Hard life

There has to be a Metre yacht, right? And it has to be Princess Svanevit - right?

It's been a busy time, completing my editing job on the new Adlard Coles title on the care and maintenance of wooden boats (more on this later), helping with the 20-year anniversary issue of the Journal of the Association of Yachting Historians, and keeping up with the good ship Classic Boat, where I'm still working about two days a week. There was time, however, to squeeze in a pre-purcahse survey of a nice, 1980-built Twister 28, which for those who don't know it, is the gl

My last choice, the Rustler 33, was controversial, as I knew it would be. I’m equally certain that this one won’t be. The 24ft (7.4m) LOD sliding gunter yacht UandI  was designed by William Fife III in and built by Hutchisons of Carrickfergus in 1897, to race on Belfast Lough. She was first found by Alastair Garland in 1995, but it wasn’t until 2011 that he decided enough was enough, and took on a rescue, with wife Mary and naval architect Paul Spooner. By that point she had

Your humble correspondent and (at the tiller), Adrian Jones of Rustler Yachts (no relation to Stephen Jones, the boat's designer). Off...

A marvel of 20th-century engineering? Or an oily horror lurking below the companionway steps? I spoke to two men with more than 120 years...

Nordic Folkboat Lorema at Antigua Classic in 2015: Leo Goolden, now better known for his restoration of Tally Ho , found Lorema in a...

Dorade , photo captured by James Robinson Taylor in 2001. The sharp-eyed may note the neat, triangular bumpking that gives lie to the...

Amid the excitement of buying or selling a boat, the survey might just seem like a dull, necessary overture to the big day… but it’s...

The Parkstone Bay 21 I surveyed recently, and the new Westons Point 27 built nearby at Traditional Shipwright Servies in Poole are two...

Pecheur, a wooden Parkstone Bay 21, in need of love... and for sale. Survey coming soon My latest survey is on Pecheur , a Parkstone Bay...

Usually, my work at Dennetts, if I'm not surveying boats that have just arrived for restoration, is of the 'lowest of the low' sort:...

I was lucky enough to spend a few hours learning from the wisdom of two men who, between them, have well over 120 years of experience in...

April was a busy month, with more surveyor training, under the brilliant leadership of Aidan Tuckett and Martin Evans, and no fewer than...

Twenty years ago, the idea of taking 'glassics' seriously just didn't exist. The classic yacht scene was indelibly linked to the big...

I'm currently writing an article on the classic steel motor sailer Atlantide , for the July issue of Classic Boat magazine. She's over...