Innehållsförteckning för December 2010 från Classic Boat

“Were you a Sea Cadet?” asks the press release heralding a campaign for old boys to get in touch, and a flood of memories conjures up days of adventurous youth. I already had the bug for that sort of thing from Scouts; going on camp and having a routine based around outdoor activities seemed the most natural and fun thing for a boy, a girl too I’d think, to do. But Sea Cadets was different. For a start there was the uniform. This put the scouting shirt, woggle and beret in the shade. The blue serge carried with it connotations of any number of historial and adventurous references, from bluejackets in the days of sail to heroism at the Battle of Jutland. It was designed to be folded or rolled…

Work has started on the new £16.3 million building that will house the Mary Rose in Portsmouth’s Historic Dockyard. It is one part of a £35 million project that will present Henry VIII’s flagship to the public in what the Mary Rose Trust describes as “an unparalleled experience of Tudor life.” The ship, which sank in mysterious circumstances in 1545, was found in 1971 and raised in 1982, will be displayed along with most of the 19,000 objects that were recovered with her. Completion of the museum is expected to be in the autumn of 2012, although the job of fully drying the ship out will not be complete until 2016. In the meanwhile, the existing Mary Rose Museum remains open, displaying 1,000 of the finest conserved artefacts recovered from…

Gispy Moth IV, Sir Francis chichester’s iconic 53ft (16.2m) Illingworth and Primrose ketch, has been sold to two anonymous new owners for an undisclosed price. It is their wish that the boat remain at her present home, the UK Sailing Academy, on the Isle of Wight, where she is used for teaching. Not for the first time in her life, Gispy Moth IV faced an uncertain future this summer after being put up for sale with a £250,000 price tag (cB265). The UKSA has a programme of boat maintenance, making it a good home for the yacht, although she’s a source of worry to instructors who have to teach newcomers to reverse her under power. She’s not as easy to handle as the rest of the fleet!…

The annual Little Britain Challenge Cup off Cowes, IoW, may not be as well known to traditionalists as some, but it is in fact one of the largest regattas in the country, in which teams from the construction industry race yachts for charity. This year’s event, 16-19 September, marked the first time classic pilot cutters attended among the 250 yachts and 1,000 crew. Thalia, crewed by piping suppliers Polypipe, took on Atkins Chambers (construction barristers) aboard Polly Agatha, and Milliken (carpets) crewed Amelie Rose. All three yachts raced in a class of their own to OGA handicap. The piping suppliers won out in the end, and the pilot cutter class raised £1,250 out of a regatta total of £60,000 for sailing charities.…

As a boat test it might be considered severe. Luckily for Fisher, builders of the newly-relaunched Yarmouth 23 GRP gaffer, it was actually a customer, David Matelicani, who elected to take his Y23, Eileen of Avoca, solo across the bay of biscay this autumn, braving 40-knot gales to arrive in Peniche, Portugal, in early october. The Y23 is from the same designers (Wyatt and Freeman) who drew the famous Fisher range of motorsailers. Relaunched by Fisher at september’s southampton boat show, it seems similarly stout-hearted. Next stop for Eileen and David is brazil.…

“Always helps to have a world champion on the helm,” our US correspondent Chris Museler told us from his home in Newport, Rhode Island. We think he’s just showing off about the fact that he was one of the first to sail, as tactician, aboard the newly-restored S&S yawl Dorade (CB268). The world champion in question was Ken Read, Puma Volvo skipper and J24 keelboat world champ. Mind you, our own Chris (standing up in the sunglasses) has had his fair share of victory, training US Olympic teams and winning the Junior Worlds in the J22 class.…

A new W boat is a rare occasion... So rare it hasn’t happened since the 1930s, but then the vicar decided to have one built... Report by Dan Houston Photography by Emily Harris There is a moment when this new boat, Winnie Marie, is sailing up the Rade de Brest and she catches a zephyr of breeze – it hasn’t even ruffled the water – and she cants over; ten degrees, then, as she speeds up, 15, and she’s off on rails in the lovely still late September light. In the motor-sailer following, doing five knots plus, we can’t catch her as she steadily draws ahead. Hervé and his French friends draw breath: “C’est magnifique, ce bateau!” And we’re quite privileged, we feel, because this is only her second sail…

The class designed for the rigorous local conditions is looking to recruit new blood. Words and photos by Emily Harris How’s this for a top opportunity? David Massey, Commodore of the Royal Mersey Yacht Club, Birkenhead, would like to give a 25ft (7.6 m) Mersey Mylne One Design away. A free boat – though the new owners would have to fulfil certain club conditions. Ideally he’d like Mermaid to go to young people, he says, by way of them learning some workmanship and boat husbandry on her, plus sailing and racing skills. Direction for this would be provided by members of the club and Massey himself. The main condition is that they race and sail her, paying the moorings and insurance. He sees this as a good way of celebrating…

Class of 1910 Rule XXVII of the Yarmouth (IW) One Designs Rules and Sailing Directions for 1932 states that “one paid hand is allowed, but he may not touch the tiller during the race”. If this strikes us, in this enlightened age, as a shade less than egalitarian, it perfectly sums up the vision of Sir Arthur Cope RA, commodore of the Solent Yacht Club from 1926 to 1934 and arguably the greatest portrait painter of his generation, who first mooted a “local class of gentleman’s yacht for Yarmouth” at a dinner at the Towers in Yarmouth High Street, a hundred years ago. Unfortunately, Y5 Greywing had no paid hand on board when, in 1946, she foundered while racing and the three Royal Naval officers on board all considered themselves…

It was possibly the last summer’s day of the year; it certainly was for the boat, which was due to be craned out on the morrow. Still, sunny settled-high and blue-skied, it was just the type of weather for which this type of craft was designed. And just the weather to pootle gently up and down the Windsor reach of the Thames jotting down notes on her history while Ray Little buzzed around us in a dory, taking photos. The boat is a Thames day launch built in 1920 by James Taylor and Bates of Chertsey, 35ft (10.7m) in length and what we’d call beaver-tailed – although the builder’s brochure describes it as having a ‘slipper stern’, the term now used for what were once called ‘sloping stern’ launches, as…

DEVON Restoration of the 1885 Brixham trawler Pilgrim, supported by a £950k Heritage Lottery Fund award (YN, CB260) is well under way at Butler & Co. The whole of the centreline has been replaced, as well as the frames and about half the planking. “Our first job was to stabilize the structure in dry dock, as she was going out of shape at the turn of the bilge,” says Ashley Butler. “Once the hull was properly supported, we could cut out the stem and keel, and start rebuilding from the bottom upwards. It was like taking the bottom 3ft out of a church! The biggest head-scratcher was the counter stern, which had been altered. We’ve rebuilt it as we think it used to be, but slightly more complex to prevent…

Traditional Tool Just as wood and metal have made a variety of boats serving diverse purposes, the same is true of planes, from the skiff-like spokeshave to this – the mighty jointer, the Thames barge of the shipwright’s tool chest. If during a long cut the path of the ripsaw has wandered, this is the tool that will make a millpond of the board’s resulting swell, leaving it smooth, square and – most significantly – straight. Whereas the coffin smoother, seen in the background, will smooth a rough surface, it will not iron out the unevenness along the length. By contrast this early-20th-century jointer by John Moseley & Son will level the board before smoothing it. The sheer length of the jointer’s stock – 22 inches (56cm) – excludes it…

The English raid Summer dreaming I know that having Matt Newland of Swallow Boats on our stand at the London Boat Show in January is trouble – in a good way. In 2009 he offered the loan of one of his boats and I ended up taking a pretty little Storm 15 double-ender and rowing and sailing it in a 100-mile circuit around London (CB255). This winter, the country was in the midst of its deepest freeze in 30 years – I’m sure none of us has forgotten that satellite photo of the whole country brushed white with snow. It was a good time for Matt to sell me the idea of a summer raid, which his firm was part-sponsoring, and in which he, and it seems I, would be…

Classic Yacht and East Coast by Den Phillips Classic Yacht features this year’s Westward Cup, Pendennis Cup, BCYC Regatta and Antugua Classics, while the East Coast calendar has evocative images of barges, smacks, classic boats and seascapes, all in monochrome. A3 size, £16 + postage £3 UK, £5 Europe, £9 UK/Aus T: +44 (0) 1621 850276 www.denphillipsphotos.com Calendar of Wooden Boats by Benjamin Mendlowitz The new calendar offers 12 not previously published photographs by one of CB’s favourite lensmasters featuring his trademark combination of stunning wooden boats, dramatic lighting, rich colour, and attention to detail. Subjects this year range from Moonbeam IV, the venerable 95ft Fife, to a 15ft Matinicus double-ender rowboat, via a Herreshoff cabin daysailer, a Buzzards Bay 15, the 52ft passenger sloop Vela, and the Maine windjammer…

This Scottish design has Scandinavian roots. The Loch Long One Design (LLOD) was launched in 1937 after members of Loch Long SC decided that a new class of affordable, one-design keelboats was required to replace its fleet of aging dinghies. The 18ft (5.5m) fin-keeled, Janne Jacobssen-designed Stjärnbåten was suggested as a possible replacement after one of the club’s members, Ian Campbell, spotted them during a visit to Sweden. It was initially rejected, however, as, although the design fitted many of the club’s requirements, its transom stern and clinker construction did not. James Croll saw potential, though, and made modifications – changing the hull from clinker to carvel, altering the rudder shape and drawing out the transom stern into a long counter. Not only did this increase length overall to 21ft…

LETTER OF THE MONTH supported by Old Pulteney Whisky I was very interested in the letter of Trevor Marsden (CB268) regarding Fresh Breeze, the Uffa Fox-designed 48-footer. In about 1955 I was an apprentice at the Bristol Aeroplane Co at Filton, Bristol, and a fellow apprentice and I were fitting out a 16ft (4.9m) Sharpie. We desperately needed spars and a pair of oars. These proved difficult to find so one evening we decided to go to Highbridge and see if the famous Harold Kimber could help us. Kimber’s little yard was located in the most unlikely place at the end of a very muddy creek. His cottage had an old clinker boat with the bottom cut out for a porch. On arrival we were asked in; the whole family…

Yet another new J-Class yacht started its build on 1 November for a Dutch syndicate at Holland Jachtbouw. This time, it’s Yankee, originally built to a Frank C Paine design in 1930 as a defender of the America’s Cup, and re-drawn by Dijkstra naval architects for aluminium construction. The plan is for the yacht to be ready for the 2012 regattas (see story, right). In addition to the three original Js still sailing (Shamrock V, Velsheda and Endeavour), there are three other new Js afloat: Ranger, built in 2002, and Hanuman and Lionheart, both launched last year. There are also, apart from Yankee, two others further on in the build process: Rainbow and Atlantis, both at the fitting-out stage, making a staggering total of nine Js in the world today.…

There cannot be many sports that have formed a body of such cultural richness as sailing – from some of the oldest and most valuable cups in history to its incomparable canon of literature and art, not to mention the massive library of technical drawings scattered around the world. It’s the ambitious project of David elliot and Rees Martin to catalogue the whereabouts of these treasures. Launched a couple of years ago, The British National Yachting Archive, as it’s known, had a slow beginning but has now achieved charitable status and its own website, www.bnya.org.uk. It relies on knowledge from around the world, so if you know the whereabouts of any yachting ephemera, please visit the site. The current campaign is to collect people’s recollections of olympic sailing, from 1908…

A ‘200th’ birthday party was held in the Monaco Yacht Club on 18 September for Partridge and her owner Peter Saxby, reports Nigel Pert. That is to say, 125 years for Partridge and 75 for Mr Saxby. A hundred or so guests had champagne cocktails on the pontoon in front of the clubhouse, where Partridge was moored. She was dressed overall and – after a few weeks’ work in Alex Laird’s Classic Works yard in La Ciotat, south of France – was looking as good as the day she came out of Camper & Nicholson’s yard in 1885. During the celebratory dinner a video and a slide show recalled the 20-year restoration of Partridge in Cowes by Alex Laird after her rescue from the East Coast mud. She’s now based…

When Todd Warner was a youngster growing up in Minnesota on the shores of the Great Lakes, the sight of ‘obsolete’ wooden boats being burned sparked a passion. Aged 12 in 1965 he saved his first craft, a 17ft (5.2m) 1947 Higgins sports boat, to begin an astonishing 35-year crusade that saw his collection of vintage wooden motorboats grow to more than 120, surely among the largest private collections in the world. Along the way he reckons he’s owned and enjoyed more than 1,000 wooden boats, from modest utility boats to glamorous and exquisite Chris-Crafts, Gar Woods, Hackercraft and Rivas. Todd is boss of Mahogany Bay, the celebrated wooden motorboat restoration, sales and service company, a Minnesota Mecca for wooden-boat cognoscenti worldwide. Now 57, he told CB: “It was always…

Under the warm rising sun, the remaining fleet of well-maintained wooden fishing vessels chug into the harbour of Le Lavandou near Toulon daily to unload their catch to the waiting restaurateurs, who watch on as the fishermen detach the fish from tangled metres of well-used nets before selling to the highest bidder. For decades this has been a way of life in France, but the tradition is fading away as younger generations eschew the job. Since I last visited here four years ago, no new blood has entered the fleet. Michel Sevenier, who has been fishing for over 25 years, the son of a bank director who chose the freedom of a life fishing, catches a small haul of around 7-8kg a day. Inshore fishing on the Med runs from…

Don Street started the whole thing. “If you’re going to have a stick holding your wind generator up, you might as well make it a mizzen. Convert Siandra to a yawl!” Good point, we thought, although not a thing to rush into. We made a temporary turbine pole and left the yawl idea for further consideration. As yet, we haven’t come up with a really good excuse not to follow Don’s advice. There are always gains and losses in rig conversion, but the split rig ought to give Siandra better close-quarters handling, more balance at sea, less loading on the hull and a prettier look. Not to mention somewhere to plonk that wind turbine. I hear the cry of a purist: “It’s not original!” Even this doesn’t get us off…

Kent Swale Barge Match Right: Arriving at Harty Ferry for the 38th Swale Barge Match aboard Brian Pain’s small Thames staysail barge Lady of the Lea, the initial prognosis, with grey skies threatening early rain, was not good. Spirits, however, were raised when the number of vessels already waiting at anchor was seen. We raised sail and were first across the start line. I eventually transhipped into a roving fishing boat to take photos at close quarters of barges, smacks and various other interesting craft. What did leave an imprint on my mind was the sheer force of the barges and especially Andy and Jane Harman’s Edme as she powered around the course, winning as usual. Even from ten yards away, the force of energy as her 80-odd-foot hull surged…

The 24ft (7.3m) Mersey Mylne class was commissioned by the RMYC after a series of committee meetings in 1934 when the number of members not wanting to race the ‘Rivers Class’ became clear. The club planned for a dedicated class to attract more members to race from Rock Ferry to Liverpool. Class boats considered for commission were the Royal Corinthian One Design (Fambridge One Design), the Victory class and the Belfast Lough Lakes class amongst others – none of which was either affordable or perceived as ruthless enough to weather the Mersey’s tidal character of varying from 4m at neaps to 10m at spring tides. Alfred Mylne was appointed by the club to formalise plans and a specification after D. Munro & Son of Blairmore on the Clyde had quoted…

Is an eco-friendly GRP boat possible? Jeremy and Fiona Rogers, with their activist son Kit and his wife Jessie, set out to build one, based on the enduring Contessa 32 hull. Nic Compton went to find out how they’d got on There’s not much that Jeremy and Fiona Rogers don’t know about building durable production yachts. Best-known for their iconic Contessas, at the peak of production in the 1970s, they were churning out a boat a week. At the same time, they collaborated with Doug Peterson to produce a long line of successful Admiral’s Cup racers. Equally, there’s not much that Kit (their son) and Jessie Rogers don’t know about sustaining endangered sea creatures. Both are former activists who worked on whale research and filming vessels for more than 10…

The engine – the original Gardner four-cylinder 4BCR petrol – was taken out and handed over to Steve Dean of Dean Marine, Maidenhead. Steve specialises in restoring old engines and is sponsor of the Dean Marine trophy for best engine at the TTBR, which Rainbow won, through independent judging, this year. (If engines that Steve has breathed on were excluded from entering, there would be very little to present the award to.) When Adam first took the boat out it was “hellishly noisy and vibrated horribly”. Steve did a test run, which showed the engine was running very rich and indeed very noisy with a lot of clatter. Then he stripped it right down and sandblasted it to bare metal. With no spare parts around, he had no room for…

GREECE Of course when I saw Salana for the first time, it was love at first sight. She was lying at a little fishing port in Argostoli, the capital of Kefalonia in the Ionian sea. She had just sunk and had been under water for a few hours, because water had got in through a hull valve that had been left open. Struck by her beautiful lines, I decided to buy her, and slowly try to bring her back to good condition. She was built in Östhammar, Sweden, in 1953 and designed by erik Salander. I was given the original design of the boat (no 293) with his signature. As I was sitting in my new toy, things started to look more serious than I had first thought. I started…

The project was to build a salmon yawl in a fortnight, involving volunteers, as part of Youghal’s involvement in National Heritage week. The original plan was to do it in the shopping centre, but in the end, Tynte’s Castle, a fortified town house dating from 1450 in the centre of this Co Cork seaport, made for a better space. It was the brainchild of Jim Horgan, of a well-known local family, though he now lives in Galway where, almost single-handedly, he’s revived traditional boatbuilding through teaching and practical projects. The yawl, 18ft (5.5m), was based on the only surviving example, built by Paddy Buttimer in 1947. The lines were taken off using a chain mould. It was to be cedar strip-planked onto six solid frames made of grown oak (not…

Buttoned ribbed jumper This Henri Lloyd Bowers 80% lambswool double-breasted, buttoned, ribbed jumper is a smart take on the tunic of old. The advantage being that you can open it up to let off steam below after a freezing night watch, catching the transition between cold sweat and boiling hot without struggling out of a big jumper. The shape is also fitting to the shoulders, tucks up nicely with an extra throat button and gives a smart ‘cowboy shirt’ general shape, although we’d advise you to choose a size up if you have a long back or arms. £125 www.henrilloyd.com Barbour coastal jacket Here’s a super-light, waterproof, machine-washable, drawstring-hooded jacket that zips up over the chin for coastal sailing and general wet walk wear. It has enough inner and outer…

Our forefathers, foremothers, foreaunts and uncles used to think the sea and its resources were limitless. Plummeting fish populations, huge rafts of plastic in the Atlantic and Pacific gyres, and globs of tar on Gulf beaches show this not to be the case. Here at the Dazed Kipper Academy we are anxious to promulgate a view of seafaring that does not involve destroying the thing we love. It has therefore been a real joy to welcome various award-winning schemes that show a passionate concern for our common future. It is now possible, for instance, to recycle your oilskins. These are handed in and flown back to Japan, where cunning operatives remanufacture them into more oilskins, or possibly toothbrushes. We would also draw the attention of ecologically conscious students to the…

25 JUNE – 2 JULY, 2011 CLASSIC CHANNEL REGATTA DARTMOUTH - PAIMPOL - ST PETER PORT Unique event offers, in just one week, a combination of two days racing round the buoys off Dartmouth, two Channel passage races and two Round the Island races, (Ile de Brehat at Paimpol and Sark. Informal (blazers banned) programme of evening entertainment. www.classic-channel-regatta.eu 7-16 JANUARY 2011 London Boat Show with ClassicBoat ExCel Centre, Docklands Tel: +44 (0)8442 090333 www.londonboatshow.com 29 APRIL – 8 MAY 2011 Liverpool Boat Show www.liverpoolboatshow.co.uk EXHIBITIONS UNTIL 29 NOVEMBER Royal Society of Marine Artists Diploma Collection National Maritime Museum Cornwall (Falmouth) Tel: +44 (0)1326 313388 www.nmmc.co.uk UNTIL 31 DECEMBER Lighthouses: Life on the Rocks National Maritime Museum Cornwall (Falmouth) Tel: +44 (0)1326 313388 www.nmmc.co.uk UNTIL 27 FEBRUARY 2011 Endurance: Shackleton’s…

Hanging around waiting for internet connections can seem like a real drag. Dodgy broadband rates and other users clogging up the server make it seem less like surfing the net than running aground on false promises of techno wizardry. But that’s where your favourite websites help and you should definitely have www.classicboat.co.uk on your favourites list. Click on to read updates of news, take part in forum chat, find safety advice, boats for sale, archived material – and browse the YBW shop. It might even give you a lift!…

The Fairlie yard, best known for restorations of Fifes and other big classics, has started its speculative first build of the Fairlie 55, intended as the first of a production series. Designed by Fairlie’s in-house designer Paul Spooner, the yacht’s appearance is “in the spirit of tradition” but with an underwater profile and rig that will provide modern performance. The triple-skin hull is bolstered by laminated ring frames and protected by two layers of GRP inside and out, giving the 55-footer a weight of 10 tons. The boat’s price will be around £830,000, but this first one is open to negotiation. According to Spooner, demand for spirit-of-tradition yachts is strong, and while restorations can provide “huge highs”, the work is sporadic, particularly, one assumes, as the stock of large classics…

Vagrant is a composite-built, 76ft (23.2m) gaff-rigged schooner designed by Nathanael Herreshoff for Harold vanderbilt. Built in just 60 days and launched at the Herreshoff Manufacturing company, Bristol, on 15 June 1910, she won the fifth Bermuda Race soon after her launch, with vanderbilt on the helm. Sold to Hendon chubb and renamed Queen Mab in 1913 – a name kept until 1979 – she won the Astor cup three times and raced the Transpac nine times between 1955 and 1978. A bermudan rig replaced her gaff rig in 1926. She got her original name back thanks to her Dutch owner Hans lammers in 1979. Superbly refitted by Jim Alabaster for Peter de Savary in 1984, Vagrant was re-rigged as a gaff schooner by Spencer Rigging. She was sold in…

This summer, the 44th station of the National Coastwatch Institute (NCI) opened on Burton Cliff, overlooking Lyme Bay, which straddles the Dorset and Devon coasts. The last two years have seen an increase in small-boat activity in the bay, according to both the West Bay Harbourmaster and RNLI – activity that has resulted in 15 serious accidents during that time in the six miles off Chesil Beach alone. The NCI, a registered charity staffed by volunteers, maintains an increasingly comprehensive watch around our coastline. Station manager Clive Edwards explained the NCI’s raison d’etre: “Trained watchkeepers can spot things like distress flares, an overturned boat or a walker stranded on the cliffs – things that computers and radar can’t.” The field of vision from the Burton Cliff NCI is, on most…

Was it the watersail that made all the difference? Whatever it was, Kelpie, the Mylne-designed gaff cutter of 1903, swept the board at the Mediterranean regattas this year, under her new and enthusiastic British owner Pelham Olive who has undertaken much restoration work. This season was only supposed to be a mid-restoration warm-up: so winning in class in all six regattas entered (Palma, Mahon, Imperia, Nice, Cannes and St Tropez) was “a surprise” Pelham told CB. The watersail added between half and knot and a knot to running speed in light airs – and attracted much favourable comment. Perhaps we’ll be seeing more of these rarely-used sails in regattas in years to come. Pelham’s other boat is a Swallow Boats SeaRaider, which he sailed at this year’s Solent Raid –…

At Seixal on the Tagus Estuary, the Ecomuseum welcomed more than 150 delegates from 20 countries at the 7th European Maritime Heritage Congress, writes Holly Hollins. Speakers included Alan Edenborough of the International Congress of Maritime Museums, who came from Sydney to talk about the need to hand down maritime heritage to new generations. Experiences were shared by many, including the host museum, on the variety of vessels rescued, often by private owners, and still sailing on the Tagus. From Russia and the Shtandart project, Vladimir Martous spoke about “making young people lead maritime heritage projects”, while Jorne Langelaan described making a living by transporting cargoes on sail-trading ship Tres Hombres. The economics of the heritage fleet was also covered and speakers came from Portugal, Sweden, Spain, France and the…

Just bought a picture that cost as much as a boat; more, in fact. It depicts what the artist calls a ‘Garment’. I reckon it’s a short shift, what Burns called a ‘cutty sark’ in his narrative poem Tam o’ Shanter, but there is nothing nautical about it. Just a flying shirt really. There is a Folkboat for sale in an Essex boatyard for £4,950 and from the particulars I gather she is pretty much ready for sea. Very tidy and about the same price as our picture, except that our picture will not float. As a boat, therefore, our picture would be regarded by serious sailors as worse than useless. It is so big you could not even fit it inside a Folkboat, or a superyacht for that matter.…

Constant gaze My choice as winner of the Classic Boat award at this year’s 65th RSMA annual exhibition was Roger Davies’s meticulously detailed oil painting titled Moonbeam takes on the big class, 1923. It shows Moonbeam IV lying third behind Britannia, with Nyria in the lead and Terpsichore at the rear in the Royal London Yacht Club regatta for yachts over 70 tons in that year. Roger, born in 1945, studied at various ports around the country including a Master’s degree in fine art at the Royal College of Art in London. His clients include Lulworth’s owner Johan van den Bruele, and restoration project manager Giuseppe Longo. This exhibition, open to non-members of the RSMA to show, and to the general public to visit, is a visual treat of, in…

On arrival I’d hardly stepped out of the car to meet his family, writes Emily Harris, when David Massey (right) burst into boat nostalgia: “At the age of six I was given a manual of seamanship, that’s really where it all started – then I couldn’t stop thinking about boats. Now I can’t remember the time where I was thinking about anything else.” He was still at junior school when hardboard roofing material, masking tape, sash window rope, and broomsticks were strapped together to make his first watercraft in order to cross Stockton Heath Canal. As his father watched him return he said, “Well, we better had make something more substantial, son.” So David sold the ‘new craft’ for ten bob to a friend. Now he owns three Royal Mersey…

Jeremy Rogers had been building wooden Folkboats and the GRP Contessa 26 for 10 years before he made one of the biggest gambles of life: to invest in the design and tooling for the bigger boat so many his customers had been asking him for. The resulting Contessa 32 was a success from the moment the first two boats were launched in 1971. Within weeks, Jeremy won his class at Cowes Week in his boat, Red Herring, and the following year the design was named Boat of the Year at the London Boat Show. It was the start of the Contessa legend. The figures say it all. In the first 10 years of production, some 500 boats were built and, by the time production ceased in 1983, some 600 boats…

SOLENT One of the new boats on this summer’s Solent Raid (see p68) was this trim 21ft (6.4m) Kite, a joint project between Andrew Wolstenholme (design) and Colin Henwood (build), ostensibly for their own pleasure. She’s built in ply, weighs a mere 750kg (about half that of the GRP Norfolk Gypsy, also designed by Andrew) all-up with carbon fibre spars, and trails easily behind a family car. “Designing a boat for yourself is pretty tricky – you know everybody’s watching,” says Andrew, who skippered her on the Raid. In the event she performed “brilliantly”, handling the Solent chop unreefed in a F4-5. With her two-berth cuddy, plus a long, tentable cockpit, she’s clearly a boat with appeal, but this boat’s really a prototype and Andrew’s now looking for a builder…

RECYCLE By New Year, our Christmas tree has become part of the family and we can’t let it go. Rather than sending it to be chipped for compost I prune it to the trunk, to join a growing stack in the garden. But the usual Christmas tree is Norway spruce, Picea abies, the traditional choice for a solid workboat spar, so I picked out one of the best-formed of our seasoned stock – evenly tapered and with a hint of a rakish curve – to make a staff for the red ensign. Using a sharp padsaw I began by cutting away the stubs of the branches – a lengthy job because we always choose a bushy tree! Then half an hour with the drawknife had the bark peeled and the…

Taking a close look at Gaboon Gaboon’s role in boatbuilding can be summed up in two words: lightweight plywood. This however should not be misinterpreted as an indictment of its quality; since it helps to reduce a boat’s displacement, it’s a feature valued in yacht construction, particularly in hulls designed for speed. It gives us a lighter sailing boat. Otherwise known as okoumé (a reflection of its habitat in the former French Equatorial Africa, gaboon (Aucoumea klaineana) is a low-density tropical hardwood (430kg/m3, as opposed to khaya at 530 and utile at 660) available in large diameter logs. This combination makes it excellent for peeling into plywood veneers. Although indigenous to West Africa, Gaboon plywood arrives in Europe mostly from France and, to a lesser extent, Italy. Greece also produces…

SMOKING, PART TWO Last month we looked at smoking in general and the two methods of curing fish in smoke – hot and cold smoking. Cold smoking works better with oily fish because the oil enables more smoke to be absorbed into the flesh. With hot smoking, the food is cooked by immersion in hot smoke; so it’s more a cooking than a smoking process. It’s much faster than cold smoking because fish does not need much cooking. The temperature is around 93ºC. There are dozens of smokers on the market, from small, portable ones for anglers to large commercial kilns. Homemade devices are popular – anything from an old fridge to a biscuit tin can be turned into a hot smoker. The time taken depends on the size and…

VESTA Believed to be a Colin Archer design, Vesta was built in 1892 for the King of Denmark in the Lautrup yacht yard in Copenhagen, and went on to act as the flagship of the Royal Danish Yacht Club until the mid- 1960s, winning a number of races during her career. The 70ft (21.2m) LOS cutter with a 15ft 1in (4.6m) is newly restored with her original oak hull, oak deck and deck fittings; her cutter rig has been reinstated from the original drawings. The new interior has a more guest-friendly layout with two en-suite cabins and crew quarters for two, as opposed to the old four-cabin layout. A good-sized chart table remains in the saloon and a new 120hp diesel has been fitted to power her 34 tonnes through…

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Two days before Christmas 1994. Still no present for my sister. The Sussex Brewery in Emsworth is one of those pubs that lays sawdust on the floor and keeps a fire going throughout the whole year as if burning the evidence of some terrible arboreal crime. The regulars, easygoing refugees from the outside world who drift in and out like the daily tides, look upon life with the sort of unhurried cosy benevolence found among the hardy men who work on the land and sea. I was drinking with a farrier called Steve when in walked Alan Loader the fisherman. “Anyone want to buy some crab?” he shouted. I peered into the writhing bucket of monstrous crustaceans and made the sort of decision that is only made in a pub:…