Innholdsfortegnelse for July 2018 i Classic Boat

LONDON BOAT SHOW Boat show cancelled British Marine, organiser of the annual London Boat Show, has cancelled the 2019 event, which was due to run at ExCeL, London, from 9-13 January. The decision was made after independent research by Zing Insights showed there was insuffcient support from a large proportion of the marine industry to the London Boat Show in its current format, duration and location. British Marine said: “Visitor research also showed that consumer satisfaction of the 2018 show was below acceptable industry standards. Visitor satisfaction was centred on the content of the show and specifically on the number and diversity of sailing and power boats exhibited. The research results showed a year-on-year decline in audience satisfaction, which would continue to fall if the show proceeded in the same…

It might seem extraordinary to think that at the conclusion of one of the most significant small-boat voyages in maritime history, the man who built, owned and sailed the boat in question didn’t know who had designed her. When Robin Knox-Johnston was serving in the Merchant Navy and based in India in the early 1960s, he and two friends decided they would build a boat there and sail her back to England. They ordered a set of plans but the ones that arrived, from a company in Poole, were not what they had expected, nor did they have any designer’s name on them. They showed “a somewhat old-fashioned but very seaworthy looking boat”, as Knox-Johnston later wrote. Because of time constraints and the fact that they had a yard ready…

“Alas, my boyish enthusiasm is all but spent” I cannot help reminding myself of the late John Leather’s reaction to the news that I was to build boats for a living. Down to earth, and lacking the slightest tint of rose in his glasses, a realist with a lifetime spent in the business of designing, surveying and at one time building boats, he warned me that it was likely to be a thankless and unrewarding business. As I look back on an adventure that began in the early years of the new millennium when I joined a band of hard-working wooden boat builders in the Highlands, I can reflect on how true his words now ring. Deafer, for sure, stiffer and with multiple cuts and bruises to show for those…

On 1 July, 19 adventurers from 12 countries will set out from Les Sables d’Olonne, France, to sail in the wake of nine solo pioneers who made up the first round the world race. 50 years on from the Sunday Times Golden Globe Race, these global gladiators will be sailing similar long-keeled yachts, without satnav, modern autopilots or routing advice, relying instead on sextants, wind-up chronometers, log lines and paper charts to navigate by. The 2018 Golden Globe Race has been billed by its Australian founder, Don McIntyre, a solo circumnavigator himself, as a return to the ‘golden age of sailing’. The rules are simple: if Robin Knox-Johnston, the sole finisher in that Sunday Times event, could not have had it aboard Suhaili, then neither can these guys. The modern…

Motor out two minutes from the pontoons off the Antigua Yacht Club through the flat water of Falmouth Harbour, pass the twin headlands and – boom! Without warning you’re in amongst rolling ocean waves high enough to block out the horizon, flying fish zipping across their sides and the sun reflecting back an almost electric cobalt blue. To leeward, waves crash on a rocky promontory that houses Nelson’s old gun battery. To windward is the vast Atlantic, liberal dollops of it now shooting back at you from the bows. The wind is a steady 25 knots and overhead, needless to say, the sky is blue. Given that two minutes ago you were untying the bow and stern lines in total calm, the invigorating scene before you is enough to bring…

Day three Tom Cunliffe, introducing Columbia in the regatta’s parade of sail, calls her “one the greatest work boats afloat”. It’s hard to think of a vessel like this as a work boat at all, but the original Columbia and the other “racing fishermen” of her brief era would stay out in the Grand Banks for weeks on end, their crews going out in dories to fish. To see the replica Columbia crashing through the waves in a yacht race off Antigua is one thing, but to think of her doing the same through angry seas off Nova Scotia 90 years ago, her hull loaded with fresh fish and her colossal sail area bulging with the ferocity of a north Atlantic gale… an image worthy of loud profanities at least.…

Hong Kong in 1956: the time and date alone brim with overtones of colonial glamour and the port, then under British rule, was a hive of immigration and manufacturing. One man, the American Robert J Newton, was running a soft drinks bottling plant and decided, in 1956, to start building boats in the factory’s outdoor yard. You might be excused for assuming it would turn out to be a glorified hobby for a man with an established business in the late summer of his life, but you’d be wrong. At first, the fledgeling yard concentrated on custom builds; yachts and motorboats built to designs by the greatest designers of the day, like Olin Stephens and Ray Hunt. But in 1962, one design would turn American Marine, as the yard became…

The enthusiasm for S&S inboard yawls of the mid-20th century shows no sign of abating. The success of Dorade in 1930 launched the careers of Olin Stephens and Drake Sparkman and spawned a recognisable type, and their revival in the current era has been just as strong. Zeearend (‘sea eagle’) is one of the most famed of the type, especially in the Netherlands, where she is a veritable legend to Dutch yachtsmen. She was built in 1936 for Caes Bruynzeel, plywood pioneer, after Caes met Olin’s brother Rod Sparkman, who was at the time sailing Stormy Weather through the Dutch waterways. Caes was smitten, and Zeearend, “very much the successor to Stormy Weather” as Olin Stephens put it, was the result, built by the famous De Vries Lentsch Yard in…

Where do you take a Sparkman & Stephens yawl if you want to really test her against her kin? If you want to put her up against the best and most competitively sailed and also most immaculately looked after boats bearing S&S lineage, you go to the Med. There you’ll find your pride and joy lined up on a quay somewhere alongside Blitzen, Stormy Weather, Argyll, Manitou and Skylark among others. Imposing company, given their long race histories and professional standard of maintenance today. They effectively form a class within a class, probably deserving of its own Sparkman & Stephens trophy. Among the S&S royalty tied up stern-to at Cannes’ Régates Royales last summer, there was a newcomer. Kind of a newcomer – she’s been around since 1950 and has…

“When I was young, all holidays were spent sailing” YOUNGEST SUSIE GOODALL (28 YRS) DHL Starlight, Rustler 36 masthead sloop If her greatest adversary turns out to be Jean-Luc Van Den Heede, there will be a fascinating battle played out between the youngest and oldest competitors, both experienced and ambitious. Susie Goodall is an ocean sailing instructor who was introduced to the sport at the age of three and in recent times has been skippering a 60ft sail-training/expedition yacht in Scandinavia. She says: “When I was young, all holidays were spent sailing and my weekends were taken up racing Lasers, before I started teaching sailing on the Isle of Wight. I’ve spent a few years working in the superyacht industry before taking up sail training.” She won sponsorship from DHL…

Day One She was the biggest German sailing yacht of her time, she acted as the unofficial German state yacht post-war and hosted the German president Heinrich Lübke in the 1960s at Kiel Week. She’s been around the world via Cape Horn and now she’s going around again. Well-known at regattas worldwide, this 1954 Henry Gruber two-masted schooner has some miles under her keel. She was built by the Burmester yard in Bremen in riveted steel with a teak deck and superstructure, her spars in Canadian spruce, 115ft (35m) LOA, 74ft (23m) on the water. She has some modern hydraulic winches to enable short-handed cruising o. shore, but for the large part, on deck, is kept in her 1950s state. On board today we have around 18 crew, all of…

GOSPORT, HAMPSHIRE One-off Laurent Giles re-launched After a five-year partial rebuild, the supremely elegant Laurent Giles-designed one-off yacht Farida has been re-launched for owner John Richardson. The job was huge, as the yacht was riddled with rot so bad that it crumbled in the hand. With her towering 45ft (13.7m) mast and big, bermudan rig, she’s “slightly overpowered” but “beautifully balanced and goes like a train” said John. She was built by RA Newman and Sons (of Poole) in 1939 for Newman himself, and owned by ITV newsman Mike Nicholson in the 80s. She now lives in Gosport Marina, from where John is planning a schedule of fun cruising – solo and with friends – and perhaps a bit of racing. Farida is Persian for ‘special’ or ‘unique’. She’s well…

Often the first step in building a wooden structure is cross-cutting boards to convenient lengths for further work, and for this a sharp panel saw is indispensable. In fact John Leather placed “a good panel saw” top of the list of essential tools in his classic book Clinker Boatbuilding (Adlard Coles). Dating from 1960, this is the sleek and curvy Double Century panel saw which Spear & Jackson made to celebrate the firm's bicentenary. Its foxy streamlined handle, which marked a bold departure from the fancy shapes which had gone before, is regarded with a jaundiced eye by some old saw aficionados, much as, say, a 1960s sloop with snubbed bow and transom stern might be viewed by a follower of Fife. But put this saw to work, savour its…

1-3 JUNE BEALE PARK BOAT OUTDOOR SHOW Nr Reading. Boats, tents, grass under your feet, brass bands, beer and smoked kippers bealeparkboatandoutdoorshow.co.uk 9 JUNE BARGE MATCHES Thames and east coast. The Thames barge matches kick o. on 9 June at Queenborough, on the Medway sailingbargeassociation.co.uk 9-10 JUNE SUFFOLK YACHT HARBOUR REGATTA Levington, Suffolk. Bermudan and gaff-rigged racing from the River Orwell based at Suffolk Yacht Harbour syharbour.co.uk 22-24 JUNE FALMOUTH CLASSICS Falmouth, Cornwall. Huge traditional regatta with more than 100 boats of all rigs and LOAs, sponsored by Tilley Endurables. falmouthclassics.org.uk … AND LOOKING BACK TO 30 YEARS AGO July/August 1988 – CB8 The lovely dayboat on the cover never appears in the magazine, but instead we kicked o. this issue with a history of the great sailing Humber yawls,…

If the overnight success of Hamble Classics two years ago demonstrated an appetite for a season-closing regatta in the Solent, then the 24 wooden boats that gathered for the inaugural Cowes Spring Classics on 11-13 May showed there is also a demand for a season opener. The new regatta, based at Shepherd’s Wharf Marina, attracted a varied fleet ranging from the Herreshoff replica Winifred, at 23ft 10in (7.26m), up through gaff cutters, work boats and Metre yachts. The Laurent Giles design Whooper won a competitive IRC class, beating 1904 Fife Mikado and the 1970 composite Twister Sea Urchin into second and third. There was a good number of gaff-rigged boats with Step Back in Time, a Golant Gaffer, topping the OGA handicap class ahead of Winifred and the Golant Gaffer…

BRIAN SAUNDERS Factory Foreman, Jeckells the Sailmakers Congratulations on completing 50 years of service at Jeckells. Did you get a gold watch? Yes, the boss was kind to me (and the Jeckells family have always been kind to me and the rest of us). You joined the company aged 15. What advice would you give to your young self looking back? Listen more to the older staff, so that I could have learned my trade more quickly. What are the big industry changes you’ve seen? Improvements with adhesives, threads and, of course, technology, including our new laser cutter. Your favourite sail-making material and why? I like any material so long as I am doing what I am told and get paid! What are the most common mistakes owners make in…

On 17 May 1935, three desperate fishermen leapt for their lives from Protect Me II, a sinking motor coble, four miles off Hornsea on England’s north east coast. They had set off from their home port of Bridlington before dawn to go south of the bay to lift crab and lobster pots on an ordinary day, the swell of yesterday’s gale still running. At about 5am the engine stuttered and they suddenly started taking on water; no one knew at that point that the stern tube had dropped out with part of the stern. The men worked the pumps but were unable to cope with the sea rushing in. Many fishermen couldn’t swim. They set fire to tyre fenders and oily rags and the smoke was seen by another Bridlington…

Day two Do I get wet? Well, there is a moment I find myself lying on the foredeck as if in a warm bath. In fact, I have had colder baths at home. To be slapped across the face or back by these tropical seas is a childish thrill that elicits a grin from everyone, every time they get dunked. My foredeck mates have spent their winter caring for Mah Jong in the Grenadines and – I kid you not – are shivering with cold. Me? I feel as though I’ll be sick from the heat. Coming from Britain’s most dismal ever winter into Antiguan sunshine is enough to make you feel very pallid, very English. So the foredeck dousings are welcome, but even in these lumpy conditions, never once…

COCKLE The pram dinghy The Cockle design came to be when Andrew was looking for a tender to his Broads yacht and the late, famed builder Jack Chippendale was looking for a pram dinghy to build and sell. “Most prams are a length of ply [8ft/2.6m] long,” said Andrew, “which is not long enough.” This one is 9ft (2.7m), meaning she can take three adults under oars. The rig fits in a canvas bag and the boat is light enough (100lb/45kg) to be “genuinely cartoppable”. She’s in double chine, stitch-and-tape ply, and suitable for homebuilding, using Jack Chippendale’s ‘glass scarph’ method of end-joining plywood, negating the need for millimetre perfect scarphs. COOT Cat-rigged gunter Coot was an early design of Andrew’s, for himself, in the early 1980s, launched in 1986.…

FIRST AUSTRALIAN 8-METRE We’re in Sydney to sail on Defiance, built in 1935 and restored in full by current owner Nicole Shrimpton HANNAH CUNLIFFE National Historic Ships’ new director comes clean on the Suhaili row and much more DUNKIRK LITTLE SHIP One of Dunkirk’s finest, well looked after on the French canals, with plenty of British flavour still evident PLUS… Waterwitch – one of Fife’s greatest disappointments, sailing on big schooner Xarifa, boat test of the new Crabber 24 with her designer on board, tips from a lifetime of building boats and much more… AUGUST 2018 ON SALE Friday 6 July, 2018 (or why not subscribe!)…