Coral of Cowes

Memories flooded back when CB reported that Coral of Cowes still languished on the Souda Bay seafloor. I helped Captain Hugh Roberts get the old girl around the track at the 2017 Spetses Classic Yacht Regatta. With racing ended, we sailed home to Souda Bay, where I spent a couple of weeks onboard, shooting the breeze and re-stowing some heavy kit. The press, speculating about his mysterious death, described the captain as an eccentric aristocrat. The howling dog clinging to the crosstrees bewailing his master’s fate added colour to the story. He certainly came from a privileged background. Fine-tuning the family’s E-types before his teens led to racing at Goodwood. Landing his Tiger Moth on the house lawns as a 13-year-old caused trouble with the estate gardener. After training with the Royal Navy, he gained his Master’s Ticket with the P&O Line. Needing ready money, he bought single-engine planes in America then flew them solo across the Atlantic, landing on fumes in Europe. Handsome profits were invested in buying an old DC3 and running a cargo operation in the Amazon Basin. At one point he and a group of pals sailed an ancient ga‘-rigged yawl down to the South Georgias for a lark to see if money could be made from salvaging iron shipwrecks. After auctioning his English percussion revolver collection at Christie’s, he bought Coral with an eye to the Grand Pacific Adventure. It was not to be! Now they lie in their respective graves, Coral and her captain, both scuppered by fate. One has gone the way of all flesh, RIP. The other, made from finest Burmese teak, awaits a miracle.

Martin van der Wal