Category: Small boats

John Macauley-built lugger Freyja needs a good new home in Scotland

Freyja John Macauley 16ft lugger

Freyja John Macauley 16ft lugger

My friend Ian Duffill is looking for a new home in Scotland for Freyja, the John Macaulay-built 16ft clinker dinghy seen at the Beale Park Thames Boat Show.

Here’s the story of Freyja, as Ian tells it:

‘In 2000 iconic traditional boatbuilder John MacAulay, who has his workshop at Flodabay on Harris was asked to build a boat suitable to sail across the Minch to the Shiant Islands.

‘The owner of the Shiants is Adam Nicolson, author and television presenter, grandson of Vita Sackville West and Harold Nicolson of Sissinghurst Castle in Kent.

‘After one epic voyage to the Shiants, described in Adam’s book Sea Room (see below), the boat Freyja was stored and not used again. She is an open16ft transom dinghy, clinker built in larch on oak with sea-kindly and dramatically tight turns to the bilge to make a good deep keel. With a single dipping lug she travels swiftly from A to B.

‘Through sheer serendipity, Adam came to give Freyja to me. We both hoped I would be able to get her sailing again and use her in her element – the sea. Although I cleaned her up and got her in the water, matters conspired so I never managed to sail her on the sea.

‘Now we have moved to North Norfolk, where I find that short tacking into Blakeney Harbour’s narrow, shallow channel with many sandbanks is asking too much of her. She now sits forlornly in a cavernous barn on a nearby farm and needs a new home where the local sailing conditions are more suitable for her.

‘I have spoken with Adam and we have agreed that a return to Scottish waters would be ideal. Most of all she wants an owner who can give her the chance to roam in open water. If she could be made available for youngsters to experience handling this traditional style of boat, so much the better. A youth organisation, club or private individual – it doesn’t matter. She just needs a chance to come alive again.

‘She was given to me and neither Adam nor I expect any payment – just to see her in action once more.

‘She comes complete – mast, oars, rudder, tiller, sail, floorboards and custom built road trailer but has been out of the water for too long and needs to be immersed for some time to take up again. I might be able to deliver – we can talk about it.’

Sea Room is published by Harper Collins, London and is available from Amazon.

For more on Freyja at intheboatshed.net, see our earlier post.

If you’re interested in Freyja, email me at gmatkin@gmail.com and I’ll pass your message on to Ian.

PS – Freyja’s future has been decided she is to return to Harris where she will be sailed by local groups. She will also be under the care of her original builder, John Macauley.

Victorian solo cruiser and writer Robert C Leslie now in audiobook

Sidmouth Beach photographed by Touriste, image from the Wikimedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:SidmouthBeach.JPG

Sidmouth is pleasantly peaceful today – but it seems to have been an even quieter place when Leslie visited in the 1850s. Photo by Touriste and taken from the Wikimedia

‘When I first began boating in the early forties, what is now called single-handed cruising was almost unknown among amateurs… people had a vague dread of it. Much of this has passed away, and hundreds of amateur boatmen, and even ladies, are now as much at home and really safer in a sailing-boat than they would be on the back of a hunter or bicycle.’

This is a quotation from Robert C Leslie’s book A waterbiography. Leslie, an artist and writer who lived from 1826 to 1901, was one of the 19th century pioneers of Corinthian solo cruising in small boats but now seems to have been largely forgotten.

Certainly I didn’t know about him until one of his relatives, Tom Bliss, got in touch to let me know that Leslie’s book is available as an audiobook from Books Should Be Free.

(I should explain that Tom’s a friend from the musical world. Like his relative, he a chap with multiple talents: he’s a gifted songwriter and performer, and is also a film-maker who happens to be an environmental campaigner.)

The coast of Devon was one of Leslie’s favourite cruising grounds, and he describes the little fishing village of  Sidmouth.

Still the home of a few fishing boats, Sidmouth is now more likely to be recognised as a rather old fashioned small seaside resort and as the home of the annual Sidmouth Folk Week. However, back in the 1850s, Leslie describes it like this:

‘No railway in my time came within fifteen miles of Sidmouth, and the few enterprising visitors who reached there by coach from Exeter called it dull. It was certainly not a gay place, but most of those who resided there in that happy valley did so rather with a view to quiet, and among them it was rare to find any one disposed to tamper with the grave routine of country life there.’

Please sign the petition in support of Standard Quay’s boatbuilding future

Standard Quay

Standard Quay, winter 2010/11

 

Please sign this e-petition – it offers an opportunity to register public support for the aim of saving Faversham’s Standard Quay from a development that many fear could curtail or end the traditional boat building and repairing.

It’s a cause that deserves the support of anyone who cares about the future of traditional boat building, and about the future of the priceless Thames sailing barge fleet.

(If on signing you don’t immediately receive a confirmation email you haven’t signed, so please dig it out and click on the confirmation link. It’ll most likely be in your spam or trash folders.)

If you’re new to this issue, read more about the danger to Standard Quay at the Faversham Creek website and from this national newspaper article, and from the campaign press release, which I’ve posted in the comments below. (It’s not my press release, but I felt people should be able to access it.)

Also, do please take a moment to read the latest news and watch a short movie about Faversham Creek and Standard Quay put together by local film maker Simon Clay and journalist Richard Fleury. In relation to that site, I’d be curious to know which of the facts included in Simon Henley’s article are held to be incorrect by councillors. The news section of Simon and Richard’s site will explain what I mean.

I should report that I wrote to many of the local councillors just before an important meeting held in November and did not receive a single reply – not even an acknowledgement. (I have now had a reply from Mike Cosgrove.)

Finally, if you can, please pass this message to friends interested in this issue. The easiest way may be to select, copy and paste this web address into an email: http://intheboatshed.net/?p=12714

PS – The weblogs are taking up this story:

http://thetroublewitholdboats.blogspot.com/2011/02/save-standard-quay.html