8 BRITISH SUPER YACHT BOOM

Peter Cumberlidge: “I have been drawn to the Frisian Islands, with their winding channels and unexpected harbours, since reading Erskine Childers’ classic 1903 spy novel The Riddle of the Sands”

Britain’s superyacht industry recorded its sixth successive year of growth according to Superyacht UK, an association of British Marine.

Driven by manufacturers such as Sunseeker and Princess, and custom-build yards such as Pendennis Shipyard, the UK superyacht industry’s total revenue grew by 8.9% to £697m across 2017/2018.

Full-time employment in the superyacht sector has also risen by 7.7% and now stands at 4,572 employees across the whole of the UK.

Lesley Robinson, CEO for British Marine, commented: “The continued global dominance of Britain’s superyacht industry reflects the prestige and outstanding quality of UK businesses and their products and services.” She continued: “Despite ongoing political uncertainty, we expect to see further growth into 2019 and continuing demand for UK craftsmanship and expertise across the world’s key markets”.

Returning from the Baltic one summer via the Kiel Canal, we carried a sluicing ebb down the Elbe emerging into an unusually calm North Sea. Heligoland was planned as the next staging post, a strange red sandstone outcrop about 15 miles offshore, but conditions were perfect for hanging a left to Wangerooge – the most easterly and least pronounceable of the German Frisian Islands.

I’ve been drawn to this area over the years because it features in Erskine Childers’ classic 1903 novel The Riddle of the Sands, which I think contains some of the most evocative writing about small boat cruising you’ll find anywhere.

The German Frisians form a 50-mile chain of low sandy islands a few miles off the flat, virtually featureless Lower Saxony mainland. Between each pair of islands, a tide-swept gully cuts in from the sea before branching into subsidiary channels that tail away through vast inner shoals. Some of these routes are quite deep and well-buoyed, while others are shallow and tortuous, marked somewhat enigmatically by willow sticks.

Locals who know these waters can cruise inside the Frisians between Wangerooge and the Dutch border, stopping off at small harbours on the way. When The Riddle was set, flat-bottomed sailing barges plied their trade behind the islands, anchoring in sheltered pools to wait for the tide.

It was Childers’ descriptions that sparked my interest in this fascinating cruising area. Wangerooge, in particular, always caught my attention: “A line of sandhills, pink and fawn in the setting sun, at one end of them a little white village huddled round the base of a massive, four-square lighthouse.”

Back then, the island harbour was used by barges and island packet boats. Now there’s a small marina where yachts moor to wooden staging, just staying afloat at low water. Out beyond the pierheads are grand vistas of drying sand.

Wangerooge is only 17 miles from the outer Elbe buoys, so we dawdled towards its fairway buoy to let the tide start rising again. A trail of reds and greens leads in past Wangerooge’s new space-age lighthouse and a white beach. Backed by dunes and windswept marram grass, the marina is pleasantly out in the wilds. From the quayside, a narrow gauge railway rattles inland to a surprisingly large holiday town. In 1903 you could only buy paraffin and basic stores here. Over a century later there are spa hotels, shops and plenty of restaurants, though German cooking, I find, is still an acquired taste.

Nostalgia. It ain’t what it used to be… For years I’ve been saying that I’m sure we had ‘proper’ summers when I was a lad. Endless blue summer skies, windows open all day long and, most importantly, the ability to organise a weekend in advance without attaching the ‘if the weather’s OK’ caveat to every plan. People my age tend to nod wisely, while younger heads mutter about rose-tinted glasses.

But this year has been a proper summer, just like the ones I remember. It has been brilliant. Yes, it wasn’t ideal for gardeners and farmers, which is unfortunate, but it’s not as though we voted for weeks of unbroken sunshine so I’m not going to feel guilty about making the most of them. Likewise, the doommongers point to global warming, as they do every time we have a hot summer (for bad ones they blame climate change). It’s the hottest summer since ’76 and I don’t recall anyone blaming global warming then.

So rather than hand-wringing, we went boating. And how! By the end of August, Smuggler’s Blues 2 had clocked up more than 80 running hours and covered 800 miles. Weekend after weekend we pushed out of Torquay, bound frequently for favourite destinations such as Dartmouth or Salcombe, but often just to a nearby bay, anchoring for the afternoon to lunch and swim, or just relax with a good book or sit on the bathing platform and watch the world go by. The bimini, if you will excuse me, has been a permanent erection, providing welcome shade from the sort of Mediterranean-style warmth that doesn’t rely on direct sunlight for heat – it’s just warm everywhere. Even my sister brought her family boating (“Not too fast!”) and for the first time ever my Med-based mate Rick Taylor has been jealous of me!

The weekend just gone, for example, we set off on a fast blast west, stopping for lunch off Hallsands, just east of Start Point. Early afternoon saw Smuggler’s nosing into Salcombe; we picked up a mooring buoy and headed ashore for an ice cream and a wander around. The trip back took longer, not because of sea conditions (I’ve seen Torquay Harbour more turbulent than Start Point!), but because we stopped twice to watch pods of dolphins heading down the Channel. The following day we took advantage of tide times to take some friends right up to Totnes at the navigable head of the River Dart for lunch. We were tailed out of the river by a superyacht and spent the second half of the afternoon anchored off Broadsands, swimming next to the boat.

On one occasion I decided to move my office to the boat and the boat to an idyllic cove. I packed my laptop and all the notes required to turn out another boat review (the Pogo Loxo 32 in the October issue, to be precise). It was a great idea in theory, high on ambience and scenery if low on productivity.

But perhaps the best thing about this summer has been seeing how many people have been out on the water. In recent years it’s been possible to cruise between destinations and see maybe three other boats in action. This year, coastlines have been dotted with myriad craft, all aiming to make the best of the weather. Brokers cried out for boat listings as demand outstripped supply and 2018 became the year the nation fell head over heels back in love with boating.