ALTRICIA
bilge,” adds Henry. “All of the angles of the plank edges
worked in such a way so that you’d never get a tight
joint. We got around it but it was hard work!”
Getting the details round the hatches was also
demanding as all the seams had to be lined up.
“We had some of the hatches in existing openings,
some in new openings,” says Henry. “Some of the
hatch liners had to be adjusted and modified to be able
to take on a new hatch, and you need to line the
planking up to it; there are quite a few intricacies
about how to actually do it.”
Peter also wanted the coach roof modified.
“Originally it had a plumb face and the mid face was
sloping so he got us to make a sloping face to match
the new front end of the coach roof,” explains Henry.
“It’s quite hard – eight sheets of mahogany have to be
laminated up to the right thickness and it’s quite a
complex curve in at least three directions. We weren’t
given any drawings to work from, so it was like a
design-as-you-go process which is really difficult.”
The rest of the modifications around the mahogany
cockpit were not easy, either. “We converted it from
tiller steering to wheel steering, but there isn’t enough
room really to put in a normal wheel steering,” Henry
explains. “We had to basically make up the whole
system from scratch but not in the most ideal way, as
there isn’t really enough width and height, and we had
to raise the cockpit floor. It did not have an opening
hatch so we had to work out ways of making an
opening hatch for access, trying to future proof it by
putting in a table for an auto helm system, and the
joinery work’s been quite complicated too.” Henry
laughs. “There was a lot of modifying and head
scratching and starting again and without drawings itClockwise from
above left: The
boat has a full
Dometic climate
control system
installed; planking
was “like furniture”
and needed little
work; the cockpit
was redesigned
for wheel steering,
with lines led backcapacity.” Peter smiles. “She’s stood the test of time
really well; all we’re doing is taking care of her in
preparation for the next 50 years on the water.”
Altricia arrived at Mylor Yacht Harbour in 2013. “I
chose Mylor because the skill and craftsmanship of their
shipwrights, engineers and electricians is unrivalled,”
Peter says. “I’m a great believer in coming to yards like
this that are fairly priced, with high levels of skill. They
care about what they do. They make you very welcome,
and I think that, for example, the new teak deck stands
scrutiny from anyone, anywhere in the world.”
Altricia has had everything below her waterline
repaired. She has had a new plywood sub-deck fitted and
undergone an intricate method of teak deckboard and
king plank fitting by gluing plank by plank – a process
which maximises both the water-tight integrity and the
smoothness of the deck.
“The fitting of the deck has to be the biggest and most
rewarding challenge,” says Henry Goldsmith, project
manager at Mylor. “It involved fitting lengths of teak
individually to perfectly fit around the camber of the
boat in the midships section, using a process of gluing
and the weighing down of the planks to create the
perfect curve without the use of screws or nails. We
ended up having to do one plank at a time on each side
per day to avoid stressing the timber while working with
strong, three-dimensional curves, the result of which is a
thing of beauty. We used Sikaflex for deck bonding and
caulking. All boats need to have long life and waterproof
decks and Sikaflex does that job very well. We had to
prime the subdeck and every seam before either bonding
or caulking the deck, laying the deck plank by plank.”
“Another of the big challenges from the shipwrights’
point of view has been repairing planks in the turn of the
See
Altricia^
on stand G150
at the London
Boat Show