Innholdsfortegnelse for June 2023 i Classic Boat

THAMES Green light for historic boat collection A priceless collection of Thames wooden boats and river-related artefacts will get the home it deserves, after council planners unanimously granted permission to redevelop the historic Hobbs boatyard site at Henley. The decision, overturning an initial planning officer refusal, secures a safe future for the Rose Toop Collection, which was formed by Adam Toop, merging the Rose Collection, started in 1965 by Bill and Penny Rose, with his own. The latter includes launches previously reported on in Classic Boat including Islay, 1922 (CB 246) and Rainbow, 1920 (CB270). Mr Rose died in 2021, shortly after Mr Toop acquired the Hobbs site with a view to redeveloping it to house the collection. The initial refusal and subsequent planning wrangles have delayed Mr Toop’s plans,…

“The objective has been to be true to the spirit of the vessel, to preserve elements of her past – from both her original era and successive eras – but to bring in new design elements so as not to be captive to it. We wanted a comfortable boat and we wanted a pretty boat.” These were the aspirations of the new American owners of the 1931 Camper & Nicholsons motor yacht Marala, and there isn’t any doubt that they have achieved all of that and more. Life afloat for the owners began on the Thames when they lived in London with their three small children in the 1990s. Having initially rented a house overlooking the river, they bought a 1909 houseboat on which they lived for seven years during…

In June 1822 three sailors set out from Livorno on the Tuscan coast of Italy and headed for their home port of Lerici, some 36nm up the coast in a 29ft yacht. The weather was hot and thundery, the boat was heavily canvassed and open with no deck. She was seen heading north at a good clip before disappearing from sight as she sailed into the murk of a thundery shower that passed to the north of the town. The crew were never seen alive again. This brutal little vignette was played out in the great days of sail with monotonous regularity. Death was a simple fact of, well, life. What makes the story stand out was that among the crew was the poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley. Indeed, he was…

SUVRETTA CB cover star for sale We sailed the West Solent Restricted One Design (WSOD) Suvretta back in the summer of 2021 with owners Chris Preston, chairman of the RYA, and his wife Victoria. The WSODs, as they’re known, are one of the most revered of all the slim, coastal racing yachts. “Perhaps the most successful and elegant inshore waters cruiser-racers ever to grace UK waters” as the broker puts it. They are famous not just for their purity and sailing ability but for their looks, which you can judge for yourself. The design, by H Jacobs and HG May, was for series production at Berthon Boatyard, and in total around 30 were built, Suvretta dating from 1924. They are 34ft 8in (10.6m) long and you don’t get an awful…

Hammer heads Preventing a hammer’s head parting company from its handle mid-swing has been a concern of toolmakers since palaeolithic man bound a stone to a stick using strips of leather some 30,000 years ago. The simplest solution of recent times employs something akin to a wedged mortise and tenon joint, whereby the handle slots into a complementary hole forged in the head and is tightened by a steel wedge driven across the grain. This is fine for a light joinery hammer such as this 8oz Warrington, (1) but for a heavier and more mightily swung claw hammer a sturdier arrangement is required to withstand the greater forces of driving and extracting large fastenings. One method which arose in the middle ages sees the head forged with straps riveted through…

“How many more voyages Veritas will make and how many more tales she’ll have to tell is impossible to prophesy…; She has been becalmed and assaulted alike by the elements, and weathered all. She has been raced and cruised, loved and abused, yet above everything she remains a ship capable of sailing anywhere in the world…; Can you wonder that I love her?” These words could have come from any of the 10 people who have, to date, owned Veritas – originally named Manuela II and now Plym – but they were actually written by Stephen Wiest whose father was her fifth owner. And how much more of the world she will sail in the future is anybody’s guess, but she has certainly covered a lot of it so far.…

It was all happening very much in slow motion. On board Tulli at the 17th Vele Storiche Viareggio regatta off Italy’s Tuscany coast, the most wind we saw all day was about 6kts and our top speed was 2.4kts. Although Lospray wasn’t even in the same class as Tulli, it felt as if she was the boat we must beat because she was another Italian designed and built motor sailer from the early 1960s. For most of the race we managed to hold her off but on the last upwind legs she was pointing higher than us on port tack and crept past. However, after we both tacked we somehow managed to sail through her lee. All we then needed to do was to get round the last mark and…

ALL HANDS ON DECK BY WILL SOFRIN It’s not so often these days that a tall ship is pressed into commercial service and compelled to take a long sea passage to earn her keep. This was the venture undertaken by the young boatbuilder and sailor Will Sofrin when he and a motley crew of 30 were charged with the task of delivering a three-masted, full-rigged ship to the film set of Master and Commander in 2002. The ship was Rose, a tired 179ft replica of an 18th-century English Royal Navy frigate. The job, for 21-year-old Will, was to reprise the noble old calling of ship’s carpenter, and this involved three months of getting the ship ready, then sailing her 6,000 miles from Newport, Rhode Island to the coast of California…

Upriver from Dartmouth and turn left, there is in a secluded tidal inlet named Old Mill Creek, the perfect location for maintaining and mooring every kind of craft. There have been small shipyards quietly carrying on their business here, servicing local needs, since way before written records began. Today the Creek’s wooded banks have special heritage status, and are being preserved by the Raleigh Estate, who own both foreshore and fundus. Since 2008 the Spirit of Adventure organisation has offered an opportunity for youngsters from Devon and Cornwall to explore Old Mill Creek in Canadian canoes. Their memories will last a lifetime. It is a magical place which has been the backdrop to so many histories and local life stories over the centuries. The spot has strong connections with Royalty.…

ABERDEENSHIRE New life for a one-off Holman sloop The 1961 Kim Holman-designed sloop Lundy Lady has been bought by a new owner. Lundy Lady is a 36ft (11m) bermudan-rigged cruiser-racer and was, thought Holman at the time, around the perfect size for this sort of yacht. She was built at Highbridge in Somerset in 1961 by Kimber and Blake, of 1in larch below the waterline and splined mahogany above. She will soon be on a big road trip to the owner’s home in rural Aberdeenshire, 635 miles away, where work will begin. The first challenge, after six years’ storage undercover, is to make her watertight for the three-hour journey down the Tamar from Calstock to Plymouth, where she can be lifted onto a lorry. Lundy Lady was built for Kip…

SYDNEY 18 FOOTERS PHOTOGRAPHS NIGEL SHARP On the first weekend in February, the historical Sydney Harbour 18 Footers held the third and final race of its Australian Championships. While there are no original boats still in commission, 11 replicas of boats originally built between 1906 and 1950 were produced between 1993 and 2013, and these are based at the Sydney Flying Squadron in Kirribilli on the north side of Sydney Harbour. Going into the last race, three boats were within two points of each other: Yendys having had a second and a first, The Mistake a first and third, and Alruth a third and second. With a forecast of “a horrible westerly 10 to 15kts, meaning 0 to 20 with big shifts,” according to Ian Smith – Britannia’s builder, owner…

WINDING STICKS A yacht’s shapely wooden hull often belies a quantity of flat, straight timber having gone into her construction, more especially in some old motor yachts, whose boxy superstructure and furnishings began with correspondingly four-square boards. While edges may be straight as plumb lines and faces ruler-flat across their widths, when viewed lengthways a seemingly level plank may prove to be as twisted as a propeller blade. A board twisted thus, with ends in different planes, is said to be ‘in wind’, which is one of several types of defect under the general heading ‘warp’. While timbers vary in their susceptibility to the shrinkage and swelling of fibres which cause wind, depending on their species, how they are converted and seasoned are also significant factors. Quarter-sawn timber is less…

BARCELONA’S BELLE The 1937 GL Watson ketch Islander has been around the world singlehanded. These days she races in the Mediterranean. UNIQUE RACER This Irish one-off design built in 1902 was famous on the racecourses of her day. After recent purchase and restoration by the great grandson of the builder, she won our restoration award. MODERN POWER The Hood LM35 express cruiser is one of the most modern yachts we’ve ever encountered – but her hull is all wood and her look carries a timeless appeal. PLUS… We meet offshore racing legend Harold Cudmore; the amazing story of the lost yacht Amyrillis; surform rasping tools; and more JULY 2023 ISSUE ON SALE Friday 9 June, 2023 Or why not subscribe? SAILING TODAY WITH YACHTS & YACHTING IN THE JUNE ISSUE…