Innehållsförteckning för August 2022 från Classic Boat

Suffolk Yacht Harbour (SYH) welcomed 50 classic sailing and motor yachts to its annual Classic Regatta in June, on its 20th anniversary. Among them first-timers and sailors who have competed in all 20 to date. SYH director Jonathan Dyke said, “This year was undoubtedly the best yet. The weather was superb and the race management delivered fantastic racing in all three classes. It was proof that the classic yachting scene on the east coast is very much thriving.” The sailing yacht fleet comprised a wide range from gaffers to spirit of tradition, IODs and Stellas. The oldest yacht was 1898 gaff cutter and Dunkirk little ship Cachalot, 123 years older than the newest yacht in the fleet; the Spirit 30 Lady Elena, launched in 2021. The three-race series for the…

We’ve got good news and bad news,” wrote Tony and Val Williams to naval architect David Alan-Williams in March 2015. “We’ve sold the boat but we didn’t really mean to!” The boat in question was the 42ft Brychan they had built themselves (just as they had their previous boat Breock) and which David had designed for them. They were now turning their attention to another boat and, once more, they wanted David to design it. Tony and Val’s involvement in boatbuilding began before they were married when, as teenagers, they played truant from college to work on a canoe, then built various small boats including an Enterprise and Fireball dinghy. Tony apprenticed as a toolmaker with Rolls Royce but by the late 1970s he was building boats full time. The…

Email: steffan@classicboat.co.uk BRISTOL Change in the air at Underfall Something of a shock awaited at Bristol’s Underfall yard on a recent chance visit: RB Boatbuilding, run by John Raymond Barker, has officially shut up shop. John moved to this site in 2002, and built from this modest shed in Bristol’s city centre, no fewer than four Bristol Channel pilot cutters, not to mention a rebuild of the original Breeze. We’re not talking boarded-up shops here though: John is now just as busy managing the maintenance of the city’s pleasure ferries, of which three are wooden (the other two are in steel). And it seems he’s nearly as passionate about this as a project. In his shed on our visit was Emily, a c40ft (12.2m) wooden ferry, in the distinctive blue-and-yellow…

UTILITY KNIFE Because it’s a current, frequently gimmick-laden hand tool, we might not regard the utility knife as ‘traditional’ but the original Stanley – widely treated as a synonym for the species – is older than the Folkboayt, in fact an exact contemporary of the Mylne ketch Thendara having been launched in 1936. Seeing the classic fixed-blade 199 in the hands of our adult children today, those of a certain age will recognise essentially the same knife as used by our grandparents. Its chunky hand-filling grip on a short blade provides such good leverage and control; no other knife comes close for simplicity and usefulness. This 199 dates from around 1960 and was advertised in the UK as a ‘trimming’ knife, supplied with five trapezoidal double-ended blades stored inside the…

Like everything else to do with sailing, going aground is a lot easier than the experts make out. Of course, the experts are the true experts at it, and do it frequently and on purpose, purely to demonstrate the myriad techniques for getting off again for magazine articles that illustrate both their depth of knowledge and our lack of it in what is a relatively shallow field of endeavour. Most of these ‘expert’ and ‘masterclass’ type techniques involve throwing everything that’s in the boat into the water – or what’s left of the water – including anchors, life rafts, cushions, outboards, ceramic loos and loo doors, flat-screen TVs, mobile phones, people and wot not. As a rule of thumb, if you manage to create a scene reminiscent of the aftermath…

Stepping off the plane onto the deck of Viveka this late May, everything seemed new. At Voiles d’Antibes there was a sensation of waking from a bad dream, with bare feet on teak, sunny skies, hard shadow lines, laughter, cold beer and groups of friends hugging each other for maybe the first time in two or three years. The sky was washed pure blue and it seemed the planet had rebooted for Antibes, back in its rightful early summer slot as the opener of the classic yacht-racing season in the Mediterranean. Also new was the staysail schooner Viveka, winner of our 2022 award for the best restored sailing vessel over 40ft. Actually, she’s 92 years old, but her near-complete rebuild at Rutherford’s Boatshop in California, her unusual staysail schooner rig,…

There could barely have been a greater contrast in the weather over the three days of Falmouth Classics. Friday’s two races took place in glorious sunshine, initially in a reasonably steady south westerly breeze and then – after a mercifully short period of calm – in a cracking northerly. On Saturday, however, the strong wind forecast kept many boats alongside and the increasing gusts prompted the race committee to cancel racing for all but the five classes of bigger boats. Despite a cold grey morning on Sunday, a surprising number of boats took part in a spectacular Parade of Sail, led by the Falmouth All Weather Lifeboat.…

ELDRED’S Westward gone but not forgotten The memory of Nathanael Herreshoff’s magnificent 1910 steel schooner Westward is preserved today in a dramatic photograph taken by Beken of Cowes. Westward cost $118,000, a mighty sum for most, but not for Alexander Cochran, who’d inherited $40 million and subsequently joined the New York Yacht Club to have a go at yachting. Cochran immediately took the 135ft (LOS) Westward to European waters where he trounced the Germans, beat the Brits including Tommy Lipton’s latest Shamrock, then sold her after barely a year of ownership. After a succession of owners, Westward entered a new golden era in 1924 when she was bought by Jersey-born fisherman’s son TB Davis who made his own fortune in cargo handling, but not before an early mishap. On his…

Set in a dug-out lake off the River Crouch, Burnham Marina is classic Thames Estuary, with the big skies and flat lands so associated with the place. It was farmland until 1988, when it was dug out by a huge excavation project. “Locals would have played on the field before then” says general manager Tony Pitt, who has worked at the marina since its inception and has overseen substantial change over the last 40 years while remaining a traditional boatman at heart. Tony doesn’t class himself as a local, as he hails from Maldon, which is all of 10 miles away. It’s a great spot – the 350-odd berths here are all-tides access to the sea, which is about five miles downriver, and from there, it’s the great East Coast…

The Giorgio Armani Superyacht regatta, Sardinia, played host to the classics in early June. Set on the glorious Costa Smeralda coast, four days of racing launched the superyacht regatta season in the Med. The Herreshoff schooner Mariette of 1915, Shenandoah of Sark and the modern Spirit 111 Geist were in town. After taking part in 2019, it is a firm favourite for Mariette. Organised by the Yacht Club Costa Smeralda, the race committee was headed by seasoned pro Peter Craig. After a delayed opening start, light to medium breeze saw Mariette in the laad. The fleet headed upwind to the first mark, the Mortoriotto rock, before reaching to the Passo delle Bisce strait and entering the Saline Gulf, at which stage the breeze was up to 13 knots. After rounding…

SHEENA’S LATEST WORK Falmouth artist Sheena Bevis-White won the Classic Boat prize at the Royal Society of Marine Artists exhibition six years ago. Sheena held a successful online exhibition over lockdown and now again we can peruse her latest 2022 works on her website. She depicts local sailing as well as scenes from international regattas in the Med and elsewhere. Working Boats racing, Falmouth Week, oil on board, 24” x 16” (60cm x 40cm), white frame, £550 sheenabevis-white.co.uk WATERPROOF PHONE KIT This photo of the sea bed, 25 yards off a beach in Crete, is somewhat less exciting than Classic Boat’s group editor Rob Peake suggested when he returned from his recent holiday on the island, but Rob was right on one count – it’s not a bad shot for…

We’ve featured countless powered vessels in Classic Boat, starting from the very first issue (January 1987). In those early years, there was a leaning towards steam and electric vessels for use on inland waterways. The classic motorboat scene has developed and matured in the last two decades, and some niches have appeared. These days, there is significant interest in collectable runabouts (Rivas, and a rising interest in classic Chris Craft, Hacker, Albatross and many others), restoration of big inter-war motor yachts (Nahlin, Malahne, Marala and plenty more), and motorboats for inland waterways, where electric power is now a popular choice. The biggest growth has been in newly-built, semi-displacement fast ‘picnic’ boats (the name is a misnomer that belies the capability of most of these vessels). These are usually fast, powerful…

Dovetail template The sloping lines for tails of dovetail joints can be marked against a sliding bevel (2) which is adjusted to your preferred angle for the job, but as with any adjustable tool there’s a risk of losing the setting if it suffers a knock or the mechanism loosens. A more convenient option is the dovetail template (1). Proprietary versions are typically metal, offer limited choice of angles and are relatively expensive for such a simple device. It’s a simple and rewarding exercise to make your own wooden template, in which case you can also experiment to find an appealing slope of tails. Angles generally range between 5 and 15 degrees depending on circumstances, but there are no hard and fast rules. Danger of breakage lurks in short grain…

UANDI She’s small, utterly perfect, newly restored, sails like a witch, and showed her stuff at the recent Fife Regatta FIFES ON THE CLYDE This year’s Fife Regatta saw the biggest gathering of the Scottish master’s creations ever seen INSAM A post-war two-seater runabout with outrageously curvaveous lines and a Lancia Aprilia engine PLUS… The restored Nicholson 55 Quailo III; part one of a history of Morgan Giles; the art of Martyn Macrkill; future-proofing the Stella Class; action from regattas around the world; and more SEPTEMBER 2022 On sale Friday 12 August, 2022 30 YEARS AGO August 1992, CB50 It turns out that the editorial in this number was a paean to the joys of small boats. “As a youngster,” wrote then-editor Peter Milne, “I well remember that as far…