Traditional oyster punt
Journalist Andrew English recounts his life afloat and how time and tide has influenced his latest vessel, the Cornish Cove
“Be careful how much you spend on your boat,” advised my late father, “or the guilt will get to you.”
Wise words indeed, though not ones that he heeded much, with his one-off day boat, Dawn, often proving more trouble than she ever returned in idyllic sailing days.
What I remember most is long winter afternoons, white-fingered from the orbital sander on the pine hull, and afternoons at Bill Smith’s yard in Lymington cursing the Stuart Turner 2-stoke engine and it’s diva-like magneto.
“What’s for supper?” called Dad coming into the house.
“Magneto,” replied Mum, surveying the oily rag-wrapped spark generator stinking up her range’s plate warming oven.
But then, being born on the Isle of Wight, sailing was always going to play a big part in my childhood. My grandfather lived in Bembridge, my great grandparents in Seaview. I was allowed to tow my model yacht off the back of the ferry betwixt the two, though it once escaped and when the kindly ferry man detoured with his complement of thirsty, pub-bound passengers to collect it, he ran aground, which didn’t make me particularly popular.
At first I sat quietly in various wooden
clinker dayboats, out of the way and dwarfed by a yellow oilskin kapok-filled lifejacket. I was mystified by how the juxstaposition of ropes and canvas could drive us at such speed without a motor, and about sailing’s seemingly inexorable relationship with beer.
Gradually the lessons took hold, although it was on the remnants of Lymington’s salt industry abandoned in the mid 19th century, that I learned to sail proper. Thanks to the far-sighted generosity of ex para, Major Tony Hibbert, the old salt pan at the end of Maiden Lane became known as The Salterns, a sailing club run by and for children.
Opened in 1960, The Salterns must have been responsible for introducing thousands of children to the peculiar joys of dinghy sailing in sturdy British Moths.
Inevitably the actual sea beckoned, or at least the Solent, and my brother and I roared our way through a series of cheap, nail-sick dinghies in race series run out of the Lymington Town yacht club – Dad remained a member of the Royal Lymington presumably so we wouldn’t embarrass him while indulging in youthful pursuits. Various Fireballs, a staggeringly quick 505, Dad’s Lymington scow and borrowed stuff, would crowd out our weekends with occasional crewing on big boats in the Half-Ton Cup.
But too many weekend Captain Blighs screaming blue murder after freezing, wind-free weekends put paid to my enthusiasm. I’m profoundly dubious of modern ‘performance’ sailing kit, worn by shouty people with big watches, but I also come from an era when standard sailing kit consisted of canvas trousers, itchy jumpers, oilskins and blue sailing shoes with white rubber sides; you spent a lot of time cold and wet.
So I gave up sailing and got on with the rest of my life...
Time to get back afloat
Coming back after almost a quarter of century wasn’t the easiest thing. The boats had got faster and the kit is better (though still as dubious), but knees, joints and sheer strength aren’t in quite such abundance. My son and I had a two-year dalliance with a composite Fireball and then I settled with a Solo, a Jack Holt design with a single, fully battened main; fast, but about right for an old fellah.
Except for some of us, getting old means working harder than we’ve ever done, with little time to mess around in boats. The Solo was getting old and uncompetitive; a bit like its owner. And then there’s the move to Wadebridge...
Being at the end of the navigable part of the Camel estuary brings its own set of challenges. Highly tidal, the water all but disappears a couple of hours after high water. Lose the wind, or the water and you’ll not be getting back to port before closing time. Oars are advisable, an engine even better. The Solo went down the road and small ads were perused.
My brother saw the Cornish Cove boat
in Teignmouth on Gumtree. It looked perfect, 13ft, narrow beamed at 4ft 8in, with lots of safety buoyancy, carrying a 75sq ft balanced lug rig similar to Dad’s scow, with a small bowsprit and a 20sq ft jib. Oars, rowlocks and a 3.3hp Mercury outboard were thrown in.
Paul Webster, proprietor of Trecarne boats, built her and I’m not sure she’s seen many nautical miles in her life. Simple square-section spars had fresh varnish, the outboard had zero miles and the main and jib looked fresh out of the sail loft. We negotiated on price and Whitehaven was mine.
Direct from the source
I contacted Paul and drove down to see him. Gruff and taciturn, he’s not one to suffer fools gladly.
“You’re not a local,” he said, “an emmet, then, s'pose you’d better come down...”
But he warmed as soon as I got there. You just need to listen carefully and ask the right questions.
Turns out this former marine engineer had come ‘ashore’ to run the engine lab at the Cornwall Technical College. He founded Trecarne Boats in 1989 producing a 24ft Falmouth Gypsy motor sailer and then the 10ft Cornish cove boat based on a Fal beach boat, which had great success as a tender and a sailtraining dinghy.
Then he’d managed to take a mould off a 70-year-old oyster boat from St Just-in-Roseland on the east side of Carrick Roads. Being so close to the oyster beds, this little craft was slightly beamier and more stable than the boats that came from farther away and had to be shaped so they could be easily rowed in each day from narrow tributaries. It seemed an ideal base for a bigger sister to the cove boat for his firm to build.
“It wasn’t in good condition,” he says.
“The Solo was getting old and uncompetitive; a bit like its owner”
“We put a lot of work into it, fairing it up, sorting out the twists and damage it had sustained over the years.”
He put a lot of thought into it, too, incorporating a buoyancy tank in the bows and stern with a foam filled tank in the floor so the boat will support two adults when swamped. It’s a simple boat as he showed me when we test rigged it in his drive. All this should have been second nature as my Dad’s scow had a balanced lug rig, but I’d clean forgotten how it all fits, there seems to be an awesome amount of string...
First sail
There’s an old saying that the best days you’ll ever have with a boat are the day you buy it and the day you sell it. I’m not so convinced, but there’s certainly been a few hurdles to leap since buying it.
First was joining the splendidly unpretentious Wadebridge Boat Club, on the eastern bank of the Camel with its own slipway. Then there’s trying to find a place in the yard...
Restoring an old railway house in Wadebridge, work, finding someone to make a cover for the boat (thanks Mac at Frank Rowsell), more work, renewing seals on the Mercury (thanks Nigel Chapman) and trying to remember where all the string goes, have been great excuses to do nothing.
Last year’s Round The Island as a corporate guest fuelled the spirit, though, as did my friends blowing their pension on a vintage Contessa 32.
So we finally made it out on the water one evening. There was so little wind I could have rowed faster and probably did, but the maiden voyage was terrific and has fired the bug.
Actually I’m making a list now: chandlery stuff, more string, combing my skipper’scourse literature for the chain-to-rope ratios, a new 2-stroke mixing bottle and when exactly is Falmouth Sailing Week...
And where I am I making this list? In the pub of course.
Some of my Dad’s lessons don’t need learning twice...