38 CLASSIC BOAT MAY 2015T
he late astronomer Carl Sagan once said
that to make an apple pie, you fi rst have
to invent the universe. And while a
tree-to-sea boat does not quite reach
those giddy heights, leaving as it does the
tricky bits like natural selection and
photosynthesis to evolution or a higher force, it is still a
magical transformation to pull off, the sort of project
boatbuilders dream of.
So Leaf of Bristol’s story really begins the best part of
a century ago when some pine cones and acorns fell to
the ground in a forest in Shropshire. A small part of that
forest was bought a few years ago by Tim Start, Bristol
resident and a relative newcomer to sailing, after a visit
by Bristol boatbuilder Tim Loftus to approve the trees’
suitability for boatbuilding. The resulting yacht, Leaf of
Bristol, is built nearly entirely from those adult larch
trees and sessile oaks. The build project was run to the
tightest of budgets, on the basis that Tim Start would
provide the timber and full-time labour at Tim Loftus’s
Bristol yard. He would also fi t out the interior himself,
something he was fi nishing off as we visited.
The project presented a number of unusual challenges.
Firstly it was to be junk-rigged, a hefty, unstayed rig that
implies a number of structural considerations. Other
keystones were a length of 25ft (7.6m), a displacement of
fi ve tonnes, a seaworthy, mid-century form and standing
headroom. Tim Start admired the Vertue (Laurent Giles),
Nor’ Sea 27 (Lyle Hess) and the Lukes 5-tonner, but
none was quite right. The Vertue and Lukes are too
narrow in the beam, and the Nor’ Sea 27 is a double-
ender, meaning higher build cost than a plain transom
and relative lack of accommodation and buoyancy. In
the end, Tim Loftus modelled Leaf from scratch.
Balancing headroom and appearance is always a
challenge. The answer on Leaf was to give a very strong
sheer line. At the bows, this works by rising up to meet1 Moulds on the loft fl oor, where much of the design
took shape. Tim saved the half-model (left), by taking
stations with a profi le gauger (often used to shape plaster
mouldings), rather than slicing it like a loaf, the usual way.(^9) Leaf in her distinctive chloroform green paint. The
stout bronze pintles and gudgeons were made at the
nearby Bristol Foundry. “They let us watch the pour,”
said Tim. “Very frightening.” The tiller is solid oak.
(^5) The keel (2.2 tonnes of scrap lead melted in a
custom-built steel mould over a bonfi re), the keelson
(with mortices cut for the timbers), stem and the
sternpost are now in place.
Tim Loftus’s
daughter Megan
(10) holds the
half-model
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