Innehållsförteckning för January 2017 från Classic Boat

NATIONAL HISTORIC SHIPS REGISTER Rules bent for Suhaili The National Historic Ships Register has agreed to include Suhaili in its list of vessels worthy of saving for posterity. For years, the lower limit had been set at 33ft. Suhaili’s hull length (without spars) fell 7in (17.5cm) short, but following a campaign by veteran yachting journalist and regular CB contributor Barry Pickthall to have Suhaili included, Martyn Heighton, late director of the register, says that with Sir Robin’s blessing, Suhaili will now be included in the Historic National Fleet. FILMS Swallows and Amazons a hit The recent Harbour Pictures movie adaptation of Arthur Ransome’s Swallows and Amazons (CB339) made more than £3 million at UK box office, “very good for a small, British film these days” producer Nick Barton said. Critical…

How can one single carved whale’s tooth be worth $180,000 and another pair be valued at just $960? For sure, the connoisseurship of scrimshaw is just as baffling to outsiders as it is enthralling to collectors in the USA, which is the hub of the scrimshaw market, just as it was for the 19th century whaling industry that spawned it. One such connoisseur was the late Thomas Mittler, whose collection is widely regarded as the best to come to market in 30 years. “We had the ‘who’s who’ of scrimshaw either in the room or on the phone,” said Bill Bourne, VP of Eldred’s, New England’s longest established fine art auction house. Of the 60 pieces to cross the block at Eldred’s most recent maritime auction, three surpassed $100,000. The…

The need to raise the power of human effort by mechanical means has been recognised since Odysseus sailed his hollow ship on the wine-dark sea from Ithaca, bound for the plains of Troy and eternity. Long before gear wheels and hydraulics were a dream on the horizon, sailors understood the obvious benefits of a rope purchase. Basic lanyards passing between two eyes of some sort would have come first. We have all used these on small traditional dinghies and on lashings aboard bigger craft. Next on the scene would be the ‘dumb sheave’, a chunk, or block of wood with a sculpted hole through which rope can render. These were popular on ships for aeons before anyone thought of putting a metal pin and a wheel into the aperture. Sometimes,…

I’m always disappointed when I see a restored classic with wind pointers and whirligigs perched on the masthead. Who needs them? Before they existed we recognised the wind strength by looking at the water. As for deciding when to reef or ditch the topsail, if anyone reading this has to ask a dial I would recommend drafting an immediate letter to the Hon Sec of the local golf club. They are probably short of members. Specifically, the wind direction indicator should be redundant unless you’re planning on joining Sir Ben and his bold crew on the America’s Cup trail sometime soon. Off the wind, if we don’t know when we’re in danger of gybing we’re in the wrong job; closehauled, we can find the groove snugly tucked up in our…

Whether it is Roger Moore helming a Glastron Carlson CV23HT down the Amazon in Moonraker, or Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig chasing baddies on the River Thames in The World is Not Enough and Spectre, water-borne action has played a pivotal role in the James Bond franchise. But for the classic boat aficionado, it is Sean Connery’s outing as the eponymous spy in From Russia with Love that created one of the most memorable scenes, when Bond is chased down by three boat-loads of Spectre agents. All five boats used (including the camera boat) were built by Fairey Marine, and three of those were Fairey Huntresses. The Huntress was introduced in the late 1950s after Richard Fairey saw a gap in the market for a fast seagoing cruiser. Inspired by…

Every worker needs a wood rasp in the tool kit. Closely resembling a file and used similarly, it’s a fast and aggressive tool for preliminary shaping and smoothing out curves. It’s ideal for ironing out a wavy surface left by the bow saw, for example, working around a tight hollow or enlarging a hole. Whereas the teeth of a file stand close together in diagonal rows, the coarse teeth of the rasp stand separately with spaces between them to delay clogging. Occasional clearing with a stiff brush ensures the teeth maintain their bite. The most useful is a half-round rasp which can tackle convex, concave and flat surfaces, while a round rasp is also handy for working inside small apertures. The rough surface left by the rasp can be smoothed…

21st Anniversary 2017 20-22 JANUARY 2017 London Model Engineering Exhibition Alexandra Palace, London londonmodelengineering.co.uk One of the biggest such exhibitions in Britain, attracting more than 14,000 visitors annually, celebrates its 21st anniversary this year. Here you will find scale model ships, working steam and sailing boats as well as remote control boats, aeroplanes and helicopters, and plenty of interactive exhibits. One highlight is the Spithead Review, a set of around 600 tiny 1:1200 scale models of iconic ships providing a visual history of 3,000 years of naval warfare. We have four pairs of tickets (each worth £24) to give away to the first four readers to email cb@classicboat.co.uk, answering the following question: How old is the London Model Engineering Exhibition this year? A: 10 years, B: 21 years, C: 100…

When Myfanwy was launched in 1897 there wasn’t much bunting going spare; the British Empire was at its zenith and the diamond jubilee of Queen Victoria was marked by 165 Royal Navy ships anchored at Spithead for her fleet review. Fifty-six years later the Victorian racing yacht broke adrift from her mooring and came ashore on the North Wales coast, sustaining damage to her starboard side. That she survived at all was credit to her builder, Samuel Bond, of Birkenhead, for the same January tempest of 1953 sank the Larne-Stranraer ferry, with the loss of 133 lives and produced the storm surge which flooded East Anglia, drowning 326 people in Lincolnshire, Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex and Scotland and 1,800 in the Netherlands, the worst peacetime disaster in UK history. As Myfanwy’s…

Theodore Walter Rye was born "a fat and jolly baby" at London’s Charing Cross Hospital on 27 October 1968. When he died from a brain tumour on 12 November 2016, he was one of the world’s leading naval architects in the field of traditional yacht design with a knowledge and enthusiasm for his subject that were unrivalled. 'Tragic' is an overused word in obituaries, but his death, soon after his 48th birthday, will have left hundreds of people around the world with a deep feeling of loss, because aside from his career, Theo was one of life’s great joys. He was our technical editor for three years, and a day that went by without finding an excuse to phone him to discuss grammar, books, boats or anything else, was a…

LLOYD’S REGISTER MEMORY STICK The entire Lloyd’s Register of Yachts from 1878 to 1980, several bookshelves’ worth of information, contained in a memory stick. For this veritable gem we have the Association of Yachting Historians (AYH) to thank. This entirely amateur body has (with the support of Lloyd’s Register Group Ltd, various libraries, yacht clubs and individuals) scanned all 94 volumes, together with all the annual supplements that were published during the course of each year (157 overall), and all material linked to the registers, such as the booklets of sail numbers and yacht flags that were occasionally published separately. The total number of pages scanned is more than 104,000. You end up with a collection of pdfs that is searchable, for yacht name and other details. Price: £95 yachtinghistorians.org.uk…

Nearly all builders of Spirit of Tradition yachts harp on about simplicity – and with reason, since ease of use is the mainstay of most modern boats’ appeal. Simplicity and speed were at the top of Swiss boatbuilder Stefan Züst’s list when he went to compatriot naval architect Jonas Panacek for a new boat. The result is a yacht whose looks are inspired by a British Pilot Cutter, but with the underbody of an out-and-out racer. The simplicity brief goes as far as flush decks and a complete lack of winches, enabled by the cutter rig that divides headsail area, and the use of ball-bearing races in the blocks. Even the cockpit has been largely omitted – there is a footwell instead, giving very little volume to any seas that…

Waterfly is an International 12-Foot dinghy, built in 1920, that has been sitting on a trailer in the owner’s garden for the last three decades. Her owner, Donald Smellie, learned to sail on her in the 1950s and he wanted her restored as a rowing boat. He approached Keith McIlwain, who Classic Boat readers may recall trained at Lyme Regis Boat Building Academy in 2013 after a career as a wine salesman. At Lyme Regis he built a Golant Ketch (CB329, November 2015) and Waterfly was his first big job after graduating, having set up as Daydream Boats in Bristol. McIlwain said: “Waterfly was a renovation in the broadest sense of the word! I have managed to save stem, transom and some thwarts. There were several significant challenges during the restoration. Waterfly’s keel had…

Where a pilot hole is needed but there isn’t the knuckle-room to turn a wheel brace or twist an auger gimlet the push drill is indispensable. Its special feature is one-handed operation, converting a reciprocating pump action into rotary motion. Besides operating in small spaces it also frees the user’s second hand to hold the work. This sleek nickel-plated example is a Goodell-Pratt No 185 which dates from about 1920 and still works flawlessly despite the knocks of three generations. Key to its longevity are the sheer quality of materials – it’s solid brass underneath – and tight engineering tolerances which have minimised wear. It almost feels like a surgical tool, and indeed it was suggested early on that the mechanism could be used in dentistry. The invention can be…

I only met Francis once. I can’t say it changed his life but it certainly changed mine. It was the summer of 1964. He was 63, I was 14. We were both solo in the Beaulieu River, he sailing on board Gipsy Moth III, I rowing a heavy old wooden dinghy. I had been mooching around the creeks at high tide and the tide was now ebbing, just. I was rowing back home upstream, no doubt crabbing and clawing and cursing. There was no danger at all, just a lot of puff and pant with the promise of more to come. He could see I was young and foolish, and sailing past he gestured to give me a tow. He stalled the sails and I rowed over, probably tied some…

Sailors and spectators eagerly checked out Columbia, the 141ft (43m) replica of a Gloucester fishing schooner, headliner of the 2016 Classic Regatta in Antigua. Curiosity for the new vessel, making her Caribbean debut, morphed into awe and admiration at the sight of her curvaceous sheer, work-of-art rig and a sail configuration to melt hearts. Hands down, she was the sweetheart of the regatta, the target of every lens. The background story of this beauty, launched in 2014, began nearly a century before on the design table of famed naval architect, William Starling Burgess. Tasked with creating a workboat that would sail the catch home first and withstand the wrath of the Grand Banks, Burgess met those parameters, enveloping all into an exquisite design that has stood the test of time.…

Hands up who has read Swallows and Amazons? To avoid the risk of offending only those with beards, smocks, faded yachting caps, red trousers, born in the 1950s, I will now offend everyone who has ever been inspired by Arthur Ransome’s misty-eyed paean to the joys of well-brought-up children messing about, largely unaccompanied, in small wooden boats. Is it nostalgia for a simpler time that makes those who read Ransome’s book cherish the memory? In a word, yes. Titty and the rest potter around in adult-free Nirvana. The perils are only those of deep water and tree stumps; sudden squalls and the risk of capsize. They learn by experience; by getting a little damp and cold and, at times, tearful (although the spirit of stiff upper lip permeates). It is…

The air is heavy with moisture. There is almost no wind and the waves of heat are visible above the ground. You can see reed beds and uprooted trees all around, while dozens, if not hundreds, of swans are floating along on the water. A herd of Konik wild horses runs together across the grassland. For a moment we can imagine ourselves in the Serengeti on the Mara River. A Masai warrior would not be out of place in this scene. We are sailing on the Lauwersmeer, the wilderness on the border between Friesland and Groningen, on the beautifully restored motor launch Granny, formerly the Elsie Isabel. Back in February, 2015, she was tied up in Sutton Harbour Marina in Plymouth, having attracted the interest of a Dutch bidder. The…

Replica Mersey pilot schooner Spirit of Falmouth is a hive of activity. The men and women on board are sanding, scrubbing, varnishing, painting and re-wiring with such resolve that one wonders if they’re not preparing to set sail tomorrow. Other than that, they look like your average crew. But they’re not. Spirit of Falmouth is crewed entirely by ex-servicemen and women, each of them taking advantage of the mental and physical benefits that sailing can bring, as they find their way into a life post-Armed Forces. They are here under the auspices of Turn to Starboard, a charity based in Falmouth, Cornwall, which specialises in helping servicemen who have been affected, physically or mentally, by military operations. Not only are the beneficiaries able to gain sailing qualifications, with a view…

Falmouth quay punts are one of those workboat designs that became immortalised in yacht design and this one, designed by Harley Mead, the best-known of the Falmouth quay punt designers, is a very nice example indeed. She was built in 1909 at Mead’s Cornubia Yard in East Cowes, and it seems that between his men a century ago and her more recent 21st century re-build, nothing has been spared. The keel is lead (in fact, the same lead that was laid down in 1909), the planking and cabin trunk are teak, the fastenings are bronze and the interior is mahogany. She has four berths in the very cosy cabin, and plenty of nice gear upstairs as well, including a good sail wardrobe all dating from 2006 or later. Rig is…

It might have been 150C and sunny when we visited Beale Park on the banks of the upper Thames in October, but dead leaves were floating to earth and drowning in water, and on the empty lake shore, smoke from a far bonfire felt like an obituary to summer. At Henley Sales and Charter’s (HSC) storage facility, the Beale Park Boat Store near the park’s entrance, it was a happy bustle of activity for Gillian Nahum and her little army as they tended to the 40 river craft hibernating in their care. For boats and boatyards, autumn is a second spring. Things are on the up at HSC. The appointment of Stuart Roberts late last year as boat manager means that all sorts of work can now be carried out…