Good, Bad Or Just Unlucky
Book Extract
Sailing craft have their own character and some just can’t stay out of trouble
Arthur White was a man who’d been involved with Thames sailing barges all his life. In 1947, he offered these words of wisdom to Nobby Clarke, an ex-RAF fighter pilot.
‘Always make enquiries about a barge’s character before you buy; it’s much more important than the price.’
A barge, you might think, has no more character than the sum of her parts. However, before you write me off as a hopeless romantic, I’d urge you to read on, because the next quote is from Conor O’Brien, a 1930s dreadnought of the Southern Ocean – as hard-bitten a son of the sea as you’d meet in a month of cold winter days. He was referring to working sailing cutters built without formal plans. They were, he said, ‘to the glory of natural man, who, living close to elemental things, develops an instinct for the earth or the sea which passes sophisticated understanding.’
So there we have it. Two sailors whose opinion only a fool would fail to respect, telling us that there’s more to a boat than meets the eye. And we know it’s true. Most of us have come across yachts that have never been anything but trouble. I remember one which a friend of mine commissioned from new. She was rammed twice on her mooring, then, one summer day, she was lying quietly at anchor when along came a large motorboat and drove straight into her cockpit. Next, she fell over when dried out alongside, and so her miseries compounded. She didn’t even attract especially nice weather. In despair, my pal sold her and took on a different craft. Lo and Behold, the sun came out and, after several years trouble-free cruising, he concluded that the problem wasn’t in him. It was his old boat that had been inherently wicked.
On the other side of the coin, I cruised a 1911 pilot cutter for 15 years that had every chance of delivering grief in sack-loads, yet she never did. She weighed in at 35 tons, measured 65 feet including her bowsprit and had a tiny engine with a spectacularly off-set propeller. Being young, I drove her around as though she was a modern fin-andspade yacht, cramming her into tiny harbours and tackling voyages that made no concessions either to her extreme age or to what I’d politely refer to as her unrestored state. Yet in all that time the only major mishap she suffered was in the United States when a huge vessel smashed into her while she was anchored. That put her out of action for months, yet somehow she contrived her lay-up so that it coincided with the hurricane season. By the time she was fit for sea in late autumn, the only way to go was south to the Caribbean and so, constrained by her persuasive hand and fuelled with funds we’d scraped up in the meantime, my family and I enjoyed the loveliest winter’s sailing we’re ever likely to have. She’d been a lucky boat ever since she put her pilot aboard a high-paying ship on her delivery run to Barry from Fowey where she was built. She never lost that personality.
It’s not all ‘good’ or ‘bad’, either. Character can be a matter of temperament. Some yachts make you feel secure and homely. Others are wet, wild and exciting. Some are inherently cheap to run. Others just can’t help themselves and cost you a fortune year after year.
It could be said that this talk of soul only makes any sense with wooden boats that grew in the forest and which have been around long enough for a procession of mariners and events to leave their stamp in the timbers. An ancient house, after all, develops a ‘feel’ that’s warm, cold, friendly, or downright spooky. What about production yachts, then? This can’t apply to them, surely. Yet it does. The potential lies in every boat, and here’s the crunch.
A boat is a lively thing which, if left alone, will drift free; she’s a wild spirit, given half a chance, and as such, individuality is never far away. To refer to any yacht as ‘it’ is tacitly to deny this, and the practice robs us of some of the delight of ownership. ‘She’, or even ‘he’, indicates an acceptance of the mystic reality.
Government bureaucrats may have decreed a few years back that all ships are to be called, ‘it’. Nelson’s men knew better. So should we.
© Not to be reproduced without written permission from Fernhurst Books Limited.
Sailing, Yachts & Yarns is written by Tom Cunliffe. Tom is Britain’s leading sailing writer. A worldwide authority on cruising instruction and an expert on traditional sailing craft, he learned his sextant skills during numerous ocean passages, many in simple boats without engines or electronics, voyaging from Brazil to Greenland and from the Caribbean to Russia. Tom’s nautical career has seen him serve as mate on a merchant ship, captain on gentleman’s yachts and skipper of racing craftTom has been a Yachtmaster Examiner since 1978. He also has monthly columns in Sailing Today, Classic Boat, Yachting World and SAIL (US) magazines. He wrote and presented the BBC TV series, ‘The Boats That Built Britain’ and the popular ‘Boatyard’ series.