90 CLASSIC BOAT SEPTEMBER 2016
ATYARD
We meet Colin Messer to
learn about rebuilds, re-skins
and the big J-Class tender
project on the slip
STORY AND PHOTOS STEFFAN MEYRIC HUGHESMESSERS
ABOUT ON
THE RIVER
C
olin Messer’s yard, on a creek of the Thames
in Windsor, is one of the river’s little secrets,
hidden by housing development and willow
trees. Colin himself, along with his team that
includes brother Stephen and partner Jane Percival, is
also something of a secret, compared to boatbuilders
with the profi le of, say, the Freebody family or Colin
Henwood, both nearby. To many of his regular clients,
however, he is the only person they will allow near their
slipper launches, motorboats, canoes, Dunkirk little ships
and every other kind of old boat nesting on the river.
You might have expected to fi nd Colin frantically
busy, what with the Thames Traditional Boat Rally – ‘the
Trad’ – due to start in three days, but I’ve never seen him
fl ustered, and today is no exception, as he guides me
around the ramshackle site that twists in and out of the
French’s river-cruiser HQ, where passenger launches
crowd under the willows and only the river matters.
First of all, we look at the late 40s/early 50s Broads
cruiser White Heron, built by Broom for the Broom
family. She’s 38ft (11.6m), with the characteristic centre
cockpit and sliding roof, now leaning against a wall.
Inside the workshop is a rare Chris Craft raceboat of
around 19ft (c5.8m), about to be treated in an unusual
manner that has quietly become Colin’s trademark over
the last 16 or so years. Over the years (she’s of 1930s
vintage), the thin mahogany carvel hull planks have been
sanded away to the point where they are unacceptably
thin. Colin’s solution will be to add two more layers of
thin (2.5mm) planking, the fi rst diagonally laid to
prevent the inner, original, layer from moving and to
provide a strong ‘blank canvas’, and the second laid foreYARD VISIT
CLASSIC
RESTORATION
SERVICESLeft to right: Stephen Messer, John Amery
(the ‘apprentice’) and Colin Messer
Main photo: Fixitor on her launch in 2012