And then there was…….none.

From three boat Steve to no boat Steve…..actually there is still one but it’s not here.

As my John Welsford Pathfinder followed a different car out of our driveway this afternoon I thought I would do a post as a whistle-stop tour of WABI’s two, three a and four. For those readers wondering about the first WABI, that was a James Wharram catamaran (Tiki 26) and a long time before I bought a digital camera)

WABI “(Two) my Frances 26.

The Frances 26 was my one attempt at owning and refitting a full on offshore and potentially ocean going cruising yacht and heavily based on the books written by Lyn and Larry Pardey. In size it’s midway between their own two boats which they cruised thousands of miles all without engine : I never made the jump to not having an engine although I tried to sail without mine for one season.

It was a superbly capable and comfortable little boat although small by modern thinking about cruising boats. My longest trip with the Frances was only as far as western and southern Brittany – returning across the English channel in fresh conditions which she managed with ease : while not a ‘fast’ boat by modern standards she seemed to just eat up the miles in any conditions.

One of the most deeply satisfying moments came with this boat the evening that I realized that all of the crucial jobs were done, the sails were aboard and I had enough food water for several days : I put out into Plymouth sound under sail and dialled in the Windpilot self steering – the Frances dug her shoulder in and started tramping towards the horizon and ultimately France with no input from me and nothing much to do except make myself a coffee and keep watch from the companionway.

WABI ”’ (three) My Hunter Liberty and perhaps my favorite boat of all.

When I sold the Frances I thought that was the end of my sailing because we (Jackie and I) bought a former miners cottage between us and I spent the best part of two years working on it. What rekindled my interest in sailing was watching the video series filmed by Dylan Winter who at that time was sailing a Hunter Minstrel (same hull, different rig) along the east coat in his long trip around the UK visiting every port and river that he could.

The Liberty was a truly great boat for my home river (the Tamar) which is essentially shallow and muddy – the Liberty being an easy boat to settle and dry out on the mud as well as being able to keep going when there was barely enough water to wade in.

I thought of the little Liberty as my breakthrough boat because it didn’t seem to rely on anything that i’d taken for granted in the past – for instance it had low sail area and low stability and was only rated as an inshore and sheltered waters craft. With that in mind I almost immediately sailed it across to Brittany after sorting out some of it’s problems. In 2019 it was the boat that I chose to take to France again although this time for my 110 day retirement cruise : had it not been for the fact that we had friends flying in from New Zealand I might have just kept cruising and had a working plan of motoring down through the French canal system over the autumn and winter that year.

Not a WABI….The Deben 4 ton ‘Inanda’

If the Frances 26 was my Pardey inspired boat then Inanda was heavily influenced by my reading of the late Maurice Griffiths, his boats and his adventures around the creeks and rivers of the Thames estuary area of the UK. When I first saw Inanda she was at least 80 years old and I like to think that Griffiths may have once known her as she was kept in the same area as where Griffiths had his own mooring.

While capable in the east coast rivers such as the actual Deben and when I crossed the Thames with her she was far less capable when it came to the open water and larger waves of the beat up the English channel – i’m glad I at least tried that because it showed up how limited a sailing boat she was. Had I kept her she would have needed a total rebuild including the replacement of most of her frames which were nearly all broken or broken and sistered.

I didn’t enjoy Inanda very much because she wasn’t a good sailing boat and she leaked like a sieve in the rain. The best times I had with her was when we were beating up the Black deep in the Thames with the tiller pegged, the other time was when I was at anchor in the Walton backwaters where Griffiths kept at least one of his boats on a mooring and commuted to work from there. The photograph of that last morning at anchor in the Walton channel is the title photograph for this post.

WABI 1V my ‘bookend’ boat

The event that really killed my sailing career wasn’t my strokes in 2024 (possibly earlier) but the Covid lockdown years when my little Liberty was already on the yard trolley and only a day or so from launching. I still don’t see any reason why the river was then ‘closed’ by the QHM except perhaps to emphasize that it was more about social control than actual pandemic management – all told, being alone in the great outdoors was a far better and ‘safer’ place to be !

I started the build of my John Welsford designed Pathfinder at home mainly because nobody had the authority not to. My plan was to build at home, keep the finished boat on a trailer at home and then go out on sail/oar expeditions from there. She was, in a way, also my book-end boat as the first boat I ever got to sail in was a 17′ dayboat in the Menai straits and I figured that it would have been kinda neat to have a similar sized boat as my last one.

Alas it never happened, I got her as far as sailing trials twice, did a lot of sorting and fettling in between those times and had, as a final trip, a night out in my favorite place in English waters – Ruan creek otherwise known as the actual Fal river. As I write she’s now gone and all that remains here in terms of boats is my modified CLC Skerry which will also probably get sold in the autumn.

Best wishes Y’awl