The view astern
Hard photographic evidence of the nautical follies of oneÕs youth
It’s too easy to record events that might live to haunt you. For instance, while sorting through photographs recently I came across a picture in which, as best man at a friend’s wedding, I appear to be wearing an outfit Liberace would have envied – such were the grotesque fashions of the day.
My journalistic activities reach back to the black-and-white days when I developed and enlarged most of the images myself. Next came transparencies and colour prints; physical entities stored in folders and boxes, shelves of which continue to occupy a whole wall of my workspace. My attempts to index them or, better still, scan them to computer memory have surrendered to the sheer volume, but I did have a brief stab at indexing them.
Which was when I stumbled on the black-and-white image that heads this page. From today’s perspective, it seems to harken back to when the world was flat, but further research reminded me that it had been snapped in the late ’60s. It was my first ‘serious’ design – meaning that, with thanks to the yacht design bible of the day, Skene’s Elements of Yacht Design (first published in 1904, my version the seventh edition updated by Francis S Kinney), the hydrodynamic elements were carefully considered; the lines not simply sketched out on the back of a beer mat.
The photo shows some of the steel reinforcements for the hull of a 27ft keelboat in ferroconcrete – then lauded as a promising method for home construction. Among the attractions of this unlovely form of construction are that the base materials are relatively inexpensive and the work can take place in the open air.
Joined by friends Bruce and Des, we had started work. But as this progressed, I found my empathy with the whole concept eroding. Wouldn’t it be better, I pondered, to have a lighter hull and dedicate the associated displacement thus liberated to carrying more stores and equipment? And was it really necessary to stab yourself repeatedly with the wire ties like some crazed fakir bent on self-harm? And I was not alone. Bruce and Des were also running short on enthusiasm.
Some weeks later we convened at a local pub to consider our options. The steelwork core of reinforcing bar and wire mesh was almost completed, and it would then be the turn of professional plasterers to apply the mortar – a drier than normal mix of cement, sand, pozzolan (a type of volcanic ash) and, of course, water. The whole hull had to be plastered in a single session and then kept moist to allow it to harden slowly without cracking. We decided to at least see that task through to completion, but there was no bounding enthusiasm to take it further.
Agreeably fair
So far as the hull was concerned, I must admit to some pride in the result. Now right side up, it was agreeably fair; only its grey hue giving a clue to its composition. After several months, we decided to sell it and, if memory serves, sold it to a gent from Kent who, for the sum of £250, carted it away to do with it what he could. That was the last I ever heard of it.
But as aversion therapy goes, that experience was a potent dose. My next design hit the other end of the displacement scale. It was a 24ft trimaran called Shangaan (an African people, the name suggested by Bruce who hailed from that continent). Construction was mainly of cold-moulded plywood using resorcinol adhesive. Gratifyingly fast, I understand she remains afloat to this day.
And I have been an unapologetic fan of light displacement ever since. So long as all structural demands are met – and with the obvious exception of ballast – the lighter the better, say I. Yet perhaps I was asking too much of a 27-footer, though perceptions have changed where size is concerned. When Francis Chichester won the 1960 Observer Single-handed Transatlantic Race in Gypsy Moth III, at 40ft LOA she was the largest boat in the fleet and was considered to be about as big a boat as a single-hander could manage. But who could have guessed that the winner in 1964 (Eric Tabarly) would sail a 44-footer, 1968 would see a 57-footer (Geoffery Williams) cross the line first, and perhaps eclipsing all else, the monstrous 70ft trimaran Pen Duick IV would see Alain Colas as the victor in 1972: alas, for both boat and skipper to be lost at sea in 1978.