Innehållsförteckning för December 2020 från Classic Boat

HIGHLAND COWES BY EUAN ROSS Occasionally, subjects of importance fall through history’s net, but not often are they of the magnitude presented here, which is nothing less than the history of sailing in Scotland. It is a book of grand ambition and gravitas, topping out at 800 pages. Even the author concedes it would take some bravery to read it like a novel, but as a reference work, it’s a serious, scholarly tome, with forests of appendices and footnotes to prove it. It has to be, as Scotland has been, for centuries, one of the great ship-building capitals; and the Firth of Clyde was, in the late-18th and early-19th centuries, a centre of yacht design and build to rival, or beat, anywhere in the world: the home of none less…

On 15 March 2020, the 1911-built steel barque Europa arrived in the Beagle Channel at the end of a three-week voyage to Antarctica. The circumstances were almost routine. Every southern hemisphere summer since 2000, Europa has undertaken several such voyages – typically five each season and with up to 45 people on board, most of whom are charter guests. To keep on schedule towards the end of this voyage, Europa had to motor quite a bit of the way upwind across Drake Passage. “We always plan a little sail-by off Cape Horn at the end of those voyages,” Eric Kesteloo, Europa’s captain since 2006, told me, “and then we have the westerlies for the last day’s sailing. That all went well.” But as she entered the Beagle Channel, the crew…

Edited by Steffan Meyric Hughes +44 (0)207 349 3758 Email: steffan@classicboat.co.uk British Finn K17 Allegretto has recently reemerged after being in a barn for around 40 years, reports Peter Vinton. She was originally bought by Chris Heywood and brother then sailed in the 1956 Olympic trials, coming in fifth overall, after which she was little used. Finn K17 was one of a batch of 10 commissioned by Tiny Mitchell for the 1956 Olympic Trials. The hulls were built by Fairey Marine and decked and finished by Wootens off Maidenhead. Allegretto is probably unique in not having been modernised or updated since 1952 and represents a rare insight into the class's early development. She has no kicker and sports a wire halyard winch. The controls are very basic (mainsheet, traveller and…

When the 16 students enrolled for the 40-week Boat Building, Maintenance and Support course at Lyme Regis’s Boat Building Academy (BBA) in August 2019, they couldn’t have imagined that it would be 14 months before they would graduate. But in March, Covid-19 led to a suspension of the course until the middle of July, and that in turn resulted in the launch day scheduled for June being postponed until October. But when the day came, the weather was very much on the students' side. The seven boats were all launched soon after 8am – the timing helped to deter the crowds that the event normally attracts – on a beautiful morning sandwiched between two horrendously wet and windy days.…

Structurally the piercing saw is similar to the coping saw. Both are frame saws with the blade held under tension between two points of attachment, the handle in-line with the blade, and the depth of the frame allowing it to swivel around the work for sawing at various angles – especially useful when cutting curves and apertures. Where the piercing saw differs is in being a smaller, lighter tool with a finer blade suited to delicate work – specifically the sawing of waste from between dovetails and their sockets. This leaves less waste to remove by chisel, which would otherwise be a lengthy and awkward procedure. The blade of a dovetail saw, used for cutting to the lines of the tails and the pins that’ll fit between them, is so…

SWEDISH MASTERPEICE BEL ROSE In 1894, Albert Andersson’s masterpiece was Sweden’s first modern racing yacht, winning all eight of her first races. Today, thanks to old methods and materials, she’s sailing again. EXTREME MACHINES Sailing with the Sydney Harbour 18-footers, one of the most radical historic racing yacht types ever conceived, was a dream come true for CB contributor Nigel Sharp HEMINGWAY’S BOAT REPLICATED The sportfishing boat Pilar was the scene of many of her famous owner’s adventures when the writer Hemingway captained her. Now, there’s a modern replica going into production. PLUS… Top ten trailer sailers; Cox’s, a Broads yard at 25; sailing on Balinese fishing boats; the winners of the National Historic Ships Photography Competition; and much more JANUARY 2021 On sale 18 December 2020 in store, or…

It’s 380 miles from Dartmouth, England, to Vlissingen, Holland, by the coastal route. It’s a routine enough passage for many British sailors cruising in Holland, or for Dutch and German sailors cruising the UK. But it’s also long enough to be filled with drama, as Uli Killer found when he sailed his new acquisition Andrillot ‘up-Channel’ home to Germany. “We had all the time strong winds,” he says. “The forecast was always for 10 knots, and we always had more than 20 knots. It was a hard job on the tiller sometimes with the boat going downwind and big waves following. The boat was always wanting to slide across the waves, not go straight through. We sailed through the inner passage at Portland Bill, and the water was like a…

WINNER Classic Boat AWARD KEVIN CLARKSON This year’s winner of the Classic Boat award is Kevin Clarkson for his acrylic titled A breeze on the Blackwater (pictured above), priced at £975. Kevin trained as a graphic designer but for the past decade has been a professional artist, and is currently chairman of the Thames Maritime Artists. He has a wide range of subjects including traditional working boats, military ships and historic vessels, but always has a wonderful understanding of the coastal sea. He lives in Kent, England, and his work is represented in the permanent collection of the Guildhall Museum and Eastgate House Rochester, Upnor Castle Kent. He was commissioned to paint a large-format set of four paintings depicting a naval action in the Second World War for a private…

I am speaking to the converted, by and large, when I say that we all think old wooden boats are special. OK, there may be some who take the magazine out of nostalgia for a long gone era; not only owners of Gib’ Seas and Beneteaus, but also RIBs and Sunseekers and even hovercraft or jetskis perhaps? And why not. Classic Boat is a broad church, and perhaps the sight of so much varnished mahogany might one day persuade you to mend your ways. More likely you will have formed an unshakeable aversion to jetskis, a prejudice that unites us all. Mostly you will already have formed an attachment with something built in wood when wood was good, and an apprentice might knock you up a clinker dinghy in their…

It’s often been said that boats are like people; seldom if ever are they compared to talking bears. But this one, a shiny new PTS26 belonging to British designer Andrew Winch, is named after Baloo from the Jungle Book. The bear – at least the Disney version – is like the charming, naughty uncle who teaches you to steal apples and fight, so you might expect a vessel named after him to be similarly overpowering and rough around the edges. Thankfully, the PTS26 – even with the over specc’d 190bhp diesel this one has – is nothing like the singing bear and more like Bagheera, the reliable, well-mannered black panther: dad. But that name is already taken by the owner’s other boat – an 18ft Tofinou daysailer that comes out…

Charlie Tulloch, co-owner of the 2009 pilot cutter Morwenna, has bought the 40ft (12.2m) Brixham Sailing Trawler (Mumble Bee class) Golden Vanity. She was built in 1908 for the marine artist Arthur Briscoe who painted the last days of working sail from her decks, and took his friend Erskine Childers sailing. She crossed the Atlantic several times in the 1970s, including an OSTAR, under owner Peter Crowther, who crossed solo in 88 days. She was resurrected in the 80s by the Golden Vanity Trust, then passed onto Trinity Sailing in Brixham. She has gone to Elephant Boatyard for some work before First Class Charter start chartering her in 2021. She’s pictured here stripped and ready to go ashore.…

Visits to Spirit Yachts are beginning to feel like little glimpses into the future of yacht sailing, which might seem a strange thing for a yard that designs and builds yachts with profiles from the 1930s, but of course everything always comes full circle. The 20th century was partly defined by speed, but this one will be defined by integration with our environment, and nowhere is this more clear than with a modern, wooden yacht. On the quayside sits the yard’s latest boat, the Spirit 111, back from a trip to Norway, with crew bustling around on and off the boat. A quick tour of the 111 with the yard’s managing director Nigel Stuart is a real eye-opener: she’s the biggest wooden yacht built in Britain since the J-Class Shamrock…

Despite our take on these things today, expeditions of Victorian and Edwardian times were in their day celebrated as brave missions to thrust forward the frontiers of mighty Empires across the globe. Two fascinating examples are Northrop Mcmillan’s Blue Nile explorations of 1903 and 1905, where the very best of British marine engineering failed spectacularly, resulting in probably Colin Archer’s strangest commissions ever! At 6ft 3 and 20 stone, American explorer William Northrup McMillan was a giant of his era, who apparently thought nothing of polishing off two whole shoulders of mutton, washed down with bottles of champagne and vodka. He inherited his wealth aged just 29 and moved, with his wife Lucy, to London in 1898. After a hunting trip to Ethiopia in 1902, Northrup was soon was planning…

After months of planning and emails to the yachting press to saying Voiles WILL be going ahead – hard to believe in the heat of the second French Covid wave – the world’s biggest classic yacht regatta went off as planned, with about 150 yachts, about half the usual turnout, and spread over a fortnight rather than the usual week. “We pulled it off! Organising our 22nd edition of Les Voiles de Saint-Tropez while adhering to the health and safety guidelines has been a massive challenge” said Pierre Robinson, President of the Société Nautique de Saint-Tropez, the organising body. Weather wise, the fleet had everything from dead calms to near gale conditions thrown at it. The first week was for yachts up to around the 80ft (24m) mark, and included…

“There are days when you’re working on board, stuck in a confined space, and you wonder why you’re doing this,” says Steve Styles, co-owner of the 44ft 7in (13.6m) Cornish lugger Our Daddy. “Then you sail into Paimpol for the traditional boat festival, and people line the quayside applauding that boat as you go in. Your chest swells with pride and you realise that’s why you do it. People become passionate about these old boats not because they’re a business prospect, but because of the emotions they evoke and how beautiful they are to sail.” And well might Steve’s chest swell with pride, for it was that cruise to Paimpol and the Breton coast that earned Our Daddy the title of Regional Flagship of the Year in 2017, an honour…

HISTORICPRINT This image by the Detroit Photographic Company shows the gaff schooner Emerald from 1894. It is part of a series of four similar images offered by Mind the Gap, printed on lithographic paper and come framed. £198 mindtheg.com VINTAGE-STYLE SEXTANT “Navigation has changed a lot over the years,” the Austalian company behind this vintage-look sextant tells us. “The maps on your phone might be convenient, but they sure do take some of the fun out of it.” This handmade brass/alloy sextant is apparently “fully functional” and comes with a heavy, felt-lined wooden case. Price $129.99 (approx £72) YellowOctopus.com.au WOOD AND EPOXY TABLES These wood and epoxy tables are created using the latest products from Entropy Resins, part of West Systems. Entropy Resins has a range of new products including…

One of my earliest memories as a small child was going to sleep in my bedroom next to his studio and being lulled by the comforting ‘ping’ as he tapped his watercolour brush against his water pot when washing one of his brushes.” To conjure up the memories of his father, painter and illustrator Winston Megoran, John tilts his head slightly and closes his eyes. “Dad wasn’t much interested in clothes and generally wore day-in, day-out, grey flannel trousers and a cream, v-necked jumper. He pretty much always wore collar and tie even when sailing.” In the early 1950s, Winston, a married man in his 40s with two boys, sported the uniform of an office clerk. In reality, he was one of the most highly rated marine artists of the…

WINDFLOWER Westmacott’s stuning cabin yacht Alfred Westmacott is best known for his one designs, like the X-ODs and Sunbeams, and his most ardent fans would reserve him a place in heaven had he done nothing else. A Westmacott cabin yacht is not something we’ve ever seen before, but Sandeman Yacht Company has one on their books right now. The 26ft (8m) gaff cutter was built in 1932, of pitch pine on oak and rock elm frames, as Wee Mac, possibly after JJ Bell’s popular early-20th-century fictional character Wee MacGregor. She was the first of three Wee Macs ranging from 32 to 55ft, all designed by Alfred Westmacott and built by his Woodnutt & Co yard at St Helens, Isle of Wight for Bembridge SC member and sporting accountant Adam T…

After winning our Restoration of the Year award 2020 for the Deben Cherub Ariel, the Woodbridge Boatyard, formerly Everson's, launched another newly restored Cherub in October, reports Claudia Myatt. Lindy Lou, 6th of 17, was built at the yard in 1931. She was bought by Charles Cook late in 2019 and given a thorough refit, including replacing several planks, ribs and floors and part of her stem. She also has new cabin sides, a new ply deck and inboard engine. The launch of a newly restored boat is always a public occasion at the Woodbridge Boatyard as the river path goes between boatyard sheds and crane – a perfect excuse for people to stop and watch the fun from a safe distance.…

PRACTICAL Making line tensioning toggles The toggle line tensioner (1) is a simple rigging component with uses including fitting a boat or boom cover, tiller line, temporary mast stay, vang, or simply setting up a washing line on deck. Essentially it’s a domino-shaped piece of wood with two holes, one securing it to the end of the line (by a bowline in this example) while the second accommodates the line returning from a point of attachment. As the toggle is moved up the line so the line comes under tension and is forced into a tight bend which jams the toggle in position. Line tensioners available commercially are often plastic and awkwardly small, but a batch of more user-friendly wooden toggles is easily made from a hardwood offcut using simple…