Table of contents for September 2025 in Classic Boat

The term 'champagne sailing' may be a cliché, but few who took part in July’s British Classic YC regatta at Cowes would disagree with it on this occasion. All five races – run by the Royal Yacht Squadron – took part in glorious conditions, albeit after smart postponements by race officer Peter Saxton on three of the days. Forty-seven boats raced in five classes, including a clockwise race around the Isle of Wight for Classes 1, 2 and 3, and a Female and Under 25 Youth Helm pursuit race for all classes. In Class 1, two Spirit 52s – David Grylls’ Flight of Durgan and Christian Oldendorff’s Happy Forever – were tied on points overall, with overall victory going to the latter after winning the final race. Nic Roach’s 1969…

ELDRED’S, USA Cutty Sark’s US rival The American clipper Flying Cloud never crossed wakes with the Cutty Sark, but had they done so it could have sparked a rivalry every bit as fabled as The America’s Cup. Both were ‘extreme clippers,’ built to prioritise speed over cargo capacity, with remarkably similar dimensions and sail plan, but designed for very different purposes. Launched in 1851 for the 16,000-mile gold-rush dash from New York to San Francisco round Cape Horn, the slim-hipped Flying Cloud, measuring 221ft (67.4 m) on deck with a beam of just 40ft (12.2m), smashed records straight off the blocks, slashing the time for a passage that typically took 200 days, to just 89. No sailing vessel bettered that for 138 years, until a radical racing yacht clipped the…

Century Boats was founded in 1926 with its first workshops at 333 Becher Street in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Nearly all the major American motorboat builders were based in the industrial midwest of the USA, not far from the centres of the mechanical and automotive industries, particularly around Detroit. In 1928, Century’s workshops moved to Manistee, Michigan, where they stayed more than 60 years. When Century began production in 1926, Chris-Craft had already been on the market for three years. This initial delay was never made up in terms of fame, even though the two companies had several things in common, including their long stay in Michigan before moving to Florida, not to mention their exceptional longevity in the world of power boating. Indeed, both brands still exist today, even though their…

Few of the world’s great yacht clubs have played as pivotal a role in the development and growth of offshore sailing as Britain’s Royal Ocean Racing Club, 100 years old this year. The RORC did not invent the sport, but it was founded to establish the concept of international as well as national ocean racing and has come to dominate the international offshore racing scene since the earliest days. With the return of the Admiral’s Cup this summer and the off-the-scale popularity of the Rolex Fastnet Race, which shares the centenary, the RORC is as influential as it has ever been. It runs the world’s largest offshore racing series which this year features the RORC Transatlantic and the Caribbean 600, as well as the Fastnet, and includes the Royal Malta…

Chapman’s Pool Tucked in on the western side of St Alban’s Head, this is a beautiful cove surrounded by dramatic cliffs and verdant downland. The holding can be excellent or awful and the bay is open to the southwest, so avoid in the prevailing conditions. Aside from that, the rewards are great. You can walk to the lovely village of Worth Matravers where the jewel in the crown is the aforementioned Square and Compass. Walk in the other direction towards the tip of the headland and you get to St Aldhelm’s Chapel, a lovely little Norman chapel that offers a moment of peace and reflection in this beautiful spot. Studland Bay A predictable choice but it became my go-to anchorage because the holding was good and it was beautiful. There…

BOJAR This 1937, 52ft Johan Anker flush-decked cutter recently raced in Cowes, and reflects the designer’s quest for beauty and superb sailing. A rare original classic that we cannot wait to feature. PUIG VELA Cool competitive sailing with a smile: classics from across the world descended on Barcelona for three days of highly social racing. BLUE MERMAID The Sea Change Sailing Trust welcomes us aboard its Thames sailing barge, used to introduce people to sailing and the onboard life OCTOBER 2025 ISSUE ON SALE 12 September 2025 Or why not subscribe? 30 YEARS AGO SEPTEMBER 1995, CB87 Thirty years ago, Sir Francis Chichester’s Gipsy Moth IV, the one he did the one-stop, round-the-world voyage in from 1966-7, was being lifted from her tomb next to Cutty Sark in London’s Greenwich,…

In the early part of 1957, it was reported in the yachting press that no fewer than 14 of Fred Parker’s designs were under construction at different boatyards, three of them at AH Moody & Son at Swanwick on the Hamble River in Hampshire. One of these would be christened Sardonyx, and would be the second of four boats of the same name built for Harold F Edwards. After almost qualifying as a chartered accountant, Harold had spent World War One as a motorcycle despatch rider on the front line. “He was extremely good at it and was the luckiest man,” his grandson William Edwards told me. “Over 100 motorcycles blew up under him and the only injury he ever got was a bit of shrapnel in the arse!” This…

Boat Building Academy Launch Day June 2025 “Today we are going to launch four boats and we are here to celebrate that, but more importantly we are here to celebrate launching 15 new boatbuilders into the world.” So said Will Reed, director of the Boat Building Academy to the large crowd that had gathered on the slipway at Dorset’s Lyme Regis Harbour to witness and enjoy the Launch Day for the latest graduates of the 40-week boatbuilding course. Perhaps the most notable thing about this batch of students was the number of females, equalling the numbered of males and continuing the story of equality and youth we are seeing in conservation and boatbuilding. The first boat to be launched was Jolly Winds, a 12ft (3.6m) traditional clinker lug-rigged sailing boat…

The smaller the boat the greater the enjoyment: LOA versus FOA, or Fun Over All. Dinghy Cruising Association members are the best qualified advocates for the old aphorism. Snug under a canvas boom tent, tucked into a reedy bank up an Essex backwater, safe from the gale sweeping the estuary, sheltered by a stand of trees, Primus hissing – or more likely a portable gas stove – the dinghy cruiser is as self sufficient and happy as a sandpiper. What need of a marina berth or showers. We first took Sally across to Brittany in the 1990s and I can’t recall setting foot on a marina pontoon from Aber Wrac’h to Douarnenez. Cruising down the Abers, Ildut, Benoit et al, it was anchoring or visitors’ moorings. We were small and…

Way back in the 1970s I was sailing into the Medina River past Cowes when I saw a big grey ketch drying out on the grid. From the decks of my 13-tonne cutter she looked enormous, and the lone figure by the mainmast raised his cap as we swept by, dropping our topsail as we went. In the snug bar of the Folly Inn that evening I asked the assembled what she might be. “That’s Vigilance,” came the swift response. “Ken Harris. He’ll be doing some massive job singlehanded. There’s nobody like him.” In those days it was only four decades since Vigilance and her engineless sisters hauled up profitable catches in the English Channel. The late Mike Richardson, founder of the Hamble River’s Elephant Boatyard, had served on the…

Heffalump slipped out of her anchorage at Shipstal Point as the sun set and the shadows lengthened. I had been waiting on the tide for several hours and was impatient to get to my next destination of Studland Bay, not more than 5 miles away. The air was stuffy and still and before us the lights of Poole Harbour were already winking at me in the gloaming. The water was like glass and we puttered into the darkness with the outboard running, sails hanging limp. My crew and I were eager to reach our destination. Shipstal Point had been magical; a beautiful, isolated anchorage backing onto Arne Nature Reserve with a feel of true wilderness – only the lights of Poole betrayed the city just a few miles away. Yet…

WESTONS POINT 27 Poole, Dorset in the south west of England, is a nice place to visit, particularly in summer, and particularly to get a first glimpse in the flesh of the new Westons Point 27, the first of her kind from the long-standing Traditional Shipwright Services yard. Paul Kendall and Tim Frearson, like many other traditional yards of late, have taken the plunge into the world of new spirit-of-tradition motorboats and the sun is glinting off the stainless steel badge on her flank as we approach her mooring at the marina just by the yard. It’s always interesting to see what influences builders choose when coming up with a thing like this and this one, designed by Jack Gifford, is a very smart, very loose take on a Downeast…

Notching and workflow Machinery doesn’t necessarily speed the work if time spent in setting up and ‘suiting up’ to meet health-and-safety requirements is included. This is especially true for small-scale jobs where basic hand tools and efficient workflow may prove both more efficient and satisfying. Here, for example, identical notches were required in two components. Having firmly clamped the two parts side by side, marking up and ‘gangsawing’ were carried out for both simultaneously. A series of equally-spaced cross cuts or ‘stop cuts’ was made, dividing up the waste (1) so as to reduce the risk of cutting too far or initiating a split when removing waste with a broad chisel and mallet (2). Next, the chisel used flat for paring the notch floors smooth benefited from the greater reference…

First held in 2002, the Suffolk Yacht Harbour Classic Regatta – sponsored by Classic Marine and the Yacht Harbour, and organised by Haven Ports YC – is now firmly established in the east coast calendar. This year’s event coincided with June’s mini heatwave, bringing glorious sunshine with light winds on the Saturday and fresher breezes on the Sunday. The two Saturday races started off Harwich’s Dovercourt breakwater with the courses going out to sea, although the second race had to be abandoned when the strong flood tide got the better of the dying breeze; and Sunday’s race was held in the sheltered waters of the Rivers Orwell and Stour. Thirty-three boats, split into five classes, took part in the races. Just two points separated the top three boats in the…

The most sensational and controversial yacht ever to race on Port Phillip.” A bold statement from Bert Ferris, the late archivist of the Royal Melbourne Yacht Squadron, but few who know the story of the yacht Thera – particularly her first couple of decades – would disagree with it. Thera was designed by the self-taught Charlie Peel and built by him and his brother on the Railway Coal Canal in Melbourne in 1911. Although he would later design the 50ft-plus (15m+) Acrospire III and Acrospire IV (1923 and 1929 respectively and both still sailing today), Charlie was best known for his smaller, beamy, lightweight centreboarders, probably influenced from his time working in New York shipyards in the early 1900s when such boats were built to the designs of Nat Herreshoff…

“I want the little ships to be making the Return in another 100 years, because these boats can do it!”. Kevin’s energy and passion are immediately obvious on meeting him, as is an open, friendly demeanour. He takes no credit for the Return’s operation and success. Instead, our conversation is dotted with the names of others, the need for a team, not to mention two entire towns, to make an event the size and complexity of the Dunkirk Return happen. The logistics are immense. This year included military parades, a new monument, school programmes, fly-pasts, blessings, film projections, multiple ceremonies and the turn-out of thousands of people. And that’s before we get to the small matter of leading 60 or so century-old boats across the Strait of Dover. So the…

It was high noon in the pretty town of Dartmouth on Devon’s south coast. The sun was at its zenith and the pasties were fresh out of the ovens. Out on the estuary, two skippers were preparing for a showdown. From the east came Big Peter with his 1939 sloop Caupona, one of the legendary Gang of Ten original Vertues. From the west came Little Richard with his 1954 sloop Wilma, a famous Scandinavian fast-shooter that out-sailed every other wooden Folkboat back in 2018. The mood was tense as the skippers hoisted their sails and adjusted their rigs to get the most out of their steeds. Big Peter adjusted his cap and gave his rival a sidelong look, while Little Richard pulled at his beard nervously. There was everything to…

The last person I expected to see when my pilot cutter rounded up to anchor in Saint Martin in the mid-1980s was my old friend Nick Skeates. We’d been pals on the Hamble River before any of us went deep sea and it had been ten years since our previous raft-up in Tenerife with a different pair of boats. Back then, Roz and I had been sailing our 1903 Colin Archer cutter. Nick was single-handed with the original Wylo, a pre-war wooden yacht with an early bermudan rig. Together with two intrepid New Zealand circumnavigators, we climbed all 13,000 feet of Mount Teide. This effort took us two days and we spent the night of the ascent in a ‘refugio’ at around 10,000 feet. Inside the rough bunkhouse was a…

Email steffan@classicboat.co.uk REEDHAM, NORFOLK Wooden boatbuilders unite A gathering of 60 boatbuilders, engineers and more met at Abbey Boat Builder, the new boatyard of Abbey Molyneux, to discuss the future of traditional boatbuilding. Abbey’s great success as a boatbuilder, first at Dennetts on the upper Thames, then as a yard owner in her own right, is just the sort of story the industry needs more of, coming as it does amid a clutch of recent bad-news stories of yard closures in the local press, doom-laden announcements from the British Government and other bodies, and the general sense that the skill and the will are dying out. “National bodies responsible for leisure boatbuilding are prioritising the export market for GRP builds on the south coast, naval vessels and saving commercial shipyards”…

PLETTENBERG PLOUGH PLANE While British shipwrights of the 1900s worked with plough planes of quarter-sawn beech, their German counterparts ploughed their own furrow using cast-iron planes as substantial as dreadnought battleships. This example by Friedrich Plettenberg of Iserlojn dates from about 1905. The difference in material is felt immediately on grasping the Plettenberg plough in that it’s a good 30 per cent heavier than its all-wood British equivalent, a difference which translates into useful momentum as it steams through the cut taking contrary grain in its stride. The cutting irons for British and German ploughs are similar, being grooved on the back to locate on the knife edge of the skate, but they are secured in very different ways. In the Plettenberg the iron is pulled back and held by…