Onboard CHARTER KEELBOATS
Square shares C
remyll is one of those charming little places that are all the more delightful for being a bit tricky to get to. It consists pretty much of a pub and a boatyard with an unrivalled prospect of Plymouth Harbour. It’s at the easternmost extremity of the Rame Peninsula, a little bit of Cornwall curling back into the harbour. It’s also well-known as the home of Cremyll Sailing – sail-training for young people with traditional yachts Moosk, Huff of Arklow (currently in the shed) and modern pilot cutter Pegasus. But now its fleet has been increased by some unlikely additions: sharp, racy Scandinavian 22-Square-Metre keelboats, designed to appeal to a very different type of sailor indeed. And thus, Cremyll Keelboats, a separate marketing arm, with its own branding, website and so on, has been created. Its aim is to help the preservation of these beautiful and exciting boats by making them available through a club format to people who would like to experience the thrill of handling these high-performance boats.
They’ve been described as the Formula 1s of the sea, but that could imply an offputtingly high skill requirement. Think ‘a bit like Dragons only more so’ or ‘about the size of a 6-Metre’ and you’ll get the picture. They plane, given the right conditions.
The good news for would-be hirers is that while there’s a ‘driving test’ before you’re let out on your own with one, the club’s managers, Dominic and Barbara Bridgman, are more than happy to accompany members and instruct them in the finer points of handling these thoroughbreds. The 22s are designed according to the Swedish Square Metre Rule, dating from 1908, with major amendments in 1935. The measurement derives from the sail area, with considerable freedom over other design aspects. The boats are also known as Skerry Cruisers, and classes range from 15 to 150sqm. The result for the 22s is a slim, elegant hull
62 CLASSIC BOAT FEBRUARY 2012
“Uffa Fox loved them and sailed his Vigilant to Sweden and back”
VOYAGES . SEAMANSHIP . EQUIPMENT
Fancy a high-performance Swedish 22-Square-Metre on a budget? Peter Willis finds a fleet seeking members
typically 32-40ft (9.7-12.2m) in length and 6ft (1.8m) beam, driven by a tall spread of sail. Uffa Fox loved them, and sailed his 22sqm Vigilant to Sweden and back in 1930 – a feat recently replicated by the 15sqm Vixen (CB275). The Cremyll fleet, now comprising five boats, has been loving assembled under the auspices of Andrew Thornhill QC, who also owns Mashfords shipyard at Cremyll and is chairman of EISCA, the collection of nearly 400 boats based originally on those in the Exeter Maritime Museum. It was his enthusiasm for the class, hitherto neglected in the UK, that got the present project going. The fleet of 22s started in around 2003 with Vigilant
and Patriot, then at the Underfalls yard in Bristol. Vigilant, 10.5m (34ft 6in) LOA, was designed and built by Uffa Fox in 1930; Patriot, 11.3m (37ft), 1961, was designed by Knud Reimers for the Chicago Yacht Club’s 22-based one-design Udell class. Chadrak, 11.4m (37ft 5in), was discovered in Sweden last year, and brought back just in time to participate in the Panerai British Classics at Cowes. Designed by Arvid Laurin, she was built in 1949,
beautifully restored by Thomas Larsen, and arrived at Cremyll well equipped and with an impressive suit of sails. Caritana, 9.5m (31ft 2in), is a bit of an oddity; she was built in 1946, but would not have qualified for class under the 1935 rule revision, having been built for designer Gustav Estlander’s very successful 1930 one-design Mälar class, designed for the lake of that name in Sweden. Her name apparently means ‘good fortune’, so it’s sadly ironic that she’s currently off the water after getting T-boned during last year’s British Classics. Newest acquisition is Solve, a Harry Becker design and a big one at 13m (42ft 8in). She’d spent 30 years mothballed in a shed in St Malo as part of the collection of a French multimillionaire, where she was misidentified as a 6-Metre and brought to the UK by Metre specialist Brian Pope’s Ocean Yacht Company. It was Tim Street who identified her as a 22, and got in touch with Andrew
Above: Dominic helms Vigilant past Plymouth’s historic Royal William Yard Right: Up the Tamar River Far right: Barbara at the helm of Chadrak
TOM BENN
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