Innholdsfortegnelse for July 2015 i Classic Boat

How many one-design sailing boat classes can claim to have all the boats ever built still sailing regularly 90 years later? That distinction very possibly applies only to the Gareloch One Designs, based at the Royal Northern & Clyde Yacht Club near Glasgow. In August last year, you could watch 15 of the 16 keelboats sailing, right across from the site of the old McGruer boatyard in Clynder where they were designed and built. The 16th, Dione, is having a complete rebuild at club expense and will be ready to go once she has a new owner. And the Diamond Jubilee celebration of this intrepid class was complete with regattas, talks, a book launch, a fine dinner and songs and poems about the class. There’s no doubt the Garelochs are…

The sun is out and our minds turn to gin and tonics. That rock pool clear glass of heaven that sparkles through dappled branches and giggles with fizz. It seems we’ve come a long way from Gordon’s and Schweppes and I don’t mind one of them at all but for the sake of argument I’m putting on my connoisseur’s coat and waxing on about the finer and perhaps lesser known gins, as nowadays, beard twiddling tweedies are concocting more and more complex gins in smaller and smaller batches. And why not? You can even make your own. Just get some vodka, (vodka was in fact invented for making gin out of – I know, a contestable theory but to be honest I’ve never really been impressed with even the fanciest…

+44 (0)207 349 3758 Email: steffan@classicboat.co.uk PALMA DE MALLORCA: Fife one design rebuilt The 1897-built gaff cutter Tern was re-launched on 20 April, after a 10,000-man-hour restoration, and 118 years to the day after her original launch from the yard of Hilditch of Carrickfergus. She’s a Belfast Lough One Design from the pen of William Fife III and one of nine originally built as an early experiment in one-design racing. The work, by Ocean Refit, remedied years of corrosion to iron fittings, electrolytic decay and a patchwork of ‘improvements’. As we went to press, she was waiting for sails from Ratsey and Lapthorn (which provided the originals) and plans to make a big splash at Les Voiles de Saint-Tropez in the autumn. GOSPORT, HAMPSHIRE: Ready for RYS Katie and Tom…

The afternoon before the Classic Boat Awards in March this year, Nat Wilson, who unbeknownst to him was to receive the Person of the Year award there, was poised between past achievements and his next major project. Within weeks of our meeting, the new branch of Nat’s Lowestoft-based International Boatbuilding Training College (IBTC) was set to open its doors in Portsmouth Historic Dockyard. Eventually – target date July, in time for the America’s Cup World Series races off Portsmouth – it will be part of the Boathouse 4 Boatbuilding and Heritage Skills Training Centre. Boathouse 4 is a gigantic building, built just before Second World War – it’s where HMS Victory’s newly rediscovered foretopsail was hung up for display during the 1998 Festival of the Sea. Once it’s opened, it…

It is something of a misnomer to describe the Itchen Ferry as a class, for as with most working boats, there is no one specific design, rather a collection of similar boats which share the same characteristics and were designed for common purpose, but which ranged in size and evolved over decades. However, the Itchen Ferry, as a type of working boat, is still worthy of description here, for during its heyday, versions of the craft – which were also variously known as Itchen Ferry cutters, Itchen Ferry punts, Solent smacks, Solent punts and Itchen hoys – could be seen throughout the Solent, trawling for fish, shrimping or dredging for oysters. They were a hardy breed of racers, too, with many of their owners top yacht skippers out of season,…

It’s a bit like a pilgrimage, coming to Rockport Marine. It’s one of those yards Classic Boat staff have been aware of for years, but none of us had managed to visit. So there’s a pleasant sense of anticipation as I drive down the hill in the afternoon sun and see the picturesque harbour open up before me. We’re up in Maine, an indented coastline of wooded promontories and rocky outcrops. Places have Indian and French names as much as British, and there are plenty of wooden boats, from dories to schooners… and yards to look after them. And there she is – on the wooden dock outside the front of the Breton red sheds of Rockport Marine, the famous Fife schooner Adventuress, restored here to great acclaim (CB Awards…

So, the fittest survive? That is the theory; a crude contraction of what Darwin devoted hundreds of pages to propound and the subject of debate to this day. Does it apply to boats? Do the fittest, prettiest, strongest, best built, the most cunningly designed boats survive? Do the ugly, slow, bad mannered, shoddily constructed, lowly boats disappear? Anyway, what constitutes a pretty boat? Examples abound of boats launched amid widespread disgust, notably that glorious example of late-Victorian yacht design, Britannia. “Gratuitously ugly” was how one commentator described her new-fangled spoon bow when it emerged from Henderson’s building shed on the Clyde in 1893. Yes, we have to be careful about judging boats by their appearance, and it is not just fashion. Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder,…

Faggot fenders Good people, some of your readers may be puzzled by your April issue’s Word of the Month. “HAZELWOOD: a large portable fender made of hazelwood sticks.” Attached (clockwise from top) is a detail from Coubro & Scrutton’s catalogue from 1912, as well as a later item from The Davey & Co London catalogue #8, 1936. Both call them Faggot Fenders. These fenders could get enormous, as the photo from the 1950s shows, of a few awaiting dispatch from J. Jamieson & Co fender-makers of Liverpool. I guess the like of these we shall never see again. Des Pawson MBE…

Fair weather blessed the fleet of 60 or so Dunkirk Little Ships as they made their rendezvous in Ramsgate the day before their five-yearly commemorative sail to the beaches of Dunkirk, where 75 years ago, the most famous evacuation of all time, Operation Dynamo, took place. The pontoons of Ramsgate Marina were awash with last-minute preparations, casual bonhomie, the sounds of Glenn Miller and Vera Lynn drifting from boat stereos and vintage dress. Regular participants were joined by newly restored boats such as Firefly and Lazy Days. The biggest boat, by far, was the 180ft (55.5m) paddle wheeler Medway Queen, halfway through a gargantuan restoration and there as a static exhibit. A morning service was held at the Sailors’ Church, Ramsgate, at which the Bishop of Dover praised the ordinary…

When, in 1906, the 22-year-old Augusto Pedrazzini left Lake Como, it was for the lands of German language and the Protestant faith. His talent and experience of marine carpentry made him a prize recruit for the boatyards of Lake Zurich. Augusto learnt his trade in Italy with Giuseppe Abbate, working boat specialist and founder of a dynasty of builders who followed his path. While maintaining the highest standards in materials and craftsmanship, as well as in every detail, visible or not, Pedrazzini expanded his range, taking great care over the many designs that became original features. After the very successful Superleggera (super light) dinghy in the mid-1950s, he launched the larger runabout Capri that still figures in the current catalogues, and created its rounded stern, a hallmark that is still…

Eel Drifters By Morten Gothche How does drifting sideways, under sail, with a seine net strung between a jib boom forward and a long drift boom aft grab you? Written by Morten Gothche, who himself is the owner of the 1908 eel drifter, Dan, Eel Drifters is the story of how two boatbuilders, on the tiny Danish island of Fejo, adapted and shortened the German boats to suit their waters. So the Prussian boat, known as the Zeesboot, at 10m (33ft), was shortened to 7.6m (25ft) with a plank keel to provide shallower draught and other modifications that improved handling and made it easier to haul the seine. Also better to race... Central to the book are the two Fejo boatbuilders Niels Christian Nielsen, who built 40 drifters and Kristian…

iPad bracket This bracket is a neat solution to support an iPad to use as a chart plotter. It’s a simple half picture frame, rebated to the thickness of an iPad. Make sure you use the iPad in a waterproof case. In my case I have fixed it to the inside of the companion doors, so it can swing out into the cockpit and be used while sailing or kept secure when the door is closed. Rout out a length of mahogany, long enough for the three sides, to the thickness of an iPad in a waterproof case. Mitre-cut into three pieces to form a half frame. These are glued and clamped together. The corners are rounded to the same radius as the iPad and the whole item is varnished…

What to do with old regatta programmes Following the recent death of her father, a friend discovered amongst his effects a number of programmes for sailing events on the Clyde, including for the Royal Largs Regattas of 1929 and 1933. She has sought my help and advice as to what to do with them. R.L.Y.C. has long since ceased to exist. The programmes show the names of famous yachts (see right). We note that in 1929 entries included Astra, Shamrock, Cambria and White Heather, with owners such as Sir Mortimer Singer, Sir Thomas Lipton and Lord Glasgow. For 1933, Shamrock was entered by Sir T.O.M. Sopwith and Brittannia by no less than “His Majesty the King”. These original programmes would seem to confirm the exalted position that Royal Largs once…

In the light of recent articles published by Classic Boat, The K1 Britannia Trust would like to respond by saying that we have been greatly saddened by the content of these editorials, which we understand were based on the personal opinions of the writers. As we don’t have a lot of space for a lengthy statement here, we are posting on our website a statement with all the details of the current situation of the project along with detailed answers to the different statements posed. We have not changed our plans to build a replica of the Britannia, the yacht so loved by her owners George V and Edward VII, and whilst the building of her has been delayed it has definitely not been cancelled. We had originally brought the…

As Peter Willis pointed out in his piece in the May issue, it is a myth that all Dunkirk Little Ships were manned by their owners during the 1940 evacuation. But a few civilian yachtsmen did take part – some on their own boats, some on others – and amongst them were two marine journalists. Gilbert Hackforth-Jones was a correspondent with The Yachtsman and was one of five crew – which included three other civilians and an RNVR lieutenant – who took the 35ft (10.7m) motor boat Elvin across to Dunkirk, arriving at dawn on the penultimate day of the evacuation. Elvin went alongside the East Mole and embarked eight British and 25 French troops – more than intended due to language confusion – intending to transfer them to a…