Letters
Flaxen sails turn to sacks; plastic is the answer! LETTER OF THE MONTH SUPPORTED BY OLD PULTENEY WHISKY
I have the highest regard for Richard Titchener’s work as a fellow traveller in the old-boat world, if in a different sphere, but I have long since given up supporting the growers of flax. I have restored and sailed
Sheila for 35 years with absolutely no modern accretions whatsoever. That is: no engine, electrics, winches, electronic toys etc. She is as 1905 as I can contrive, so that I can sail exactly as she was when new – except she has Terylene sails, whose raison d’etre is this.
In 1979, I had Taylors cut a suit of cotton sails for my first use of her. I had no prior knowledge of her performance, but after two years, when this suit had become sacks, she became so unhandy as to render sailing her in tight conditions impossible.
I asked the redoubtable Gail Heard to cut me a suit of plastic
sails so that I could keep up with his Jade. The resulting mitre-cut main, jib and mizzen transformed her performance beyond my wildest dreams, which would have had her designer Albert Strange saying in his grave: “I told you so, for that is what I conceived – the slipperiest yacht in Christendom.”
“she
became so unhandy as to render sailing her... impossible”
Half Crown Club
In the May issue (CB287), Val Howells says that the half-crown bet between Chichester and Hasler is a myth. In Chichester’s book The Lonely Sea and the Sky, referring to the build-up to the 1960 OSTAR, he writes: ‘At one stage, when it looked as if no-one would sponsor, start or finish the race, I offered to race Blondie across for half a crown.’ I was a competitor in 1984
Cutting into the Cutty Sark
Seeing CS I would have thought the hole in her side where the entrance once was could have been filled. And there are rather too many short planks in her side – the fairing of the hull looks rather like a clinker-built garden shed. I think it’s dreadful: not a tribute to the workers or the builders. I gather carpenters, not shipwrights were used. Chris Roche, by email
and am a member of the Half Crown Club – actually formed for competitors with little or no
sponsorship. Brian
O’Donoghue, Poole
We sail her in and out of marinas while I tack her up through the absurdly tight Waldringfield moorings on a falling tide with ease and surety, and in and out of the Deben entrance. The fact is, she is a stunning performer. Her original design being fully realised by those plastic sails, which allows us to sail her exactly as she was a hundred years ago under the tight conditions of today.
This was the object of the exercise – no damned icky-prissy museum piece motored into marinas for us. She sparkles amongst ‘the bermudans’ to keep alive the style for which she stood – to have people delighted and amazed that such should be from ‘an old boat’ – yet the sole difference is the material of her sails. B****r flax – that magnificent mitre-cut main is still with her! Michael Burn, Felixstowe
Armorel sight
CB268 featured a Sternpost article about Armorel – stating that the details of her first owner had been lost. She was built for my grandfather, Howard Kingsley Neale, who was a partner in the Penarth trawler firm of Neale & West. Roger Neale, by email
CLASSIC BOAT JUNE 2012 97
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