New project for CB artist Martyn Mackrill
Last autumn, marine artist Martyn Mackrill, who illustrates our regular ‘Bosun’s Bage’ pages in this magazine, bought the OM Watts-designed, Fife-built yacht Peregrine last autumn through Sandeman Yacht Company in Poole. The bermudan cutter of 39ft (12m) was built in 1936 of teak planking on oak and elm frames. Martyn and his wife Bryony sailed Peregrine from Gosport across to Bembridge to the yard of H Attrill & Sons in early November, where a big refit is taking place now. Martyn and Bryony are doing all the work themselves and hope to have Peregrine back in the water in the spring of 2023. “We have been looking for a suitable boat for extended oshore cruising in comfort for some time” the couple wrote, going on to quote Claud Worth’s chapter on Tern III, from his book Yacht Cruising: “Some years ago I began trying to plan a cruising yacht which should combine all the good points of all the vessels I knew and should be equally suited for home cruising or for an ocean voyage – have an easy motion, able to lie to safely in bad weather, she must be weatherly and able to carry her way in the short steps sea, she must have good accommodation. She must be a good-looking vessel for as an Irish yachtsman once remarked, ‘An ugly yacht is no more attractive than a ugly woman however fast she may be!’”
“Peregrine fulfils all the above criteria exactly,” continue Martyn and Bryony. “This is what we wanted; the quality of her construction, built at the Fairlie yard by William Fife & Sons, and the perfect size. capable of being handled by a crew of two – and a good oshore cruiser. The tragedy is that she is in an incredibly run-down state, having swung around on her mooring abandoned for some years. She was about to fall o the cli and needed to be saved…
The couple were previously behind the 15-year restoration of Nightfall, the 31ft (9.4m) shoal-draught ga cutter designed by Harold Lidstone, built in 1910 by F Miller and Co, and owned for some years by Maurice Gri£ths, and aboard which he wrote his seminal Magic of the Swatchways.