The designer
Nigel Irens’s lifelong fascination with efficient hull shapes originates from childhood holidays to Salcombe, when he first learned to sail. He studied Boatyard Management at Southampton College and got his first major break in 1982: designing IT82 for Tony Bullimore, which won its class in the Round Britain Race, followed by
Apricot four years later.
Around this time, he designed the 80ft catamaran Formule Tag, which set a new 24-hour record of 512 miles in 1984 with Mike Birch at the helm. Ten years later, she was stretched by 12ft, renamed ENZA New Zealand, and set a new Jules Verne Trophy record with joint skippers Peter Blake and Robin Knox-Johnston.
A string of record-breaking multihulls followed, including Fleury Michon VIII and IX and Fujicolour II. He was also active in the powerboat field, with his
iLAN Voyager setting a new roundBritain powerboat record in 1988, and
Cable & Wireless setting new roundthe-world powerboat record in 1998.
He received wider recognition in 2005 after Ellen MacArthur sailed his B&Q
Castorama to a new round-the-world single-handed record, and he was awarded Royal Designer for Industry (RDI). Alongside this mainstream success, he found time to dabble in traditional boats, designing the 29ft lugger Roxane in 1994, followed by her little sister, the 22ft Romilly, and of course the Western Skiff in 1997.
Looking back on the boat he created 22 years earlier, he says: “When Ed Burnett and I set about drawing the Western Skiff, we had the pleasure of designing something that only had to look good and row well. A boat that rows well has, almost by definition, a narrow waterline, and that means that she won’t have much in the way of righting moment.
“The simple and sane conclusion is that this shouldn’t matter because she’s so easily driven that she’ll fly along under the tiniest of rigs. In hindsight I have to say that I think the design team may have got a bit carried away with the temptation to put a ‘pretty’ rig on her. So I think messing around with different shapes and sizes of sail plans for different sized people could and should be a lot of fun.
“By chance I ran into an Austrian gent at the Düsseldorf Boat Show, who had bought a skiff kit from me back in the late 1990s. In case there was any doubt about his story, he pulled from his phone, with all the flourish of a magician, a picture of he and his skiff yachting along on an Austrian lake.
“He seems to feel that his outrageously exotic (gaff) rig is just right for the boat. I say good for him – and good for anyone else who likes to mess about with boats, in whatever way takes their fancy.
“Incidentally, Jeremy and Adrie Burnett kindly passed on to me a fine model of the skiff that Ed built to check, in his fastidious way, that the parts fitted together as intended. He’d be happy to see the revival of the skiff.”