Tag: traditional boats

Photos from a harbour stroll: Southwold and Walberswick

Southwold Harbour on the River Blythe and, on the opposite bank, Walberswick is a great place for a stroll, and it’s a delight to see so many well maintained traditional craft still in use, often for fishing.

Among other things, the photos in this gallery include:

  • Southwold Harbour itself and some of the local boats
  • the rowed ferry (the tide’s pretty fierce here, so the ferryman or woman has to pull well up-stream or up-tide to make it across)
  • the ferry operator’s shed
  • the village of Walberswick with its fishermen’s cottages and, right in the centre, its non-conformist chapel, which looks very much as if it was built in the 19th century way from standard parts ordered from a catalogue
  • in the Walberswick pub The Bell, a photo of local fisherman, singer of old fashioned and traditional song, and well remembered all-round character Dinks Cooper (see this earlier post)

Francis B Cooke’s writing republished in blockbuster manual of traditional yachting

Cruising Hints FB Cooke 450 pixels

Francis B Cooke was one of the great yachting writers of the 20th century and more – a long-lived man, he was first published in 1883 and was still writing in the early 1970s, by which time he was in his early 100s .

He has been one of my favourite authors for many years, and so I’m delighted that Lodestar Books led by Dick Wynne have brought out a compendium of his writing.

I think it’s high time Cooke was rediscovered – a very popular sailing author for many decades, his books are full of practical information and advice peppered with beautifully told stories about his experiences and descriptions of the East Coast areas of Essex, Kent and Suffolk. However they are now rare in the second-hand bookshops.

Cruising Hints: The Traditional Yachtsman’s Compendium is a big book of 686 pages including the index priced at £30 from the Lodestar website – or something around 5p/page. I will make a great Christmas present for many Intheboatshed.net readers. (That’s a hint, but the way!)

What you get is a very complete manual of old-fashioned small boat cruising, that’s still relevant for traditional boat owners and enthusiasts today, intermingled with pieces of writing that demonstrate a deep and abiding enthusiasm. For example, the section ‘The boat’ includes chapters with titles such as ‘Yachting with economy’, ‘Selecting a yacht’ and ‘Size for the single-hander’, but it also includes a chapter headed ‘A perfect love of a boat’ that turns out to have been drawn by Harrison Butler.

This quotation from ‘A perfect love of a boat’ encapsulates several of Cooke’s regular themes of economy and practicality, enthusiasm, adventurous single-handed sailing (in contrast to many of his 19th and early 20th century cruising contemporaries, who required the help of a hired man) and of course his beloved East Coast:

‘She is a perfect love of a boat, and when my ship comes home, I shall be tempted to have her built. That is of course if I still remain in the same frame of mind… The design I am in love with for the moment comes from the board of that enthusiastic yachtsman Dr T Harrison Butler, and was published in the Yachting Monthly of November 1915… an exceedingly pretty and comfortable little cruiser. The boat has a very nice sheer and a bow that reminds me of the excellent small cruisers designed by Mr J Pain Clark. The underwater lines suggest weatherliness, and with a good length of keel she should be very steady on her helm… Length over all, 18 feet 6 inches… Of course, the boat is very small but it is astonishing what a lot of fun one can have even in a ‘tabloid’ cruiser. She strikes me as being just the thing for knocking about on the estuaries and creeks of the East Coast at weekends, whilst a trip up to Lowestoft would be quite within her capabilities in any ordinary summer weather.’

The phrase ‘when my ship comes in’ is mildly amusing – Cooke was a successful merchant banker, so I’d be surprise if he was short of a bob or two.

The new book Cruising Hints includes chapters and sections describing the classic East Coast sailing area, a substantial collection of Cooke’s design commentaries often describing craft that are now considered classics, and an extraordinary number of beautiful lines and layout drawings – it’s a real feast of the draftsman’s art.

There are also sections on sailing cruiser equipment, the ‘Domestic economy’, ‘Maintenance’ and ‘Seamanship’, and ‘Desirable East Coast anchorages’ – just the stuff to read while waiting for the tide, or in peaceful moments at home, if there ever are any…

Have I persuaded you it’s a good buy yet? I hope so! If not, there’s more information at the Lodestar Books website including this pdf including samples from the book.

PS – I’m reminded that the wonderful compendium of George Holmes’ writing and drawing that Lodestar published in 2009 been reprinted. See a review here.

Big crowds and strong winds at the Boat Building Academy’s summer student launch


Boat Building Academy launch crowds summer 2011 photos by Tracy Marler

Boat Building Academy launch crowds summer 2011 photos by Tracy Marler Boat Building Academy launch crowds summer 2011 photos by Tracy Marler

Photos by Tracy Marler

For years Boat Building Academy students at Lyme have been amazingly lucky with the weather on their big launch day – but not this time. These shots were taken at the summer launch day on the 7th June. The weather was mean and moody, and although the rain kept off for most of the day, Academy principal Yvonne Green reports that the big issue was wind.

‘Two of the boats couldn’t go in: the harbourmaster saw the Yachting World Dayboat zip through the harbour and decided the Haven 12 1/2 and the Half Rater were staying on the shore,’ she says, ‘but the other ten were launched to the cheers of a crowd of between three and four hundred people.’

It’s a shame about the weather, but what a great turn out!

I gather Yvonne is gathering together photos of the original boats for us. To read about the twelve boats the students build over the winter, click here.