This weekend, 6/7th July, saw the start of the Dartmouth Classic Channel Regatta, with two days of racing outside the harbour. We were there aboard our 43′ Camper and Nicholson ‘Zircon’, fresh from a 2 week refit and looking very smart. We had high hopes that the quality of th boat would make up for our lack of sharp racing skills, however it was not to be! Saturday brought very light winds which made the beat to the windward mark long and tiresome in the strong tide. It was clear not long after the start that the course would be shortened from the original 4 laps, and as it was very few boats even managed to complete 2 before the end of the afternoon. Our maximum boat speed during the race was a heady 3.1 knots which was greeted with utter delight and a celebratory beer. It was however perfect conditions to get our spinnaker and asymmetric out their bags for the first time, both of which set very well.
The whole fleet was shown up by the grace and speed of Jolie Brise, a Le Harve pilot cutter and winner of the first Fastnet Race. It was astounding how she kept moving when everyone else seemed to be struggling, however I think she was benefiting from a breeze slightly above sea level which she could benefit from with her tall mast and enormous gaff topsail. It just goes to show that you don’t necessarily need a strong breeze to get a heavy gaff cutter to go well.
Sunday promised a bit more breeze and it certainly delivered with a steady north easterly Force 3-4 at the start. More by luck than skill, we managed to judge the start perfectly and went across the line in second place, doing 7.2 knots and soon flying into first place and keeping that position for at least half an hour! Unfortunately our old sails are not conducive for beating hard to windward and although out in front we were losing ground to leeward. We were however delighted to have made a good start and be at the forward end of the fleet having never sailed the boat hard or really pushed her at all. There were several French competitors going very well, with the ex racing yacht Cervantes romping through and being one of 3 boats to actually finish the course by the end of the day. The wind started to fade as we headed along the coast towards Torbay and shortly after Berry head it died completely with all the bats started to spin in circles in the tide and head smartly back towards Dartmouth. Only three boats that I know of made it to the mark and were then able to drift slowly back to the finish, most boats retiring and enjoying lunch in the sun or catching mackerel. It was good to see the two Holman sloops Mabel and Whirlaway back together, with Bruce Thorogood in Mabel slicing past us to windward in the light winds.
Despite the lack of wind it was a great weekend with a good turn out of yachts from both sides of the channel. Monday will see the fleet depart on a cross channel race to Paimpol, then up to the Channel Islands at the end of the week. The winds are looking great for this with 15-20 knots on the beam going across the channel, so all the boats will be flying with the sheets eased out a little.
We will be putting photos from the weekend up on our Facebook page, but there are lots of photos taken by Andy Carter of Dartmouth Photography on their web site, www.dartmouthphotography.com
Here at Wooden Ships we like to have a wide range of boats on our books, boats from all parts of the scale in price, size, condition and age. It is this variation that makes our business not only attractive for buyers but also for us here in the office.
There are two such boats we have for sale that represent very different ends of the scale entirely, but both are attractive propositions in their own right, and although neither are suited to everyone, both will find passionate and excited new owners.
The first is ‘Ezra’ an Isles of Scilly pilot cutter built by Luke Powell, launched in 2006 and featured in his book which was released last year. Her lines are similar to those of all Luke’s boats with inspiration taken from the Scillonian pilot cutters. When drawing her lines Luke and the first owner had in mind the adventures of Bill Tillman, with a plan to take her to the far north and beyond, she had to be a strong and seaworthy vessel, capable of taking on any weather. These characteristics are inherent in the nature of any pilot cutter as these boats would spend days at sea in often horrendous weather conditions with a small crew, so evolution of design has left us a superb seagoing legacy, a boat that will take on any weather, can be easily handled and most of all are very pleasing on the eye. The question, as always, is can the crew take it, not can the boat take it?
Ezra has spent the years since her launch chartering on the west coast of Scotland, carrying guests on sailing holidays, often with a focus on mountaineering in the rugged and remote Western Isles. Unfortunately in life things don’t always pan out the way they were planned, and now Ezra is being offered for sale, complete with the charter business, its web site and contacts. She has an up to date MCA Code of Practice certificate, licensed to carry 6 passengers plus crew with capacity for 10 day passengers.
The ‘pilot cutter revival’ as it has become known, has blossomed in recent years, due partly to the construction of what is a relatively large number of new boats, and of course with the rebuilding of the remaining older cutters. We now have a large fleet of 35 pilot cutters or pilot cutter derived yachts, many of whom will be gathering in Fowey and Falmouth from the 30th May to 2nd June 2013 for the “World Championships” to indulge in a bit of racing and a lot of celebrating, with takings behind the bar in St Mawes increasing tenfold!
We often hear remarks that Ezra is an expensive boat for her size, but this is out of ignorance of the situation. She is basically a new boat, has had all the teething problems ironed out and is a lot cheaper than the cost of a new build boat today, plus she has a good earning potential that would offset the purchase cost greatly. Many of the new build cutters have been put to work in the charter industry, most of them very successfully, and Ezra of course was no exception. To many the idea of chucking in the day job, throwing off the suit and buying a pilot cutter to charter is the ultimate dream, sailing around the beautiful islands of Scotland or exploring Brittany, but this is not a decision that should be made lightly as it definitely does not suit everyone. You need to be a particular type of individual to run a successful charter boat, not only being able to sail a gaff cutter extremely competently, but you need the relevant qualifications and bits of paper. You need to be a half decent chef, an entertainer, a teacher and a host. You are the person who will make or break the guests holiday, and most importantly if you succeed they will come back again and again. We have often turned buyers away from the idea of purchasing a boat for charter as it is obvious from the outset that they are completely the wrong individual and will never succeed, but for the person with the right attributes this can be the dream life.
Ezra is a boat that has all the potential to offer that way of life in terms of the traditional charter route. However, we think she has the potential to provide a platform for what is a relatively untapped resource, day sailing charters. There are many barriers to this game, it is very seasonal, weather dependant and has no guaranteed income, but in the right location and run the right way we feel could be rather lucrative. This is something we have suggested to potential buyers who have wanted the boat as a private yacht with the ability to offset their running costs with a little summer charter work. This would not work everywhere, but in a busy tourist port with an available quayside, a boat like Ezra will attract a phenomenal amount of attention, and for most holiday makers the chance to have a three hour trip around the bay on a traditional boat is a once in a lifetime experience. This is not going to make the owner a wealthy individual, but it will pay some costs which as we all know is what boat owners are most concerned about these days.
As you can see, when you break it down, at £265,000 she is not actually an expensive boat, and although not in everyone’s price range, she is more accessible than one might initially think and has advantages that may not be clear at the first glance. Ezra will be sailing to the south coast this summer from her usual berth in Skye, taking part in several classic regattas and cruising around Devon and Cornwall so if you see her out and about give Sam a shout and go and say hello.
The very opposite end of the scale is a boat we are about to put on the market, designed and built by Percy Mitchell in 1932, she is a bermudan yawl with rather noticeable Westcountry lines. She has been in the same ownership for many years, and is now very sadly an executor sale, so is in the guardianship of a very distressed widow who was not expecting to be in this situation at all. She is 27’ on deck planked in pitch pine and will be going on the market at £7,500.
This is a lovely little boat in a very distressed situation, so it is nice for us to be able to help by offloading one burden for the family. This type of sale is not our bread and butter, but as I said before, it makes Wooden Ships interesting for buyers and for ourselves. A boat like this is going to get a family out sailing for not a lot of money, and although a new owner will undoubtedly want to do some work to the boat, there are only a couple of areas that require immediate attention, otherwise she is just as she has been for years, sailing around the channel every season with no problems and providing a lot of fun for her owners.
Although not to everyone’s taste, somebody will love her again and she will have a new owner just as ecstatic and content as the new owner of Ezra will certainly be. As they say, whatever floats your boat!
“Buy the smallest boat possible that will do the job you want”
This is a mantra we preach to buyers time and time again. As long as the money is in the bank, it is easy to go and buy a 50’ yacht which provides all the space required to cruise around the coast and across the channel in comfort. It is more difficult to find that same comfort in a 35’ yacht and have the imagination to be able to use the more limited space in sensible ways. The cost benefits of the smaller boats are considerable and can be seen in yard and mooring fees, maintenance costs and insurance premiums.
The truth is that most people are ‘over-boated’ considering what they actually do with their yachts which is plain to see when we look at all the marinas around the country, stuffed full of yachts that rarely go to sea. Do we really need a 40’ yacht to sail around the bay a few weekends every year?
For many years we have had a 19’ Herreshoff designed dayboat called an Islander. These are gorgeous little boats with a long keel, short counter stern and a couple of berths up forward. Although we have had to do a lot of work on her over the years, including a new rudder post, floors, garboards, keel bolts, quite a lot of new framing and some deck repairs, she has been a huge amount of fun and provided cheap sailing. Because she can be towed behind the car on her 4 wheel trailer there are no winter yard storage fees and at only 19’ her mooring is cheap.
I have grown up with this little boat and spent many weekends aboard going camping and fishing, exploring creeks as well as coastal sailing. It was in this boat that I undertook my first ‘voyage’ without the help of parents, sailing from Plymouth to Salcombe with my brother as young teenager, memories that will never be forgotten! I wouldn’t have been able to do that had she been a big yacht.
The joys and benefits of owning and sailing a day boat should not be underestimated and although it lacks the comforts afforded by a larger boat, the small dayboat is capable of undertaking a large proportion of the sailing that most of us do. We have just been asked to sell a 22’ West Country working boat, built around the turn of the 20th century and typical of the working boats built up and down the coast at the time. Although many would not admit it, this is the type of boat that most yacht owners should be buying.
Although gaff rig is not to everybody’s taste, this boat offers everything in a small inexpensive package. She has a large open cockpit with coamings at chest height which keeps everyone in the boat rather than on it, you would have to try extremely hard to fall out of her even when she is heeling hard. There is small inboard diesel to get you home when the tide turns foul or the wind fails, and the 2 berth cabin under the foredeck gives shelter from the elements and a bit of accommodation when you want to venture further down the coast. It might not have the luxury of a big motor yacht but you will be warm and dry.
For summer family sailing you don’t get much better. I will be eternally grateful for the years I spent sailing small boats like this and our Herreshoff when I was young. These small boats give you an understanding of wind and boat handling that you cannot get from a bigger yacht, and in some ways is not available with dinghies. The hands on sailing of a small boat that reacts when you put the helm over but also has a bit weight behind her is invaluable for kids who are to become good sailors. Skills learned at this age, I believe, become second nature and it is easy to spot someone who has grown up on boats by the way they handle a yacht as they have a feel for a boat which cannot be taught by a sailing instructor later on. And what is more fun as a child growing up than to spin around the bay, catch some mackerel and camp under the boom tent while at anchor up the river. These are the childhood memories that I will never forget.
Bessie Ellen is a Westcountry trading ketch, built in Plymouth in 1904 and is very typical of the type of boats that were being built in great numbers around the coast throughout the 19th an d early 20th century. After a lifetime of carrying cargo she now operates as a charter vessel with her owner Nikki Alford who rebuilt the boat from a bare hull.
I join the ship now and then to skipper for Nikki and I came aboard to help bring the boat back from the Canary Islands after her winter of chartering in the sun.
This is a log of our voyage from Tenerife to Lisbon.
9th February 2013.
Last minute preparations underway before departure. Bobstay, whisker stays and forestays are all tensioned, food is loaded and stowed away and passage plans are logged with MRC in Falmouth and Portugal. The list of jobs needing to be done on any boat before setting off on an extended ocean passage is endless, but special attention has to be paid on this type of vessel that has just finished a long hard charter season. We did a full rig check from top to bottom looking for any tiny stress fractures in the iron work, chaffing in the running rigging and other damage that could become a problem at sea. The boat is in very good condition and looks extremely smart thanks to the hard work, time, effort and money put in by her owner so we don’t have too much to worry about on that side of things.
The guests arrive in the afternoon, and once they have been taken through the safety talk and a briefing about shipboard life while at sea, we slip lines and head round the coast and drop anchor off Los Christianos. From here it is easy to weigh anchor and head straight off without hassle, and it is nice for the guests to spend a first night on the boat out of the marina but not at sea so they can get used to their new surroundings and find their way around the ship. We have a superb big hearty meal of roast pork followed by homemade lemon cheese cake followed by a good nights sleep.
The Bessie Ellen – 1904 West Country Trading Ketch
10th February 2013.
Noon position: 28ᵒ16.3’N 016ᵒ55.7’W
Forecast: NE F5/6. Moderate to rough sea conditions. Plan is to head NNW, pointing as much as we can but keeping boat speed up until we are north of Madeira where we will be able to take advantage of the Azores blocking high pressure and start heading east.
0830. Weigh anchor. There is very little wind on this western coast of Tenerife in these north easterlies so we motor up the coast in mirror calm waters. We kill the engine and drift near a pod of pilot whales, several of which swim right up to the boat and dive under our keel.
1200. The Canaries is well known for its acceleration zones where the wind is funneled between the islands and can easily be 15 knots more than forecast. With this in mind we set the main with a single reef followed by the staysail, inner and outer headsails.
1300. Course 315*M. Sail out of the lee of the land into rough seas and strong winds which quickly build to 40-45 knots with frequent gusts of 55 knots. It seems the reef was prudent. The ship takes it well making 8/9 knots boat speed on a fine to beam reach.
1600. Course 340ᵒM. Winds ease to a steady 30-35knots and we settle into a comfortable rhythm on a course of 340 M. watch system temporarily altered to 2 watches so as to strengthen the crew in what is forecast to be a lively night. Tomorrow we will return to a 3 watch system as planned.
2000. 340ᵒM. Choppy confused seas that we encountered around the islands are dissipating and a more consistent 2m ocean swell is coming through. The ship has settled into a steady motion with the occasional larger wave making her roll uncomfortably. The helm is light and easy and the new guests are quickly getting the hang of helming an 85ft ship. Some of them are used to sailing small modern yachts with tiller steering so it take a little coaching and some practice to get them steering a steady course. The off watch clear up after dinner which was served straight from the galley in these rolling seas.
11th February 2013.
Noon position: 30ᵒ05.68’N 018ᵒ25.93’W.
Days run: 137Nm.
0800. 340ᵒM. My watch take the deck. The NE wind have settled in now with a steady Force 6 breeze giving us about 6 knots. There’s bacon for breakfast!
1200. 340ᵒM. At the change of watch we shake out the first reef in the main. The wind is steady Force 6-7 so she will happily take a full mainsail.
1730. 345ᵒM. A loud bang reverberates through the hull. Shouts from the watch to get on deck. We have snapped a link at the bottom end of the bobstay leaving the bowsprit dangerously unsupported. We drop the inner and outer jib and heave too where we can assess the situation. Our options are to motor sail north to Maderia but that is straight into the choppy seas. We decide on a running repair at sea. The bottle screw at the top end of the bobstay is let go with the chain held on a rope. We lower one of the crew down on the inner jib halyard wearing a drysuit. He very cleverly manages to join the two parts of the broken chain with a big shackle and gets a cable tie on to seize it. We then attach a chain hoist between the top end of the bobstay chain and the bowsprit and winch the two parts together until we can do the bottle screw up and eventually tighten the chain. An hour later we are as good as new, except for the several bits of rope attached to the bottom end of the bobstay which will have to wait until we reach Lisbon.
1900. 335ᵒM. Just getting dark and we are back underway. The crew are getting changed out of wet clothes when there is a shout from the helmsman. The clew of the mainsail has pulled out and the main is flogging in the breeze. It never rains but it pours! We quickly lower the peak and throat halyards, run out the reefing tackle and haul in on the second reef. There is no chance we can get the 1st reef as that pennant is taking the whole strain of the sail. 15 minutes later the main is set nicely with 2 reefs. The easy repair can wait until daylight tomorrow.
2300. 340ᵒM. Engine on. Decide to motor sail as wind is decreasing. Sheet in on the main and attach preventers to the boom and gaff to stop them crashing and causing anymore damage.
12th February 2013.
Noon position: 32ᵒ03.61’N 019ᵒ04.19’W.
Days run: 125Nm.
0800. 004ᵒM. Wind is veering as promised and is now ENE. Making 6 knots motor sailing. First few spits of rain, we must be heading north!
1400. 000ᵒM. The mainsail clew has been repaired so we reset the lashing, shake out the reef and set the full main. Outer jib hoisted and engine off. The wind has shifted to ENE so we are now sailing due north.
13th February 2013.
Noon position: 34ᵒ02.7’N 019ᵒ10.7’W.
Days Run: 131Nm
0700. 005ᵒM. Spotted first vessel since we left Tenerife. As the sun rises we can see it is an oil tanker. He does not come up on the AIS for some reason even though he is only 7.2 miles so we are not sure what the name is where it is heading.
1300. 017ᵒM. Making good ground now with the veering wind, even managing to make some easting which we desperately need to do. Looks from the forecast as if the winds are going to die off as we head north from here. Lunch on deck of pumpkin soup and homemade crusty bread, we eat like kings on this ship!
14th February 2013
Noon Position: 35ᵒ50.8’N 018ᵒ53.7’W
Days run: 117Nm
0500. 025ᵒM. Wind is veering significantly now, just what we need so we can alter our course towards Lisbon. Another ship sighted, M/V Primrose bound for Boston. Call him on the VHF as we can’t see him on AIS. He reports that he can’t see us either indicating a problem with our AIS transceiver. Spend some time going through the manuals but to no avail, everything seems to be fine except that it doesn’t work! We will have to wait until there are more ships around so it can be tested properly as there is little traffic out here to pick up anyway.
1300. 395ᵒM. Busy morning with shifting winds. Headsails have been hoisted and dropped several times and the main sheeted in and out to account for the wind which is backing and veering and going from force 2 to 5 every half hour, keeps the watches busy.
1500. 060ᵒM. Wind has come right round enabling us to lay a course for Lisbon, although we are moor sailing. The winds are a light 10 knots, enough to fill the sails and steady our motion but not enough to give us any speed. We are after all working to a deadline as we have guests who need to catch flights. We take advantage of the easy rolling ocean swell to get up the mast and fix the red all round sailing light which has most likely blown a bulb. There is enough wind in the sails to stop the roll which is horrible while trying to work aloft. I don a harness, fasten it to the gantlin and climb the ratlins to the hounds, from where I will clamber, half hoisted, to the lower part of the topmast where the red and green all round sailing lights are located. It turns out it is the bulb so fortunately a quick fix. Fantastic view of nothing but gentle ocean swell from up here.
1600. 035ᵒM. Winds backed again. We sight a whale blow about half a mile on our starboard beam so we put the helm down and make our way slowly over. After 10 minutes of waiting the whale surfaces again and it turns out it is not one but two, possibly Fin Whales. They send enormous blows of spray from their blowholes before diving again. As we motor slowly away one of them breaches, jumping half out of the water, it is certainly a big beast!
2000. 060ᵒM. Motor sailing into the night with main and main topsail up and the staysail, 750rpm on the engine giving us 6.5kts. Plan is to carry this course NE until we are on a similar latitude to Lisbon, by which time it is forecast to blow a steady F5 SW which will carry us on a starboard tack broad reach all the way into the coast. Plans can always be changed!
15th February 2013.
Noon position: 37ᵒ26.91 016ᵒ46.66’W
Days run: 148Nm
0800. 060ᵒM. Peaceful night aboard. Wake up for my morning watch to find the Atlantic is a mill pond. Just shows you never know what to expect out here at this time of year, it could just as easily be a gale. We see some flying fish for the first time since leaving the Canaries, they are really bizarre animals!
1100. 060ᵒM. Wind is filling in from the SE so we can lay a straight course for Lisbon. We set the headsails and sheet out the main. Not enough wind to sail yet so we leave the engine on but reduce the rpm. We are still working to a bit of a deadline so can’t afford to drop the speed right down. We are now making 7.5kts, if we can keep this for 24hrs it will take the pressure of and we can sail at a more leisurely pace. Passage making with deadlines to meet is not ideal as it can sometimes force decisions to be made but the boat is a business and has to be run to a schedule, although not at any cost. If the weather became really adverse we would of course seek shelter and find other ways of getting our guests to their flights next week. The crew on my watch are set to work, the deadeyes have to be oiled with linseed, rust stains removed and the manual deck bilge pump is being wire brushed ready for a fresh coat of tar. There are constant little jobs to do aboard a boat on passage, last night the steaming light bulb blew so I will pop up the mast and replace that this morning. The 240volt impellor pump we use as a daily bilge pump and for empting tanks was starting to struggle, a quick inspection found the impellor was missing a blade or two so it was replaced. A 5 minute job but it could be crucial in an emergency if the bilge doesn’t perform to its optimum.
2000. 075ᵒM. We decide to bring the main topsail down at the change of watch. Forecast is not entirely clear and it could blow a bit so better safe than sorry.
16th February 2013.
Noon Position: 38ᵒ17.62’N 14ᵒ00.15’W
Days run: 143Nm
0400. 085ᵒM. We have the 4-8am watch today which I like as you get to see the sunrise and finish with a good breakfast. We are still motor sailing but the wind has veered to SSW and is slowly building. It appears from the forecast we are going to get a sou’ westerly blow before we make landfall and this is likely the start of it. Barometer has started to fall.
0800. 085ᵒM. Wind has built sufficiently so we can sail and still make good speed, we set the flying jib and within an hour are making 6.5kts in the freshening breeze. Breakfast of champions today – freshly baked bread and leftover plum tart from dinner last night!
1200. 085ᵒM. Wind is a steady F5 on the beam and we are making an effortless 7-7.5kts. It is times like these you can tell that Bessie Ellen was designed as a sailing ship with no engine, in the right conditions she glides along with such a comfortable motion and so easy on the helm, it really is a joy to take the wheel.
1400. 085ᵒM. The ‘Bessie Ellen Bake Off’ reaches its third day. It is the turn of my watch today to bake the cake for afternoon tea, in competition with the middle and starboard watch. As watch leader I do as any leader does and delegate the task to someone who actually knows what they are doing! We get a superb lemon drizzle cake, and although I’m bias, I think it is the clear winner. We also take this opportunity to do a sweepstake for our time of arrival, closest to the mark wins a bottle of rum so people are studying the log book hard to make their best guesstimate. Wind has slacked a little but the clouds look ominous so we decide that a reef will be taken in before dark, perhaps over cautious but prudent none the less. Handling a big gaff main in the dark with rolling seas is no fun when the wind gets up, and the old girl doesn’t deserve to be stressed too much at the grand old age of 109.
1700. 085ᵒM. Take the first reef in the main. Good practice for the guests to do this kind of sail handling in adverse conditions, keeps them on their toes!
2300. 090ᵒM. Wind eventually building from the south. Gusts now of 30 knots with an increasing sea, but it’s on the beam and she is taking it well. Making a steady 7 knots boat speed.
16th February 2013.
Noon Position: 38ᵒ 41.93’N 010ᵒ 42.12’W
Days run: 158Nm
0400. 095ᵒM. Take in the outer jib as the winds reach a steady F6-7. We are sailing fast but comfortably. It’s a bit lumpy down below but everyone is managing to get some sleep of some description. The rain squalls are coming thick and fast, this is the first night I have to get out the waterproof trousers, I guess they are here for the duration now.
0800. 095ᵒM. Bacon and baked beans for breakfast! We now have less than 100Nm to go and it looks like we might make it in tonight before last orders at this speed.
1200. 095ᵒM. Fastest day yet with a very satisfactory 158Nm from noon to noon, and all under sail. Put a good breeze on her beam and she will really fly!
1300. 095ᵒM. Wind is veering again to due West and dying rapidly. We are quickly left with a lumpy sea and not enough wind to fill the sails. We try sheeting the main in hard and putting a boom and the two gaff preventers on but the gaff yard is still crashing horribly so we do a quick drop and get it all lashed down tight. The next few hours we will no doubt be rolling around but at least we won’t break anything. It’s engine for the last miles of the trip unfortunately.
1600. 095ᵒM. Cross the Portugal VTS reporting line. We call ROCA Control to inform them of our inbound passage to Portugal, give our present position, course and speed with ETA in Cascais. We are now crossing the southern side of the Cape Roca TSS (Traffic Separation Scheme) so we will be seeing a lot more ships travelling north and south, time for the watches to keep their eyes peeled.
2000. 105ᵒM. The TSS is not as busy as we expected. Picked up the lighthouses of Cabo Roca and Cabo Rosa.
2300. Tied up and all secure in Marina de Cascais. The guests are tired but extremely happy. We open a couple of bottles of red and toast ourselves and the ship, as always she has done us proud this trip.
Find out more about how to come sailing on Bessie Ellen.
In these financially restricted times we are noting an interest in projects. The problem is that projects vary hugely in type, size and quality and one man’s viable project is another man’s firewood.
The moral must be, know your skills, admit your limitations and make sure everyone is on side because this might take some time.
I have seen some very successful projects and some disasters and it is always the disasters which make better reading of course. However I am not going to write about those because they are invariably exaggerated, always depressing and we don’t like failure here. Failed owners too often blame the boat and not themselves and “I told you so” gets nobody anywhere. Full marks for trying I say but let’s make sure you set off on a course with some reasonable hope for success.
I have just had an e-mail from a brave and determined lady who some years ago set out on a missionary voyage with a group of like-minded people in a little 65’ schooner and by strange circumstances – they would never believe you if you made it up – she became the owner. With age not on her side, no knowledge of wooden boats, not a sailor and no money it looked like only a question of time before it all fell apart.
She thinks it was God at the helm. I am not so sure of His track record as a ship-mate and prefer to think it is her own determination; whichever you care to believe the result has been very encouraging and she is at sea once more with a missionary purpose again. We can only admire such dedication.
A small refit job started here recently when a Suffolk based gent bought a fine Folk Boat.
His first boat was a sailing dinghy before he was captivated by a huge lump of a French-built sailing fishing boat which had been through our hands several times and had absorbed several fortunes over the past 25 years.
Love has no bounds and he dedicated several years of his life to this fine ship but however many flares he fired she was taking him down. With a little encouragement and after a brave rear-guard action he finally accepted the inevitable and we got him out of the big boat and into something far more realistic, a Folkboat.
I have a personal mantra that most people are over-boated and the Folkboat was and still can be the answer to a problem. The original Folkboat was an inspired design and perfect for post war, budget sailing in the Baltic. However it all went wrong when owners wanted to make the design do more than was ever intended.
Being also a popular class here in UK, we persuaded the Norwegians to let us have an English version which meant a bigger coach-roof to get more volume below because we were not as hardy as the Scandinavians and carvel construction to placate market opinion.
Then the Poles and the Hungarians and the East Germans shrewdly spied a gap in the market, enlarged the coach-roof into a block of Soviet flats and turned them out for the cost of a few pints for a thirsty UK market. They were well built, great skill but sadly the mahogany and fastenings used seldom stand the test of time.
A half-way design between the basic Scandinavian FB and the Soviet block of flats came with the few boats built by Cyril White in Brightlingsea in the 1960’s.
He even built a matching pair for the Guiness brothers in 1965.
His success was in keeping the clinker construction which is quicker and cheaper to build and emphasises the very sweet lines of the hull, extending the cock-pit by a few inches on the basis that a lot of small boat sailing is day sailing with a group of friends when extra cock-pit space is desirable and building a coach-roof which is similar to the very small Scandinavian slice of cheese but slightly bigger all round and gaining height by the clever deception of keeping the coamings low and adding camber to the roof.
The result is one single long cabin with no silly internal subdivisions, still 4 berths, 2 in line each side, good sitting head-room, the standard proven FB rig but with an inboard engine.
This is the perfect compromise in a small boat.
If you want a heads or can’t take your socks off in company or God forbid want more than tea and hot soup on a passage then either stay at home and sail virtually or work overtime and buy a bigger boat.
We sold this boat to a chap who never came back to pick her up from the yard so that eventually she was seized and sold for not a lot. However as a repeat warning to all would-be project builders there is no such thing as a bargain. One man’s bargain is the next man’s hole in the water to fill with money and despite appearances this one is more than just a fresh coat of paint if he is going to be serious about taking the opportunity to put her properly right while he is at it.
Projects can be immensely satisfying and rewarding but you have to be realistic. There’s nought for nought in this world. You need money or skill or effort or preferably all 3 unless, like my schooner-owner lady, God and luck are on your side and I don’t see much of either these days.
My Suffolk owner had learnt a lot from his time with the big French boat and sensibly took his new acquisition to a Devon based Scottish boat builder who like many individual, self-employed boat-builders does excellent work at realistic cost.
His recent excavation of the back-bone bolts and chain plate bolts is a lesson to all of us.
The yacht looked perfect a few years ago and indeed was very smart and much cared for. A few years of neglect did her no favours but nothing serious as she has been out of the water and largely covered so the buried deterioration in the bolts must be long standing.
The real horror is the totally predictable and avoidable one of using threaded stainless steel rod as a through bolt. Firstly it is almost certainly stock threaded bar as provided by the builder’s merchant and secondly you never, never bury thread in the timber as Small Cavity Corrosion is inevitable. The right sort of fastenings can all be had and are not even expensive. Suppliers can be found on our Services Section or by a quick call to the office.
People worry about rot in wooden boats but it is our experience that it is more often the metal that goes wrong first and takes the wood with it.
Checking and replacing center-line bolts, keel bolts, chain plate bolts, sea-cock bolts and even hood end fastenings is so easy and inexpensive and can save huge expense and heart-ache later if done in time.
I had an example of the same problem recently in my pre-war Vertue Caupona. I have sold her several times over the past 30 years and every time I had noted the open stem scarph just below the wl. Repeated surveyors all advised simply filling it and it was never my position to question an expert but when it came to getting my feet wet I was not totally happy. I found a 5/8” bronze bolt through the scarph and several ½” bronze bolts all down the stem holding the inner and outer stem together, all standard stuff.
The 5/8” nut disintegrated when I put a spanner on it and when knocked out, three separate bits of bronze fell to the floor. Bronze or not, it had disintegrated years ago and the stem was held together by habit. Given how people are prone to winding up their rigging, it is amazing how strong habits can be.
Of course the other bonze through bolts all came out, all more or less rotten and were replaced by bronze bolts off the shelf from Seaware in Falmouth at nominal cost and with only a few hours work.
The moral is that not even the best marine quality bronze is proof against the ravages of time and sea water. Fastenings hold a wooden boat together and replacing fastenings can often be a simple Meccano job so don’t hesitate too long to have a look.
I found a similar surprise when I came to replacing some planks on my Miller Fifer. Jimmy Miller was a prolific boat builder but being not just a canny Scot but a Fifer to boot he was not a man to waste money on fancy stuff. So he fastened his Fifer range of motor sailers with galvanised boat nails or cut nails or rose head nails, however you want to call them.
They were good enough for his boys to go to sea fishing in the winter Icelandic waters so they would be good enough for a mere yachtsman and so they have proved to be.
His larch planking used below the waterline is perfect and gives no trouble but I don’t know where he bought his mahogany for the topsides planking and the superstructure.
Even if you can keep the fresh water out of the superstructure by meticulous varnishing, the topsides planking seems to have rotted down the middle of the plank. It is almost as if the wood had some prior fungus from the start which does happen. Having sailed the boat in total confidence and with not a hint of trouble in some weather and some distance before starting on the refit, I told Richard to hit her hard with a ball pein hammer down the length of every plank.
And sure enough all down the water-line plank stbd side the hammer went right through. A tap or a prick on the outside would never have told you that the plank had a fungal rot down the middle.
Replacing planks is the most fundamental part of a refit and also the easiest and should not be expensive. Luke Powell could plank a 40 footer from scratch in just a few weeks and that was using 1.5” thick larch so don’t be fooled by costly plank repairs.
The old planking came out with a chain saw in a few minutes leaving behind the galvanised boat nails in the 4” square sawn oak frames which resolutely refused to move. It took a 3’ jemmy with a 4’ scaffold pole slipped over it to get them to break free. Of the 60 or 70 nails removed only some 5 or 6 did not come out. They were the few which were rusty because water had got in behind and simply snapped at the interface when under stress from the jemmy. That is always a nuisance because the stub then has to be drilled out and the resulting hole plugged before you can go on with setting the new plank.
Last year a chum with an extremely beautiful, teak pre-war Dallimore lost his mast when a bronze chain plate failed. It looked perfect above and below deck but fractured within the thickness of the deck. Sad, dramatic but remember it had been there untouched for 80 years!
And another chum here in Dartmouth lost his mast when his galvanised iron chain plate fractured. The bit of metal above the hole simply pulled out leaving a fork instead of a hole. And again his chain plate had been there untouched for 55 years.
What do we expect – miracles? You can’t just blame this sort of thing on wooden boats. Knowing it’s proclivity to stress fracture, I wonder what all the stainless steel in the modern grp yacht will be like in 50 years?
The moral of this tedious tale – dockside gossip that bronze is fool proof and iron is bad news is not always to be believed and like all gossip it depends on who you are talking to.
It also dictates that maintenance is more than just varnish. If you are going to sail an old boat for £20,000 instead of building a new one for £120,000 then you must carry out some fundamental checks every few years which are more than cosmetic. However they need not be expensive and most can be tackled by a careful owner with a box of simple tools and perhaps just a little advice and encouragement. Don’t think of it as a project, just as a challenge.
The joy of it is that a wooden boat is made up of a large number of small bits and within reason each bit can be replaced in turn while our friends with white plastic can do little when their boats start to go wrong. Of course like modern motor cars the modern yacht relies on being out of fashion long before it wears out so the problem never arises with anyone who is likely to make a fuss.
The real issue yet to be tackled is what on earth do you do with the white plastic blob when it goes wrong and you don’t want it any more?
But that is a delicate subject for another day……………….
Are we the only small business to note a wind shift in the air? It seemed to us in the months following the Lehman crash that, while everyone talked of recession and naughty banks were in the news, down here in darkest Devon we seemed to bowl along as normal.
By 2010 we started to notice the drop in business but by this time the news was that the worst of the storm is past, the bankers are paying themselves bonuses again and all is well with the world.
Here at Wooden Ships we were very aware that this recession had not yet even reached the man in the street.
Of course the penny finally dropped that the good times were over, we had had a ball for 15 years and now the truth was coming home to us that the high life was based on quicksands, borrowed money, government and personal.
On a commercial basis borrowed money has some real advantages especially when the tax system is structured to make it attractive but there seem to be very few good reasons for unsupported borrowing on a personal level. Without the personal contact that used to exist between a bank manager and his clients and with the incentive to extend loans to anyone who asked it was not surprising that some poor banking decisions were made. In a way you can’t blame the average bankers.
Real knowledge of their customers and their trades was replaced by the no-responsibility tick-box check and that was a decision taken at a very high level. Will those guys ever stand up to be counted?
People who buy wooden boats seldom borrow money to buy them. They appear by and large to buy, sail and play within their means.
There was a time when we had contacts in the marine finance business because we brought in some business but this has not happened for years largely because the marine finance world does not understand wooden boats, it is an unpredictable market with no clear and consistent values.
Values stated were often wildly wrong resulting in huge losses to the finance houses.
People sometimes bought an old wooden boat because they were cheap, that was all they could afford and this clientele proved to be a poor risk for the financier.
The result was that a very few bad cases gave the whole wooden boat world a bad name.
Add the easy money to be made on financing the ubiquitous and predictable new grp boats and finance for wooden boats collapsed.
Now we are all struggling in the mire of financial muddle, many owners of traditional boats with no finance hanging over their heads are feeling rather smug. We know that we are not subject to the whims of fashion and that provided we care for our yachts the values seem to remain fairly constant though of course the international fluctuations that we are experiencing at the moment can have a temporary effect.
The problem we are seeing regarding the ownership of boats at the moment is not so much the cost of the boat. It seems to us that the money is still out there, it has not disappeared and if you spend a big lump of money and buy a boat you still have the asset. However the running costs are spent money, gone. And it is the running costs which are putting people off buying, not the capital purchase funds.
Of course prices have slipped a bit with market pressures but as a seller, merely dropping the price of your boat will not guarantee a sale.
With the average of £5000 per year to keep your boat in a marina and the shortage of swinging or trot moorings – and even they are several thousand pounds a year – is it surprising that people are keeping their boats in France or Holland where berthing is so much cheaper?
And what does it really cost to make a tin of anti-fouling? And why is the tin of varnish with a picture of a yacht twice the price of the tin with a picture of a house?
Looking at our wooden boats from the distance of time, it is apparent that despite these figures, yachting was a relatively more expensive sport in the pre-war days than it is now.
There was a time when you owned your semi in suburbia, you had your Austin 7 motor car and a 2 ½ ton Hillyard and you had arrived!
The small east coast yards thrived on building small boats by the hundreds if not thousands. South coast and West Country fishing boat builders turned to building yachts.
The glossy magazines and the expensive hard cover books show us glamorous photos of the exotic big classic yachts but this is not the real world. Wonderful as they are, there were very few of them. In the real world a 35’ yacht was a big boat to own. Even for the better off a 30’ or even a 25’ yacht was a major investment and the norm.
In the 1960’s the number of yachts over 40’ built in UK could be almost counted on the fingers of one hand although of course there were a number of much larger motor yachts being produced.
Look at the old building lists and you will find the commissioning owners were people we would normally consider to be the better off and they were buying what we now think of as small yachts.
The interesting point is that these same people are now buying 40’ boats which must be a reflection partly of our wealth as a society and partly of the reduction in the cost of yachting.
As Maurice Griffiths used to say, “it’s a funny ol’ world.”
We have had a busy couple of weeks here with several sold boats moving around the country to new owners and lots of boats coming on the market that need viewing.
Last week saw Eda Frandsen, the 53′ Danish gaff cutter move from the wilds of West Scotland to her new base in Cornwall. Jamie and Penny, who have run the very successful charter business Eda Frandsen Sailing for over 16 years now, have hung up their oil skins and are moving on to different activities. The boat has been bought by experienced charter skipper James Mackenzie and his girlfriend Becky who will carry on taking guests sailing on the west coast of Scotland and South West England. It was not ideal weather for their first voyage as new owners, being forced to put up the trisail after a day at sea! James was almost shocked at how well she dealt with the weather and could hardly believe that after a real hammering there was not one drop of water in the bilge! This is a testament not only to the design but also to Jamie’s skills as he rebuilt her and has maintained her himself.
Peter has been travelling around the south west a lot in the last 10 days with 2 trips to Falmouth and 2 trips down to Plymouth, trying to convert some potential wooden boat owners and inspire them to buy wood rather than plastic! It was interesting going to Southampton Boatshow 2 weeks ago and seeing mile after mile of white tupperware with only the varnished topmast of Will Stirling’s ‘Integrity’ to break the monotony! It is a real shame that members of the general ‘boat buying’ public cannot be persuaded to go wood. There are obvious benefits to a lot of these modern boats, mainly in terms of usable space. A new 40′ production will likely have 3 double cabins, 2 heads and a cockpit where 6/8 people can sit in comfort. However, if the buyers of these boats ever took them to sea, they will find that they rattle around inside the cabin with no hand holds, can’t move around the cockpit because the table is in the way and the wheel is too big, and when they are beating to windward the thing slams like a baked bean can. It does appear that generally, but certainly not exclusively, sailing performance and practicality are not at the top of the wish list on the designers drawing board, as boats sell on more than their capabilities at sea. You only have to look at an average marina on the south coast to see that 90% of the boats rarely leave their berth, and then it is only when the weather is perfect. A very good friend of mine used to work for a Dufour broker and she once had a couple who spent months looking at the range of yachts and what was available. When at last they had decided which model it was they wanted, they were offered a sea trial to put the boat through it’s paces, to which they replied “No thank you, it’s quite alright, we don’t intend to sail the boat, its simply a cheap cottage in the West Country”!!! These people cannot be serious?
As everyone who has sailed a good wooden boat knows, the seakeeping is a fine quality that is hard to convey to the unconverted, but makes an enormous difference to the comfort and peace of mind, especially on a longer passage. The other argument that is always brought up when weighing up the pro’s and con’s of wooden boats is maintenance. The fact is that many wooden boat owners enjoy the maintenance side, and revel in the few weeks every year spent in the boat yard alongside all the other nutters. As we have said many times in the past, some boats are just nautical garden sheds! That aside, many of the horror stories of wooden boat maintenance come from people who have no idea what they are doing and buy totally the wrong boat. If you buy a good boat, keeping it good is relatively easy and just requires small amounts of regular and preventative maintenance. If you buy a bad one, and there are many of these out there, don’t complain to the world when it costs you a fortune, you spend your whole life in the yard and never go sailing!
The last factor to consider is that of depreciation. If Joe Blogs goes and buys a new plastic yacht for £120,000, what price is he going to sell it for 4 years later? Is this depreciation more or less than the cost of 4 years maintenance on a good wooden yacht. Take for example the 43′ Camper and Nicholson cruiser racer we have for sale. That boat could be bought for £55,000, and in 4 years time will be worth at least that, if not more!! Less than half the purchase price with no depreciation! Surely the maths lay a great argument for buying a wooden boat, and I know I would far rather go to sea in the Campers ex race yacht than a new ‘Benetaria’ ice cream tub!
I am part way through the delivery of Angele Aline, the 55′ historic French fishing trawler, now rigged as a gaff cutter, that we sold a few weeks ago. The boat was in Ipswich where I joined the owner to give him some support and words of advice on the trip round. We set off down the Orwell and had a rough trip across the Thames before getting into Eastbourne for some much needed rest. We left here early the next morning and had a fast run down to Lymington under staysail and jib with 35-40 knots up our chuff. This is just the sort of day a new owner needs to give him some confidence in his new boat! Even though her trim is a bit wrong and she is down a little at the stern, she ploughed on admirably through a horrible sea, with only a couple of rogue waves dumping over the counter onto the aft deck! With the wood burner roaring, we then spent 2 days hiding in Lymington from a brisk westerly which gave us a chance to fix the various leaks in the coachroof and pilot house that threatened to turn our charts into a soggy mess, tighten up the rigging and resolve a whole host of other little problems that you will always find in a new boat. As soon as the wind had eased we set off and made good time straight back to Dartmouth where we have left the boat for a week or so. The next stage is to take her from here to Gloucester where Tommi Neilsen will be doing a big refit this winter, including a reverting her back to the ketch rig and repairing a bit of soft in the counter. We plan to leave here Sunday, make the most of SE breeze and dash down to Newlyn, where we will wait for the tides and catch 8 hours of favourable current around Lands End and up the north coats of Cornwall into the Bristol Channel.
The next delivery trip which i am very much looking forward to will be to take the 37′ Buchanan ‘Shiraz’ to Germany for her new owners. I aim to leave later next week and have a fast 3/4 day passage up the channel with a good SW breeze. Sods law of the sea says it will turn easterly but that’s a problem for another day!
15 years ago I found a gaff cutter for some old friends. She started life as a Cornish sailing fishing boat built in Mevagissey around 1895, typical of hundreds such boats working Cornish inshore waters. Naturally they wanted reassurance that when they came to selling they would not find they had a worthless lump of very old firewood on their hands which I gave them with confidence.
Now 15 years later, 2 voyages to Scotland and back to C ornwall, many great days sailing around the West C ountry, Scilly Isles and the Brittany regattas at Douarnenez and Brest their ownership had run it’s course and she went into the market.
I always thought she was a pretty little boat, she just looked right, she was largely yard maintained, sound and tidy though by no means an immaculate restored boat like some we see but she had a certain charm which is difficult to define though instantly recognised.
At a price in the mid £20s I thought she represented good value for someone who appreciated these West Country sailing fishing boats even if at the upper end of the price range in these hard times. What I did not appreciate was the enthusiasm that would greet her in the market.
Some of you will have noticed her on our web site and disappear quite quickly when she sold within weeks. And if we had 3 more we could place them immediately.
Even after 35 years promoting these lovely old boats I still find it difficult to predict why one boat will attract a keen following while others which may be better value, much better quality or much better presented can hang around in the market for months with little interest.
Putting a value on the boats is not too difficult when you have sat at my desk for so many years. I can advise what work should be done to prepare a yacht for the market, where to put her if there is an option and offer history often unknown to the owner but the one thing I can rarely do is to say when the yacht will sell. How long is an impossible question to answer as the example of the little gaff cutter clearly demonstrates and price is not always the controlling factor.
It is our impression that the sluggish market we have experienced for the last 3 or 4 years is not just a shortage of cash. If you are in secure employment, life is remarkably cheap with bargains to be had in every sector as business slash their prices to promote sales. I still come across people who are blissfully unaware that there is a big problem out there for many people and I have absolutely no doubt life is difficult for some but I am also aware that the money is still there.
If you part with your hard-earned cash for a significant purchase like a yacht, by and large your money is still there in the boat. However your running costs are spent cash, gone, spent, blown and it is these costs which worry people. Throw in a general lack of confidence in the future and we have a bit of a struggle to find new owners for many yachts, not solved simply by reducing the price.
I hope the present slow market will persuade the infra-structure behind yachting to examine their price structures and ask themselves if they are not actually milking the yachting cow dry.
Now getting back to that bargain; if I were a betting man, look at the web site and open the yacht called………………………………………. really?
I was recently reminded that there can be no better sailing grounds in Europe than the West Coast of Scotland.
I said this to my friends on board their yacht in Troon Marina but was quickly reminded to qualify my admiration of their home waters with a caveat on the weather and the midges.
Crossing over to Hunter’s Quay on the car ferry with the blue mountains of Bute standing high above the blue waters of the Clyde under a bright blue afternoon sky there was nowhere better to be on the water.
They don’t make it easy for passengers on that ferry. No car park, no ticket kiosk, no cafe, no loo, just a ramp alongside the road apparently in the middle of nowhere and an insignificant sign. Car parking for a mile either direction is restricted to an hour so it was a pleasant walk in the afternoon sun.
I was on my way to see the Reg Freeman motor sailer Skelgoose in the Holy Loch. The same owner also had a fine little Silvers-built motor sailer and an exquisite Merron sailing yacht tender so it was a busy afternoon.
We looked at the Merron in the store at the top of the club slipway. A little beauty and quite a rarity, especially in this condition. She is an Arthur Robb design built in cold-moulded mahogany so minimum fastenings, relatively light and very strong. She had been the pride and joy of the previous owner for a very long time who apparently fitted her for cruising with lots of fascinating little details. She is totally complete and absolutely ready for use as a tender on your superyacht.
We sold the Reg Freeman ketch nearly 20 years ago for a London owner, then lying in the South of France. She came back to the East Coast and we lost touch with her until she turned up again on the Clyde. She seems to have slipped a little in condition over past years but is definitely on the way back up again in present ownership. She is clean and tidy, the engines have been rebuilt and upgraded to new spec and she is in full working order and ready to sail.
She must have been an expensive boat when she was built, all teak hull, twin engines and a good sized rig. The midships helm position is reminiscent of the bridge in The Cruel Sea but she also has an interior helm position for the more delicate helmsman as long as he does not need to see anything.
Reg Freeman was a tall man so his boats usually have good head-room and a feel of space – what I call a dressing-gown boat. You can wander around her as you would at home with no bending or crawling and all in 40’.
She has many interesting features like the railway carriage windows in the deck-house which drop down into a drained copper box or the saloon table which the owner apparently designed himself. It pivots, folds open, extends and transforms itself into either a coffee table or a dining table for 6.
The most startling feature is the blue galley. Formica was the obligatory modern hygienic materiel at the time but to our tastes it is a bit striking.
I was reminded of the day I took a lady to see a 45’ Camper and Nicholson sloop. I opened the heads door to reveal a light blue formica speckled with a gold fleck – awful. I was explaining to the lady that the finish the surface could be changed to whatever she wanted when she stopped me sharply – “What” says she,” and loose that exquisite original material, never in my ownership”.
There is no accounting for taste and fortunately we are all different. What a wonderful world!
The little Silver motor sailer was fascinating. She appears to have been an early version of the later Miss Silver design which proved so popular for the yard. Again, lots of lovely period features in her construction and finish, lots of fine old varnished teak, a slightly tight forward cabin but thre is a galley and a separate heads compartment and a nice aft cabin with a decent double berth. You would probably spend a lot of time on board in the lovely sheltered midships cock-pit and the wonderful old diesel which showed all the signs of being in perfect health. It has probably done fewer hours than my builder’s cement mixer.
The owner reports surprising sailing performance even though she is blatently a motor sailer, a feature I have personally confirmed several times in the past with John Bain designs. I took a Miss Silver out of Dartmouth one day for a trial sail and was amazed at how well she went. Another time, a 36’ John Bain motor sailer left us in her wake in a Holman North Sea 24 when sailing with free sheets.
Just stuffed with character and with a good recent survey she will become one of the family for whoever buys her.
We are often asked to take on the sale of boats built in other materials as well as wood. We always refuse GRP because it is not a materiel we are familiar with, we are not up to speed with modern boats and we prefer to talk of designs and sea conditions rather than carpets, curtain and digital gadgets.
My car, my TV, my old iron and my computer all have built in recycyling costs but apparently modern grp yachts do not. Who is going to pay to get rid of all that white plastic? What are they going to do with it all? Who is going to deal with it? What do you do if you can’t give your old boat away?
At least we can put a match to our wooden boats and they revert to nature but tons of white plastic looks like yet another nightmare for future generations.
Have you noticed that over the years highly skilled men have found ways to adapt rigid trees into some of the most beautiful shapes ever produced by man yet now they have plastic which can be moulded quickly and cheaply into any shape required they produce some of the most unfortunate yachts on the water. Who designs these things?
That said, I have some sympathy with steel as a boat building medium. It is more difficult to work than wood thus restricting design especially in smaller boats but does not require the same skills as wood. It is strong of course and more impact resistant for a given weight, steel build costs are much cheaper but corrosion is a bigger issue than in wood and maintenance is just as much work and not usually as pleasant.
By and large wood repairs are easier and cheaper and more open to the amateur requiring far lower technology. You can build a wooden boat with a bag of hand tools but you require some hi-tech stuff to build a steel boat.
My friends in Troon have a very fine big Dutch-built steel ketch, they have decided that she is just too powerful for them so she has to go so we agreed to take it on.
In this size of boat, you might be mistaken for thinking she is wood. A traditional yet quite modern yacht shape, she is varnished hardwood everywhere you look, a teak deck and has a nice feel to her.
Big centre cock-pit, an aft cabin which is comfortable even for my chum – who is not a small man – and his wife, 2 separate twin berth cabins forward, a good saloon, adjacent galley, dedicated engine room and all the gizmos of course. The rig is powerful yet manageable but this sail area does require a certain degree of fitness and agility though of course roller reefing headsails and self tailing winches make a huge difference and I reckon can add 10 years to our sailing lives.
Regatta week is here again in Dartmouth, how do we know? because the fair rolled into town, loads of boats turned up and it’s raining! Sunday and Monday saw the heats and semi finals for the rowing races take place with crews representing every drinking establishment in town racing the slightly cumbersome ‘whalers’ and the slippy ‘blue’ boats from the higher ferry to the lower ferry. Monday was a foul day for rowing with a strong southerly wind and racing flood tide making it a hard pull up the course, but the best crews came through to race in the finals next Friday.
This week also saw the arrival of the newly built 3 masted lugger ‘Grayhound’ built by Marcus and Freya down in Millbrook, Plymouth. She is a replica 18th century lugger, and Marcus and Freya plan to do traditional sailing holidays and sail training onboard, starting next spring. see their website www.grayhoundluggersailing.com for more information, pictures and stories from the build. she is a striking vessel and has been built extremely well. I was onboard this morning and it is great to see the craftsmanship that has gone into the boat. The interior is still pretty empty, so this winter will see them complete the fit out to provide 12 guest berths plus crew accomodation with a big open saloon under the cargo hatch. it’s going to be a busy winter but it will be great to see something a little different on the charter scene next season.
Sunday was a hive of activity as the sun brought everyone out to play. The Moody family with the newly launched ‘PETTIFOX’ went on their maiden voyage, clocking up 7.2knots close hauled on the way out of the river. The two big motor yachts moored in the middle of the river, ‘CORVELIA’ a 1960 Silver Ormidale, and ‘WHITE MOUSE II’ the 1963 Philips 50 were also out enjoying the weather. Both boats are maintained by David Rogers of Number 7 Marinecraft who is a whizz when it comes to paint and varnish work!
Ashley Butler was out and about in his newly launched 50′ gaff yawl that he has built for himself. she is yet to be rigged but her masts are up and she looks like she is going to be a fast cruising boat.
After posting some teaser photos of Nell a little while ago, we have now formally put this fine yacht on the market. Nell is a G.L. Watson gaff cutter built on the Clyde in 1887 and completely rebuilt in Normandy, France between 2009 and 2017. This yacht is a totally unique piece of maritime history and is presented in superb condition. Her interior is her most remarkable feature and was designed by her first owner Robert Cowan Robertson. He was an artist based in Glasgow and his interior design was influenced by the fashions of the time with raised and fielded oak panelling, ionic pillasters and most notably stained glass sliding windows covering the portholes. The interior has been restored sympathetically and is largely original apart from some very small areas where damaged joinery needed replacing. The result is magnificent and sets this yacht apart as a unique piece of history. Full details and many photos available on our web site with the following link:woodenships.co.uk/sailing-yacht/g-l-watson-gaff-cutter/#classicboat #classicboatforsale #yachtforsale ... See MoreSee Less
