Innehållsförteckning för January 2024 från Classic Boat

Built over 100 years ago by two generations of the Woods family, the 30ft (9.1m) gaff-rigged Bootlegger is one of Norfolk’s oldest charter yachts. She has spent the majority of her life in hire on the unique inland waters of the Norfolk and Suffolk Broads, with only a brief interlude as a private cruising yacht. Today, Bootlegger is the sole surviving member of the Upton-based Eastwood Whelpton’s original hire fleet. Bootlegger’s origins date back to 1922 when her keel was laid by the Norfolk boat builder and designer Walter Woods in his Potter Heigham boatyard as the latest addition to its hire fleet. His career began as an apprentice in the Great Yarmouth shipyard of Wm Brighton followed by a spell working with George Mollet in Brundall. H Little &…

Many a reader’s first experience of a boat would have been a small, glassfibre dinghy, tender perhaps to a small glassfibre cruising yacht, a Corribee, or something grander, depending on parental income. For others, slightly older, a Mirror dinghy, home built, and those of a generation born in the fifties it would have been a clinker pram or, in my case, Greenfly, my naval grandfather’s 15ft pride and joy, wrecked when a hurricane lifted it from the garden and deposited it some miles away (well, miles may be an exaggeration but I was five when it happened and a mile may well have been a few metres or yards in those days.) Greenfly, which I can remember helping to paint, upside down on the grass in front of that modest…

Indonesia’s Spice Islands with its exotic crops of nutmeg and cinnamon have been fought over for centuries. But the eastern archipelagos straddling the Equator are also entrenched in history thanks to natural historian Alfred Wallace’s revolutionary theories on evolution Dodinga village is about as far from London as one can get. Fewer than 100 foreigners visit the neat, single-street village that straddles a narrow isthmus shaded by coconut palms on Halmahera Island in Indonesia’s North Maluka province. The only way to reach the island is by boat, then it’s a half-hour walk on a road lined by dense jungle on one side, and a coconut plantation on the other. Yet its significance in the archives of history is well-established. It was here in 1858 in this far-flung village that English…

Mushroom Vent A proper brass mushroom vent is a thing of wonder for a small wooden boat – good for a GRP boat too. Untwisting the “mushroom” lets air circulate below decks, keeping rot and mould at bay throughout the year. Owners often use two at either end of the boat, where it won’t get in the way. Just remember to close it when you go to sea. Or whenever you wash the roof! You can open and close these from below decks. Importantly they have a low profile which won’t catch ropes or stub toes. This 4in (105mm) version in heavy solid brass is 3in high and costs £105. classic-marine.co.uk Deck Hardware Deck hardware for your restoration or new build, or just for giving the old girl a gift,…

NO 3 BENCH PLANE Few wooden boats built or restored in the last 150 years have not been touched by one of the cast iron adjustable bench planes invented by Leonard Bailey and subsequently popularised by Stanley. Bailey’s mechanical refinements which ousted the hammer-adjusted wooden plane have filtered down to us essentially unchanged since conceived in his Boston, Massachusetts workshop in the 1860s. For many years Stanley’s range extended from a palm-sized No 1 bench plane weighing just 1lb 2oz (0.5kg), now exceedingly rare and expensive, up to a whopping 24in (61cm) No 8 jointer whose 9lb 12oz (4.4kg) mass might prove an arm-and-shoulder dis-jointer for anyone new to the ways of muscle-powered hand tools. Falling mid-range between these extremes the No 5 jack plane and No 4 smoother are…

Lucky me to be roaring into the roads off Saint-Tropez at Les Voiles 2023 in a RIB with the famous marine photographer Kos. We can see Baruna, Tara Getty’s ‘new’ yacht tooling along as the crew limber down after the day’s race. And they are going to keep going for a little so I can get on deck to see first-hand how she sails. Kos is super-relaxed. She already has a lot of photos, having documented the restoration of this famous yacht over a number of years. The 72ft (22m), 1938 yawl with her 96ft (29m)-high mainmast looks powerful surging along in the eight knots of breeze. She must be doing seven to eight knots herself, on the wind. At Porto Cervo, I later learn, she averaged 9.6 knots over…

Operating a sailing boat with an auxiliary propeller is a mixed blessing. Even if it feathers, we still don’t enjoy what it does to our sailing performance, yet today’s marinas are so tight that trying to get into an awkward berth without one is often unrealistic. This leaves us stuck with some degree of drag. The time we really don’t want a prop is when we’re racing, and on one occasion I had a bit of luck. I was aboard Westernman, a 40ft (12.2m) Irens-designed cutter (50ft sparred length) built for me out of wood epoxy. Although she was a fully traditional shape with a proper long keel and a classic gaff rig, she was a veritable flying machine. Partly, this was because she had a Brunton Autoprop which did…

PORTSMOUTH, HANTS View from the mezzanine A view of some of the restoration work being carried out to a dizzying array of small and forgotten naval vessels at Boathouse 4 in Portsmouth Historic Dockyard, taken during a visit there in October. This is the facility behind the recent replica of Coastal Motor Boat 4, a World War One torpedo boat. The work is mostly carried out by volunteers at the Portsmouth Naval Base Property Trust. Just outside on the water is a growing collection of historic naval small craft in seagoing condition, including MGB81, RAF High Speed Launch 102, RAF Seaplane Tender 1502, Victualling Ship VIC56 and Landing Craft Foxtrot 8. These are available for charter via pnbpropertytrust.org. THOMASTON, MAINE A job from outer space Lyman Morse boatbuilders were recently…

Much like land, container ships and icebergs, communication is best avoided at sea, which is why, to avoid the misunderstandings that so often arise from people attempting to communicate with me, I mostly sail alone. And so far, I’ve never hit an iceberg. But even then it’s not plain sailing as I have at least three niggling, undermining little inner voices that all contradict one another: leave now, wait for the ebb, stay put and slap another coat of anti-fouling on. They are, however, unanimous in one thing: basically that I’m an idiot and that any decision I make will result in calamity, embarrassment and shame or, better yet, death, which by then is usually looking like the least worst option. On one such occasion when the voices got the…

ZIP BAGS These canvas zip bags from chandler Arthur Beale are heavy-duty, attractive and endlessly useful. They measure 30 by 18 cm and are fitted with smooth-running YKK zips and emblazoned with the Arthur Beale logo. “Onboard they have a great advantage over the usual Tupperware boxes because they will squeeze into smaller spaces and they don’t go clonk every time you tack,” says Arthur Beale. They recommend them for small tools like Allen keys, screwdrivers, socket sets, electrical tape and so on. We’ve discovered that they also make very seamanlike sponge bags or artist’s bags, or simply a place to corral plugs, leads, batteries and so on when travelling. They’re a bargain too, at £17.95 for a pack of three in different colours. Arthurbeale.co.uk NANSEN SWEATER These warm, traditional…

Standing on the dock in HMS Hornet, Portsmouth (now the Gunwharf Quay shopping centre) on Saturday 8 September, 1973, to count the 18-strong Whitbread fleet out, no one fully appreciated – least of all the many young crewmembers, some of whom had only signed on just days before – the enormity of what they were taking on. Yes, Francis Chichester had already rounded the globe alone with one stop, followed by Alec Rose (two stops). Robin Knox-Johnston had become the sole finisher in the 1968/9 Sunday Times Golden Globe Race and Chay Blyth had completed the first west-about solo, non-stop circumnavigation two years later. But these were all solo challenges with an average speed of little more than four knots. The big question was how full-on racing yachts designed and…

MERIVA Kim Holman yacht Here’s a pretty classic with quite a modern shape for a boat built in carvel (pitch pine and mahogany on Canadian rock elm). She’s by Kim Holman and built by one of his favourite yards, Tucker Brown, in 1967, with a fin-and-skeg underbody and retroussé counter stern. Somehow, that stern looks quite in keeping with this pretty classic. The high freeboard and decent beam give plenty of accommodation (nine berths over the yacht’s 43ft) while the rig is a simple bermudan sloop on an alloy mast and boom. Her current owners gave her a three-year refit ending in 2012, producing a well-found boat capable of being crewed by two for long, comfortable passages, including transats. The 40hp Yanmar (2012) was removed, serviced, repainted and reinstalled in…

Stanley’s ratcheting screwdrivers Stanley’s ratcheting screwdrivers of the 1950s and 60s with their crimson beechwood handles, gleaming chrome and sliding ‘spring-shifter’ for forward/lock/reverse remain as functional as ever where slotted screw heads are appreciated, but less so where Phillips, Pozi Drive, Torx, Hexagon or Robertson square sockets rule. Accordingly, Stanley’s current offerings provide a range of hexagonal bits attached somewhat precariously by magnet to a hollow bit tube. Manufactured 5,000 miles from the old Sheffield factory, and dominated by plastic, these screwdrivers seem distant relations of their classic forebears. The larger tool is supplied with 10 bits, four stored inside the handle and six in a bit-tube collar. The selector ring for the collar was so painfully difficult to turn as to suggest a manufacturing fault but a spot of…

AWARDS 2024 SHORTLIST The boats that wowed the world in 2023. Make sure you have a good read and cast your vote. Photo shows Lady Min, one of last year’s winners DOROTHY The little 30ft gaffer Dorothy is thought to be the oldest yacht in western – maybe all – Canada, and she’s just been treated to a rebuild. CONTESSA 32 The Contessa 32 has been a legend since the early 70s, and when Jeremy Rogers built a brand new one, we just had to send Contessa 32 owner Nigel Sharp to have a look PLUS… The extraordinary WW1 torpedo boat replica CMB1; sailing a wooden gaffer through the NW passage with Will Stirling; our US road trip hits the west coast; we meet the sailing journalist’s sailing journalist; and…