SAUNTERER


“She turns heads like no other yacht I’ve owned ”


Above: All the wood inside is from the original boat’s interior – if sometimes re-shaped for a different purpose


They cost £650 on eBay rather than £1,800 for new bronze ones,” said Chloe. They’re perhaps the most modern things on Saunterer, unless you count the VHF. There’s no radar, GPS, AIS or even an echo sounder – just charts, compass, years of experience and a dash of optimism. The solid spruce masts date from the 1930s when the rig was converted to bermudan. The staysail is self-tacking with a big club boom and Chloe made the smart black boom covers with an ancient Singer sewing machine. The teak cockpit grating was bought from Trinity Marine in Teignmouth, who reclaim items from old ships broken up on the beach in India and sell lights and portholes to pubs. “Cockpit grating is a nightmare to make; it’s much easier to trim up than make anew,” Chloe tells.


PATINA OF AGE


Even the deck beams are original and left, like so much of the interior, with the rough patina of age just oiled over rather than having its history ground away by orbital sander and covered with layer upon layer of varnish or worse. The century-old iron hanging knees have resisted galvanic corrosion with their bronze fastenings and are in perfect fettle. “The iron is such high carbon that there was no electrolysis,” Guy tells me.


The gimballed mahogany saloon table is straight from


Sibbick – Thalassa, a later near-sister ship (CB219), has the same one. The solid teak beamshelves, behind those Sibbick diamond-shaped breathing holes, are original too.


12 CLASSIC BOAT JULY 2011


When I mention the bronze anchor windlass, though, Guy winces a bit. “Saw that in Ashley’s yard,” he tells me, meaning nearby boatbuilder Ashley Butler. “I asked if I could buy it and offered him £1,500. But he wouldn’t take the money. He would only give it to me if I spent some time framing the new 50ft (15m) Mayflower yawl. Three weeks of the hardest graft in my life. I wish he’d let me pay!” That work was one of many jobs Guy had to undertake away from Saunterer to pay the bills. The finishing touch was the rigging, with help from Lee Rogers, who made the bowsprit net and served the whiskers. “I don’t want to see any stainless,” muttered Guy, whose work serving the bottlescrews in beautiful grey suede leather is to the same end. By this spring, the yacht stood restored throughout and brought back to her first flush of life – and for a sum of just over £40,000, a fraction of the cost of sending her to a yard for the work to be done.


“She turns heads like no other yacht I’ve owned,” Guy tells me as we stand on the quayside admiring Saunterer’s lines. She might suggest some of the esprit of her designer’s love of the slim and the fast, but actually she’s an optical illusion, beamy and strong with full standing headroom below. It turns out that Guy, aged 36, has owned nearly 30 classic yachts in his life so far. Old wooden yachts are not generally thought to be appreciating assets, but it’s how Guy makes a living. Here are a few examples: Corolla, a Buchanan sloop,


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