a pretty fjord on the Danish border. Luckily it was the week before England lost to Germany in the football world cup, so there was no need for any of us Brits there to display any Dunkirk spirit! I joke of course; Dunkirk was a very different experience, as I hope our report on p26 goes some ways to show. If our football experience shows anything it’s that Germany is able to organise itself well on the larger scale; our slightly more haphazard and individualistic approach probably needs more work, now as it did then. The organisation was the same at this regatta where 165 boats of all sizes, from…

SS Robin, built in 1890 and believed to be the world’s last coastal cargo steamer, was lowered into the water in Lowestoft on 28 June, a prolonged and delicate operation as the 143ft (44m) riveted-steel ship weighs a crane-bending 366 tonnes. She was built by the Thames Ironworks in east London to Lloyds 100-A1 and is of a type once common around the British coast, and immortalised in poet laureate John Masefield’s poem Cargoes: (“Dirty British coaster with a salt-caked smoke stack”). She’s been the subject of a two-year restoration in Lowestoft, costing £1.9 million, partly funded by the Crossrail project. Once on the Thames, probably on a pontoon near Tate Modern, she will act as a museum and education ship.…

This 9-14 August sees the return of the Pendennis Cup, the ‘classic superyacht’ regatta first held in 2008 to celebrate the 20th anniversary of its host, the Pendennis Shipyard in Falmouth, reports Nigel Sharp. At the time of writing there were seven confirmed entries. The 19-M Mariquita and the Herreshoff schooner Mariette return – and yachts entered for the first time are: 182ft (55.5m) schooner Adela (built by Pendennis in 1995), the St Mawes-based 8-M Pinuccia, S&S yawl Tomahawk (49ft), the 85ft (26m) bermudan ketch Velacarina and the Eugene Cornu-designed 1966 yacht Zarik. Numbers are expected to increase as entries will be accepted until 31 July. The regatta will run again in 2012.…

The International One Design, or IOD, will be celebrating its 75th anniversary in style in Marblehead, Massachusetts in 2011, writes Kathy Mansfield. It was designed in 1936 by the Norwegian Bjorn Aas, based on the 6-M yacht, Saga, though smaller and with slightly broader at 33ft (10m) LOA with a 6ft 9in (2.1m) beam. There are 10 fleets racing around the world today. A glass-fibre version in 1967 was carefully built to be able to race on equal terms with the original boats. The boats are one-designs – only the crews move around to regattas where the fleets are based: St Mawes in Cornwall, England; Norway, Sweden, Bermuda, Chester in Nova Scotia, Canada; Marblehead and Nantucket in Massachusetts, Fishers Island and Larchmont in New York, and San Francisco. The St…

Africa’s oldest ship, the 1898-built steamer Chauncy Maples, is well on her way to being renovated for use as a mobile clinic serving the scattered settlements of Lake Malawi, in southern Africa. Malawi, at nearly 30,000sqkm (11,500sqM), listed in the Times World Atlas as the world’s ninth largest lake, is also thought to be the most biodiverse body of water on earth. The half million inhabitants peopling Malawi’s shores are among the poorest in the world, often travelling 80km by dugout canoe for medical assistance. Life expectancy is 36 and the infant death rate is higher than one in ten. Among the dangers encountered in these sometimes stormy waters are hippopotami and crocodiles; both have taken the lives of villagers trying to reach medical assistance in small craft. Chauncy Maples,…

South of France Antibes More than 50 yachts made the passage to Antibes in the first week of June for the Panerai-sponsored season-opening regatta for the Med classics. With average daily wind speeds for 10 to 15 knots there wasn’t quite the drama of last year where 30kn created some spectacular racing but the lighter airs put crews and tacticians on their mettle. Among larger yachts the racing was won, just, by the 15-M Mariska, while Bona Fide, Rowdy, Chaplin, France, and Maria Giovanna II all took home the silver in their respective classes. For the fun afterwards the organisers were able to stage no less than 10 concerts this year and it was a festive gathering, as ever. South Coast Yarmouth Old Gaffers Light airs, accompanied by haze, made…

Hope for the future For many years a convergence has been taking place within the classic boat scene. With little or no work to perform, the working boats have been becoming steadily more yacht-like, to the extent where those people who used to earn their corn upon the water would hardly recognise their trusty workhorses. Though polished fittings, racing canvas and teak decks are becoming the norm these days, I have to admit that on encountering Hope, a double-take was still needed. Even if you squint and imagine her without her sparkly adornments, her luscious, beamy shape, yacht-like counter and lustrous finishes make it difficult to envisage pots ever being dragged up her sides, boots grinding the sole and lines abrading her corners. I like to think I have an…

Time was running out for Kes Travers. The former Royal Navy submariner had boldly declared that at least one of his beloved ‘little ships’ would reappear at Dunkirk this year for the 70th anniversary of the most desperate week in British history, when 700 boats crossed the Channel to rescue 385,000 men from the beaches to which they had been forced to retreat. Kes’s choice, from the five vessels curated by his Spirit of Dunkirk Trust, was Anne, only acquired in October last year, without a survey, from an owner on the Wirral. A 30ft (9.1m) launch, built in 1925 in pitch pine on oak by Frank Curtis at Looe, she was still equipped with her original gravity-fed petrol motors. With these two 1931 Ailsa Craig LB4s – “amazing engines…

Commander RD Graham is best-known these days for Rough Passage, a seafaring classic about his 1934 single-handed transatlantic passage in his 30ft cutter Emanuel – and also nowadays for the daughter he declined to take on that voyage, who in 2001 as Helen Tew became famous in her own right for completing, at the age of 89, her own solo transat to Bermuda. But Cdr Graham subsequently undertook another, even longer passage, and this time he did take one of his daughters with him – Marguerite, Helen’s younger sister, then 18. They planned a circumnavigation, but World War II intervened and the voyage came to an untimely end in New Zealand, where his boat, the 32ft Caplin, was sold. It was there that a British Old Gaffer, Viv Head, recently…

Charles Currey, who died on 10 May aged 94, was one of Britain’s most successful small-boat sailors, as well as inventor of the dinghy trapeze system and a notable dinghy designer and builder. Charles was the son of Capt CNE Currey RN, decorated in both world wars, firstly for the rescue of the crew of HMS Tomtit when the ship foundered off Peterhead in 1914, and secondly for developing the Bombardon inflatable rubber tubes part-filled with water, that protected the floating Mulberry harbours of the D-Day landings. Young Charles, expected to follow in his father’s footsteps, was brought up in Peterhead but sent south to Boundary Oak and then as a cadet to Dartmouth Naval College in 1929. In 1933 he caught pneumonia and was discharged before he entered the…

Mark Jardine, who runs Alternative Boat Hire, is restoring the 1930s Danish fishing boat Bertha Marie for charter work from Iona. His present boat, Freya, is much loved by the countless folk that have gone out in her over the years, but Mark is now wanting to extend his skills and challenges with a bigger boat. He has had much structural work carried out in a yard in Northumberland and is presently painstakingly continuing the restoration himself. Luckily, he is skilled in boat repair and seems to be immune to the weather: a definite advantage in restoring a boat outdoors in these parts! Hopefully by next year the Bertha Marie will be under sail around the coast of Iona and with Mark at the helm.…

Growing up on the Thames above London in the late 1970s, I couldn’t help but notice the Turk’s hire boats come the height of summer. For me and my friends the school holidays meant an abundance of longed-for fishing time but, predictably I suppose, the break also coincided with the peak in river holiday traffic. And my childhood, in turn, happened to coincide with an historic peak in Thames pleasure boat usage. The hire boats were the bane of our lives. Not all the hire company names stick in my memory, I suppose there must have been Hobb’s, and Salters among others, but perhaps because of its exotic ring, or more likely because their fleet were bright orange, I still remember Turk’s; they were part of summer on the Thames.…

What appeared to be an impressive sea shell lying buried in harbour mud turned out to be an old mushroom pattern ventilator, writes Robin Gates. Although clogged with paint and firmly screwed shut with the thread of the dome seized in the deck flange, prospects for restoration seemed fair because it had been cast in bronze to resist the rigours of the marine environment. Early attempts to free the thread proved ineffective, however, as I resorted to increasingly desperate persuasion with various grips and wrenches. The solution turned out to be chemistry rather than brute force, using the dismantling lubricant PlusGas Formula A. The maker, English Abrasives and Chemicals (EAC), claims this fluid works in seconds with just a few drops. That wasn’t the case here, but after dousing the…

How to make a switch box fuse panel Q I need to tidy up some wiring and I think a new cupboard / box / panel whatever it is called will be required for fuses and switches etc. The existing one has real wood sides and plywood front and is simply too small. The ply front doesn’t look great and is a bit thick (1/4in/6mm maybe) for the toggle switches mounted on it. So I am looking for ideas on what to use or make for the job. dur • I have the same task in a boat where the designated navigation/electronics space is very tight. My solution will probably not suit, but here it is anyway – I’ve made a dovetailed box (570x200x200) from solid mahogany, to match the…

Hythe, on the ‘wrong’ side of Southampton Water, is a sleepy little place, distinguished mainly by a little train which rattles out over a long, rickety pier to meet the ferry. The Marina Village is also quiet, especially after the hustle and bustle of Hamble. Almost too quiet – it’s a ‘village’ because it consists mainly of houses with their own moorings. It’s vaguely Dutch in appearance, but like all these synthetic developments there’s something unsettling about it. One starts fantasising about setting another remake of The Prisoner here. Still, there’s ample free car-parking and it made an ideal base from which to launch Nancy Blackett’s Round the Island campaign. It also proved to contain, among all the plastic boats, a fellow Hillyard, in the shape of a centre-cockpit 9-tonner…

Rock Samphire: A coastal source of vitamin C Working around the sea cliffs at St Catherine’s Point, Isle of Wight, I found this excellent salad and pickle plant growing in rocky clefts. It is rock samphire, Crithmum maritimum, a species which thrives in salt spray and has featured prominently in the seafarer’s diet. The plant is another good source of vitamin C and historically sailors would eat the fleshy leaves to stave off scurvy. This could land collectors in perilous situations, such as suspended from a rope on Dover cliffs as Shakespeare’s Edgar remarks in King Lear: “Half way down hangs one that gathers samphire: dreadful trade!” Rock samphire is in the carrot family, a fact made obvious as soon as you handle it because the carrot aroma is intense…

HALCYON: A marriage of tradition and luxury Next month we’ll resume normal service (yachts from all over the price range) but this month we couldn’t resist these two superb yachts from the books of Barney Sandeman, of Sandeman Yacht Company in Poole. “It would be hard to find a yacht of this period that can complement its 1920s opulence with the facilities more suited to present day expectations,” says Barney of the first, this John Thornycroft-designed and built ketch of 80ft (24.4m). An extensive refit at T Nielsen & Co in 2006 left Halcyon and her teak-on-oak structure in “near-perfect condition” – not to mention copper-sheathed – and with the systems and conveniences of a modern yacht. Another of the yacht’s advantages was described at the time of her build…

Dovetails – who needs them? When I was younger I took it into my head to go boatbuilding as an occupation. It was more than just an itch to be scratched behind the garage producing a stitch-and-glue 35-ton plywood schooner with naked figurehead under a plastic sheet. This was a generic force. Building, of architectural structures, was in the blood; generations of my family spent good lives doing it. I achieved my goal. I learned my trade and was paid for my work. I started my career at the tail end of the wooden boatbuilding era. There were still men in our yard who could build a wooden yacht by eye. One old boatbuilder defined the elemental nature of the craft: “You can’t call yourself a proper boatbuilder,” he expostulated,…

The first Jester Challenge yachts started to arrive in Newport, Rhode Island over the weekend of 26/7 June. First in, at 0200 local time on the 26th, was The Grand, a Doug Peterson-designed quarter-tonner of 1970s vintage sailed by Russian Igor Zaretskiy, who reported good weather and an incident-free passage He was closely followed by Briton Rory McDougall on Cooking Fat, a James Wharram-designed, wingsail-driven Tiki 21 catamaran. After 33 days at sea, the two yachts arrived within 90 minutes of each other. Rory reported sightings of sharks, jellyfish and a huge turtle – and logged 135-mile days. Third, the next afternon, was fellow Briton Roger Fitzgerald, sailing a Dehler 29. Among those still sailing in this unique singlehanders’ challenge for yachts under 30ft (9m) are Trevor Leek on Jester,…

The world’s leading dinghy cruiser, Frank Dye, died on 16 May, aged 82. He is known principally for his many dangerous voyages in a succession of Wayfarers in all corners of the globe, suffering many capsizes and dismastings. He often sailed with his wife Margaret, whom he married in 1964, and who survives him; they spent their honeymoon sailing to the Hebridean island of St Kilda. Frank Charles Dye was born at Watton, Norfolk, on 23 April 1928 and after leaving Hamond’s Grammar School in Swaffham, joined his father at a Ford dealership. In 1974 he started a marina in Cheshire, spending eight years establishing the business before returning to settle in Wells-next-the-Sea in Norfolk. He started sailing at the age of 27 and in 1958 bought a Wayfarer dinghy,…

The RYA is urging boaters to observe the Voluntary No Anchor Zone (VNAZ) that has been set up in Studland Bay, Dorset, by the Crown Estate and Natural England as part of the ‘Studland Bay Seagrass Project’. Studland Bay is a shallow, sandy embayment on the south coast of England: a popular anchorage for yachtsmen and an important site for seagrass and seahorses, both protected by law due to their scarcity in Britain’s seas. “If it’s unsuccessful, the argument for allowing recreation and nature conservation to co-exist will be weakened” warned Caroline Price, RYA Planning and Environmental Advisor. “As Government moves towards identifying and designating new Marine Conservation Zones (MCZ) it is vital that voluntary management regimes can work.” The zone is 100m by 100m and located off South Beach.…

The life of Ivan Konstantinovich Aivazovsky (1817-1900), Russia’s most celebrated marine artist, was intertwined with the romantic struggles of his time. This brilliant and dramatic oil on canvas ‘Along The Coast’ depicts brigantines battling through a storm towards a safe harbour beyond a chink in a cliff. Yet despite the monstrous seas, the sunlight from behind the clouds lighting up the water gives a hope of salvation, in a style sometimes likened to JMW Turner. The painting represents the Greek struggle for independence from the Ottomans. The overcrowded brigantine, packed with a desperate human cargo clinging to the rigging, proudly flies the new Greek national flag in a life-and-death struggle against overwhelming forces. The 132 by 168cm (52 by 66in) painting recently sold for £690,850 at Sotheby’s in London. Born…

The fine shape of a Whitehall rowing skiff that evolved from ship’s gigs in the 1820s, distinctive for its wine-glass transom, has been given new life by Canadian builders Whitehall Spirit, of Victoria, British Columbia. The builder is ‘thermoforming’ the classic form in heated copolymer, suction-formed to a frame. Two sliding-seat models have been launched: the 14ft (4.6m) Solo 14 with one sliding seat and the Tango 17 with two, weighing 68kg (150lbs) and 90kg (200lbs) and costing roughly £4,500 and £6,900. Two have now been delivered to the UK. One, a 17, will be used on the Roach in Essex. Its buyer told CB: “It looks like an Elizabethan water taxi and with the speed of a proper rowing boat – you sit above the freeboard on a sliding…

The theft of Valerie Jean The island of Langkawi is a cruising crossroads. Some sailors are on their way to Africa; others to India or the Philippines. Many find their dream right here in Malaysia and settle to a life in the Tropics. We meet lots of people, working on Siandra’s mast and boom at Rebak. Our timber spars attract the usual brainless comments about wood being a labour of love – as though repainting an old alloy mast is no work at all. But when that dark honey glow of antique Oregon begins to emerge, so do the traditional boaters. There’s Paul Leicester from Leigh-on-Sea, a past owner of the 1930s barge-yacht Nancy Grey. (You can tell Paul is pining for a gaffer by the white tops on his…

The Sandown Bay Cutter project has been a long time in the making – so long, in fact, that Hope’s original, Sheila, was burned for scrap back in the 1960s. Rather than a strict class, the boats that the Sandown Bay Cutter is based upon were a loose collection of craft built for the longshoremen who worked the island’s coast. The boats all had similar characteristics to suit the local sea and working conditions, but were far from identical. The longshoremen of the Isle of Wight were an even looser network of men who would perform any work that was to do with the coast – fishing with nets or pots, ferrying people or cargo, or chartering their pretty vessels to the tourists. In addition, the longshoremen would have been…

On board Southern Queen as she made the crossing with her hastily-patched sump, was Brian de Mattos, whose father Sub-Lieutenant Basil de Mattos had skippered her to Dunkirk in 1940. Peter Galloway’s last-minute repair was an echo of a repair job forced on Basil de Mattos. He wrote to her owner after the war to tell how he had motored from Dover to Dunkirk and worked under fire in the docks taking British and French soldiers out to the bigger ships. When he had boarded Southern Queen in Dover at midnight: “A naval commander said, ‘That’s yours. She seems to sink at high water but they say she goes OK.’ The exhaust pipe flange had been unbolted for some reason. We refitted it in the dark, making gaskets from a…

Off Cook Strait, Monday Christmas Day 1939: ‘These gales are so frightening’ What a way to spend Christmas. We got off from Gisborne and had a good run down the coast, with a fair wind and smooth sea – well offshore and out of sight of land, but fifty miles short of Palliser Cape – two days out, we lost the wind, and hardly made any progress. The weather report spoke of a NNW gale in Cook Strait, and then radio died again. By 02.00 we were within ten miles of the Cape, so motored round but when Mate relieved me at 05.00 the wind was freshening so we reefed down. (Horrible swell all the previous day). By 08.30 it was blowing hard. Plugging to windward at the entrance to…

A curious thing happens when you discuss wooden boats with Davie Kirkpatrick: he doesn’t talk about boats, but about genealogy. His memory is prodigious – characters, lineage, foibles, detail, stories, layer upon layer, like the richest of patinas. The same encyclopaedic knowledge with which he weaves the warp and weft of Iona families lets him trace the boatbuilders, the boats, the people and places. Sometimes it is hard to know when he is talking about a person or a boat. This is a culture, still, of connections, of family and of memory. Boats are interesting not in the abstract, but because of the folk who had them and their stories intertwined like a celtic knot or like the variations of a pibroch. Iona is an island of genealogists; these are…

Violet Aitken came to powerboat racing by chance. Her husband Sir Max Aitken, who had started the London Boat Show, sponsored by his Daily Express newspaper, watched the Miami-Nassau race in 1959 and decided to bring powerboat racing to England. “When he came home he was full of it,” recalls Lady Aitken. “Already he was thinking about how he could run a similar race, very much with the ordinary bloke in mind, encouraging the development of British powerboats and engines.” The first Cowes-Torquay race took place in 1961 and in 1962 Sir Max competed himself, buying a boat, Glass Moppie, from US designer Dick Bertram. He finished fifth. Bitten by the bug “We had the boat down at Brixham,” explains Lady Aitken. “One day Max needed me to drop him…

Though it was the Romans who built the first bridge over the Thames in around aD80, it was not until 1750, with the building of Westminster Bridge, that London obtained its second permanent crossing. And it was through control of the river’s access points, via stairs and jetties – a factor that still restricts leisure usage in the capital today – that the city’s watermen and lightermen were able to maintain a grip on London’s main artery and therefore its people and politics. At the height of their power the watermen and lightermen gained a reputation for all kinds of sharp practice, and many was the passenger left with no choice but to swallow a newly announced fare-hike midstream on a foggy London night. In order to regulate these vital…

By painting one colour below the waterline and varnishing or painting another colour above it, your dinghy or tender will appear sleeker. The difficulty lies in marking a straight line on a surface of compound curves. Determine the waterline at stem and transom, from plans if you have them. Or, drop it in the water, have a heavy friend relax on the central thwart and draw marks at transom and stem. It will look smarter if the waterline shows when the boat floats, so lift the marks an inch at each end, mark with a pencil and rub out the lower marks. Turn the dinghy upside down. Attach a horizontal batten to the stem and stern post with its top edge on the pencil mark. The battens must be straight…

Hand vice This Draper sprung hand vice is a useful bit of kit if you are grinding or polishing those smaller items or need to hold something securely against another tool without damaging it with pliers jaws or hurting yourself. With a jaw width of 36mm, opening out to 19mm this vice is only for smaller pieces – but handy nonetheless. Cost is around £8.50 from various stores and the internet. www.drapertools.com Soldering pistol This small gas-powered soldering iron/torch, will sort out all your soldering needs on a boat without having to use mains electricity. Soldered joints stay together and don’t suffer from corrosion that can happen to crimped joints resulting in lights, radios and other essential equipment failing to work. The salty atmosphere found on a boat soon finds…

Boat barbecue This is a well-designed, compact, sturdy “over the transom” barbecue made from marine-grade stainless steel. It folds down to no bigger than a couple of thick books, has a quick release mounting bracket and will clamp onto any pushpit or stanchion post. In fact it’s so well made it’s on the expensive side, at £119 and seems a shame it’s only for those disposable barbecues. Nice though. www.boatbq.co.uk Coffee cosy Although perhaps more at home on the pages of Country Living this coffee warmer does what it’s meant to and keeps coffee warm (tested to a drinkable temperature for 2 hours in fact) so you can happily make a load of coffee, run up to the foredeck, fix the spinnaker, stub your toe, put a plaster on it,…

Atonement One of the best novels to portray Dunkirk in recent years is Atonement, by Ian McEwan, now made into an awardwinning film. And although the novel is not really about Dunkirk at all, but about a girl who suffers decades of guilt after accusing her sister’s boyfriend of rape (hence the title) the scenes set around the evacuation are brilliantly portrayed, as are the hospitals in London, set up to receive French and British wounded. McEwan’s writing is tense and evocative and he sets the scene for the retreating army brilliantly with the stark horror of the evacuation portrayed through one man’s eyes. The film used the beach at Redcar, North Yorkshire, to recreate the feel of the Dunkirk seafront. Some 35 Thames sailing barges attended at Dunkirk and…

Thames Revival Classic Boat Rally The second revival rally at St Katherine Docks in central London promises to be even better than 2009 East coast bawley Gladys and her 12-year rebuild Now based at Pin Mill the venerable fishing cutter has been brought back to seaworthy condition Seamanship When it comes to running a big classic ketch, new crew need simple systems to learn the ropes, as Thendara’s sailing master Chuck tells us. Plus: The Westward Cup, Classics at Cowes Sea survival for boaters, the new classic event at Nice, caulking while under weigh and much more September issue on sale 19 August 201 Subscribe now! Tel: +44 (0)1444 47567…

Nordic Bear, a Nordic Folkboat, won the Roman Bowl at this year’s Round the Island Race on 19 June, skippered by Brian Appleyard, with an elapsed time of 8h 52m 27s. The J-Class Velsheda romped around in an astonishing 5h 45m, to win IRC-0 on corrected time. Nigel Waller’s Fanny of Cowes won the Traditional Gaffer class, just ahead of Betty II, while Spirit of Tradition was won by Sea Badger II, a Cape Cutter 19. And CB contributor Trevor Clifton, who sailed his GRP Twister Cracklin’ Rosie to round Cape Horn and back in 2006, took fifth in the combined ISC class, with sons Luke, Matthew and John. Elapsed time was just over 9h 3m. Also racing was Arthur Ransome’s Nancy Blackett – see p72 for her tale.…

Italian journalist Bruno Cianci wrote to tell us of his gaff cutter yacht Vilia, built by P McKeown of Belfast in 1911. “She’s not Orion,” said Bruno, referring to the glorious schooner in our May issue, “but she’s never disappeared from the Lloyds Register of Yachts.” She was for some time a gaff yawl, but is now back with her original rig type. The 28ft 7in (8.5m) yacht was originally built for a Mr Norman Spark of Glasgow with a two-cylinder petrol engine; quite rare in pre-First-World-War years.…

Domed decklights (or bullseyes) are a fire hazard on hot summer days. This is the surprising warning from the Boat Safety Scheme (BSS), who first started noting the hazard about five years ago. The BSS already knows of three fires this year alone, where rays from the sun have been focused by the decklights into an intense hot spot capable of igniting objects in its path. The most serious was when some towels and an aerosol burst into flames. The focal distance will vary from light to light - but the BSS urge vigilance, and keeping any inflammable objects at least 300mm (1ft) from any domed decklights.…

American Tom Mittler, who died age 67 on 13 June from a stroke, loved speed in classic form, whether it was on land or water, reports Dave Selby. Mittler, who lived in Three Rivers, Michigan, raced his exotic and valuable historic racing cars, including a string of important Ferraris, all over the world. In later years he devoted increasing time to his collection of vintage speedboats and hydroplanes, delighting appreciative crowds with spirited demonstrations. At the time of his death his boat collection amounted to around 40 craft, including Baby Bootlegger, the fabled 1934 Gold Cup race winner designed by George Crouch. Other craft in his collection include Vogler Boy and Miss Daytona, the Miller supercharged 3.6-litre racing hydroplane. In many cases the common thread in his twin enthusiasm was…

The 1927 C&n ketch Cynara of 110ft (33.5m) sits tied to a concrete sea wall 80km (50m) from Tokyo, writes Ivan Brackin, abandoned by her owners, the captain and crew dimissed. The perilous mooring faces the open sea in 10ft (3m) of water and offers little hope of surviving a fierce storm, let alone the typhoon season which last year destroyed her marina and looms again. The yacht is for sale at £1.3 million but no buyer has been found. Sam Swire, whose grandfather lord northampton once owned Cynara, visited the boat last year and expressed his concern.…

Gazing on a small, new clinker boat Although I have my views on the construction of wooden boats, timber vs ply, varnish vs oil and so on, it’s not in my nature to be controversial in the widest sense; I’ll leave the debates on the Cutty Sark, creeping bureaucracy, the breathalizing of poor yachties, and other weighty matters to the Editor, whose shoulders are broad. My concerns are smaller and closer to what I believe to be the heart of the matter: little, traditional – OK, classic – boats. Ever since I became involved in what the late John Leather warned me would be a “thankless and unrewarding business” (he was wrong by the way) it has been the look of wonder on the faces of those who gaze for…

Lying as it does, jutting out into the North Sea on England’s lower eastern bump, Ramsgate is one of the first places in England to see the quality of the rising sun, writes Steffan Meyric Hughes. It’s a town steeped in conflict, with its grandest building, the harbour that took a century to build, used as a mustering station for British fleets in the Napoleonic wars. The night before we leave, the sea is in calm, summer blackness, under an astronomer’s sky, pinpointed by the syncopated silence of navigation marks flashing their way out to the unseen horizon to the continent. Once, it would have seemed like another world. It certainly was in the early summer of 1940, when Ramsgate (with Dover) acted as a departure point for a fleet…

The natural harbour at Akaroa in New Zealand is almost unique. It is the crater of a massive volcano that erupted from the sea a zillion years ago to form the Banks Peninsula. A later eruption blew out a small section of the rim and the sea rushed in. Nowhere is the sense of being inside a volcano more apparent than from a boat in the middle of the harbour, surrounded on all sides by the mountainous ring. Crossing the high rim and dropping down to the water’s edge via a twisty little road, you come upon the moorings at French Farm. Caplin has an outside mooring there, and even stood fast she is a fine sight on the blue green waters of the harbour with some welcome sunshine filtering…

Caplin’s second owner was Mr George Thomas Gillies of Oamaru, New Zealand. Despite many rumours, the purchase price was not officially disclosed, although it appeared that Mr GT Gillies had, as was his custom, got himself a bargain. Under the guidance of Don Stronach, an Oamaru ship’s pilot who had originally recommended Caplin to Mr Gillies, the yawl left Wellington, where she had been put up for sale, for Oamaru on Monday 29 July 1940, with GT Gillies and his sons George, Edgar and Bruce aboard. Cook Strait lived up to its reputation and Caplin spent some time running under bare poles. Akaroa, on Banks Peninsula, was reached on the Wednesday, and by Saturday evening Oamaru, destined to be Caplin’s home port for the next 55 years, welcomed the yawl.…

As a young boy on Iona in the 1920s, Davie remembers his father rowing out to the Torran Rocks to check the creels in the morning and then row paying visitors out to Staffa in the afternoon! Later, as a bobby on the streets of Glasgow, Davie started building wooden dinghies in his spare time. He would work away over the winter months, teaching himself as he went and helped by his wife Nora. To begin with he built for himself but, frustratingly, as soon as he finished a boat, someone would ask to buy it from him. Retiring home to Iona in the 1980s Davie honed his skills and design ideas and built boats for five years in his shed. Each one immediately sold. They are all still locally…

For a man who was an Olympic sailor – he raced in the Flying Dutchman class for France for eight years and has rebuilt a classic French sailing boat – Bruno Gandolphe, boss of Bahama Boats, is almost Taoist in his ideas about his motorboats. “I believe that people are happy when they have only the things around them that they need, and no more: and most people are carrying around huge amounts of gear that they won’t ever use. When I get time to go out with my family, I just grab a bottle of wine and a pizza, and off we go. Anything else around me that I don’t use is just slowing me down. My boats should do all that their owners want, but I want them…

The first surprise in Bristol was as I was walking over Redcliffe Bridge on my way to Mark Rolt’s Bristol Classic Boat Company writes Peter Willis. I glanced over the parapet and there below was what looked like a delightful old fishing boat with a couple of dinghies for company. On investigation, the twin gold dolphins on her stern announced her as not a fishing boat at all, but Truant, the boat owned by George Millar and featured in his book Isabel and the Sea which I’d read and enjoyed when it was reissued a few years ago. Truant, 49ft (15m) and 31 tons, was in fact a yacht, though built in Looe in 1919 by a fishing-boat yard. Mark, who’s been working on her on and off for the past…

For a wooden boat to perform well and look right she must be shaped to a precise formula of parts assembled in exact number, size and relationship one to another. She’s a beautiful example of applied mathematics and more particularly of geometry, in which a multitude of intersecting and overlapping surfaces come together as something that works. Essentially we have a critical assembly of angles, and for generations the tool which set and transferred these angles to the work was the purpose-designed shipwright’s bevel. This mid-19th-century example is typical. Crafted with brass plates let into a rosewood body and fitted with two tongues of different lengths, secured by copper rivets, it is altogether more practical and more elegant than the standard carpenter’s sliding bevel which is, by contrast, short, thick,…

Lesson 16: Tied up We are currently turning the Dazed Kipper Manual into an Academy, so we are undergoing a Government inspection. Astonishingly, flaws have been pointed out. The inspector, a tough lady in a peaked cap, says that the course contains plenty about boats, navigation, anchoring, ways with contraband and the abuse of strong drink; but that so far nobody has said word one about tying up. Well, Inspector. You can put away that notebook. Our only aim is to instruct and edify, and it is a terrible thought that various people have been floating about on the high seas, unable to position themselves alongside the quay so they can nip up the town and buy some spuds and a couple of steaks. Though our elite corps of instructors…

17-18 JULY Thames Traditional Boat Rally Henley-on-Thames, Oxon, contact Tony Goodhead Tel: +44 (0)1932 872575; www.tradboatrally.com 18 JULY Colne Smack Preservation Society Sail and Picnic River Colne, Essex, Tel: +44 (0)1206 304690 M:+44 (0)7768 522957, robin@strong-point.co.uk 18-24 JUL Cowes Classic Week Cowes, IoW, Tel: +44 (0)207 627 0944 www.cowesclassicweek.org 24 JULY Pin Mill Smack Race, Suffolk Paul Webster, Tel: +44 (0)7710 209167 24 JULY Lundy Gig Ro North Devon, Tel: +44 (0)1271 863969 www.ilfracombeyc.org.uk 25 JULY Royal Yacht Squadron Keelboat Regatta Cowes, IoW, Tel: +44 (0)1983 292191, www.rys.org.uk 25 JULY-6 AUGUST Menai Strait Regatta David Challinor, Tel: +44 (0)1248 851197 davechallinor3@btinternet.com or www.menaistraitregattas.org.uk 30 JULY-1 AUGUST Holyhead Maritime and Leisure Festival Tel: +44 (0)1407 762622 www.holyheadforward.com 30 JULY-1 AUGUST Bristol Harbour Festival Tel: +44 (0)117 922 3719 www.visitbristol.co.uk 30 JULY-1…

The Golant Gaffer Like the Cornish Shrimper (CB236), this 18ft 9in (5.7m) LOA coastal cruiser was originally conceived for its designer’s own personal use, and not for sale on the open market. Indeed, Roger Dongray, who designed both boats, as well as the ubiquitous Cornish Crabber, built the first Golant Gaffer himself in 1995, for himself and his wife to sail, and it was only after several people expressed interest in it that he was persuaded to redraw the plans for amateur construction. However, unlike the Shrimper, which now numbers over 1,000 boats built since 1978, the Golant Gaffer has remained relatively low-key, and firmly within the realm of the skilled amateur boatbuilder, with only one boat known to be built by a professional yard. The design is nevertheless still…

POEM OF THE MONTH I must go down to the lawn again, to the weedy border and bed And all I’ve got are the gardening gloves and the rusty tools in the shed And the sun beats down and the birds sing and the day just seems to go on, And the lawn is rough and the mower’s blunt and the grass is terribly long! I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide Is a wild call and a clear call that my spouse has firmly denied, And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying, But what I’ve got is the carrot patch, and the roses seem to be dying! I must go down to the seas again,…