legendary last words, “I’m just going outside and may be some time.” It’s hard to think of any name so inexorably connected to a catchphrase but of course it was actions that defined him when, wounded, he left his companions in the expedition tent besieged by high winds and – 40º
C
weather, to die alone, in the hope that they would reach safety without his slowing them down. Her role this summer, cruising the South Coast in support for a services’ Antarctic expedition and the Help for Heroes charity, seems an appropriate reflection of her distinguished past ownership.
Below: The anchor windlass was found in Ashley Butler’s shed
THE DISCOVERY
In early 2009, it was a different story. Boatbuilder Guy Savage and his (now) wife Chloe had finished a spell in the Mediterranean aboard their Buchanan-designed 36ft (11m) Yeoman-class sloop when they saw a yawl for sale, built 1900, and in terrible condition, beside a shed in Helensburgh, Scotland. She’d been in it for 14 years and outside it for the last year, breathing the cold, damp Scottish air again. “Rain was hitting the deck and continuing straight through into the boat inside,” Guy recalls. Her designer, Charles Sibbick, was best known for his late 19th-century Rater yachts, a loose design envelope that counted only length and sail area and produced one of the most dynamic racing fleets ever seen. They were also beautiful, with long overhangs, high rigs and low freeboards. When Rater racing died,
10 CLASSIC BOAT JULY 2011
Sibbick turned his attention to cruising yachts and it’s tempting, and perhaps not too fanciful, to see the flightiness of a Rater in Saunterer.
The owner wanted £75,000, on the strength of the Oates connection. Guy and Chloe had learned about this paragon of tough English altruism at school, where he was held up as a hero: the stiff upper lip had a name, and that name was Oates. “They don’t teach kids about Oates any more,” Guy and Chloe have found, after checking with various teenagers. If they did, he would perhaps be described as a vainglorious icon of machismo, elitism and empire, the stoutness of his heroism and the gentler quality of his selflessness derided against the current cultural backdrop of self worth. Eventually, they paid £45,000 for Saunterer. After bringing the boat to Dart Haven, on Devon’s River Dart, she was put straight into the water on a trot mooring. “There wasn’t much wrong with the hull and she had to go straight in as we couldn’t afford to keep her on land,” says Guy. The first job was to waterproof her, covering the deck with damp-course material – “the cheapest way to keep a boat dry,” in Guy’s book. Then they moved in to live aboard and ripped the doghouse off. “It was a lot worse than camping!” Chloe relates. “Paint flaking off in your hair every night. Dodgy gas pipes – cooker was right next to the boat. Makes you do the job faster though.”
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