Making a mast
Spar making is often considered a bit of a black art; in fact it is quite straight forward but is a painstaking process and labour intensive. You also end up with an awful lot of wood shavings on the floor. First you have to prepare for a financial shock: Sitka Spruce...
read more
Eleanora
Eleanora was built at the famous Gosport yard of Camper and Nicholson in 1927. She was designed in house, built largely in teak and her power came from a pair of 8 hp Stuart Turner petrol engines mounted under the floor of the aft cockpit. Much of her history is lost...
read more
Lady Gwynfred
The Thames sailing barge Lady Gwynfred was a 68 ton sprit rigged, wooden barge built by Glover at Gravesend in 1904. Like many barges she had a varied career and came to a sad end. She operated as general trading barge under sail up to 1933 when she sank at...
read more
Aquila Maris – refitting a Westerly Fulmar
Aquila Maris started life with Barklays Bank ( Aquila Maris = Sea Eagle which is Barklays' emblem). She is an early fin keeled Westerly Fulmar. Well used by Barklays she then spent two or three years ashore before a number of years of hard use as a family cruising...
read more
Sarantina
Designed by David Cannell of Wivenhoe and build by North Sea Craft, then in Norwich, the Samphire 26 has impeccable east coast credentials. In design terms she is one of several similar boats of the 1970's which can be somewhat unkindly described as the fatter...
read more
Nutshell
Malcolm Goodwin made his name mostly by building plywood racing dinghies to impressively high standards. He designed the Nutshell for his children to learn to sail in and judging by their later achievements it did its job pretty well. Subsequently Malcolm sold kits of...
read more
Mirembe
Ray had spent the early years of his career in Uganda, so when he came back home he called his boat "Mirembe" which is "peace" in Luanda. This turned out to be a serious misnomer; in my experience she was followed by trouble of one kind and another throughout the...
read more
The Lifeboat
My father was never short of a project; usually it was cars, tractors or ancient farm machinery. Then there was a bus converted into a motor-home and and a folding caravan. Following the theme of family holidays he decided the time had come to have a boat in which we...
read more
Early days
Growing up 5 miles from the sea, boats seem to have always been part of life. My brother and I made countless model boats, powered by sails, model engines, electric motors and even a rocket motor. Most of these boats had a short and eventful life on the large pond...
read more