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Discovery and delivery RESTORATION PART 1
Greg Powlesland begins a series of articles, giving a detailed chronicle of Patna’s five-year restoration
It’s curious, time and memory, for I’m sure that after the exhaustion of the restoration of Marigold I resolved never to take on such a task again. Yet here I was, sitting in Patna’s saloon in 2005, surrounded by blackened and bashed Edwardian mahogany panelling and faded olive green buttoned leather sofas. A verdigreed oil lamp swung from the central six-pane skylight, with its worn sennit a reminder of restraint against vast gale-lashed seas that laid Patna on her beam ends when her steering broke in mid-Atlantic in 1983. A wonderful aroma of ancient worn wood, a hint of
paraffin and Katie’s enthusiasm to save this almost-ready-to- sail but tired nautical masterpiece of Charles Nicholson were eroding my resolve. Shall we? Yes! Thus Patna was purchased from Fred Lockwood, who told us that nothing else he had ever owned had given him as much pleasure. The principal appeal of the boat was her originality – only the cockpit area had been altered with the addition of an enormous deckhouse in 1956 – practical but
deadly to elegant lines. The interior, however, was intact in virtually every detail, as could be identified from C&N’s very exacting building plans from 1920. The fo’c’s’le with traditional crew quarters and galley
forward still had its three folding pipecots, seat lockers and hand pumps for salt and fresh water. The saloon retained its original gimballed table and mahogany panelling to disguise the mast. The original Victory WC was still there with lead pipework, and under the pine cabin sole were the original riveted steel water tanks complete with lead supply pipes and vent. The stateroom aft featured a folding cane seat and amazingly still had the original Vi-Spring mattresses on the bunks. All this was accessed by a magnificent semi-circular
staircase down to an intimate mahogany panelled lobby. On deck the hatches, skylight, brass-capped windlass
and galvanised fittings for bowsprit and rig, were exactly as they appeared in a Beken photograph from the early 1930s. Originally Patna had a huge engine, 6ft (1.8m) long,
sited above the waterline aft with its own skylight, driving, via a chain, a shaft off to the port side of the sternpost.
CLASSIC BOAT MARCH 2012 15
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