PETER LUCAS
movement in a weakened, hard-driven wooden boat
can be disastrous in terms of leaks; strength is key if
she is to compete and win again.
For these reasons Cynthia is half way through a
complete refit. To stiffen her, she has been refastened. In
addition two ring frames have been laminated in,
connected right through the hull where the chain plates
are on each side, one for the cap shrouds, and the second
for the aft lowers. To prevent movement through the keel
bolts a big plate was fashioned which sits in the bilges
with every bolt fixed through it, acting like a big washer. It
isn’t a classic solution although Peter says similar plates
were used in some J-Class yachts from the start.
Later, upright plate floors were fitted and were bolted
both to the new big plate and the frames, giving the boat
a lot more strength. The deck is relatively new, which
helps. The floors themselves are stainless steel. In a perfect
world they would have been structural bronze but, unlike
for Ripple, finances don’t allow. Times and material costs
have changed. A “slightly modernised” rudder is planned
to give a better shape dynamically and, all in all, Peter
feels these works will see the boat out for years to come.
He’s taking care that the new rig will be very near to
Cynthia’s original arrangement. As ever, the philosophy is
to re-use what’s there wherever possible, so there’ll be an
original finish, with knocks and bumps, warts and all,
rather than a sparkling new apparition when re-launch
day arrives. But she’ll go some. It doesn’t take long to realise that sailing has been Peter’s life.
One day in the late-1960s, he paid on to a USA-bound yacht instead
of going to his teaching placement, and what he calls the “terminal
illness” of the sea has been his sickness-of-choice ever since.
That voyage nearly finished him. One midday, when it was
“blowing old boots”, they had a mizzen up, and a working jib
which blew out. He shinned up the forestay and was cutting the
rope pennant at the top of the jib when the boat took a lurch and
he went flying out into mid-Atlantic. He clearly remembers coming
up slowly through black water only to watch the transom
disappear, knowing that the rigging was still in a tangle; he also
realised that the propeller coupling had been tightly shored with
wooden wedges to stop it revolving, because the shaft brake
wasn’t working. Luckily his own Heath-Robinson version of a
danbuoy was attached to the lifebelt they had desperately thrown
him and he swam diagonally towards it, not the boat.
They rescued him 40 minutes later. Typical of Peter, after a
meal and some warm clothes he clambered back up the mast,
to tackle the tangle of blown-out jib and rigging which had
caused the problem in the first place.
Later I caught a tale of his experiences sailing the three-masted
topsail schooner Charlotte Rhodes of Onedin Line fame, for the
BBC. He was kept on as mate when the series finished and she
was sailing back around Britain. Her owners were showcasing a
1970s computer, as large as a grand piano, to local seaside
businesses. Second time round the schooner grounded going
through the Caledonian canal, ripping open some of her caulking,
shortly before they caught a Force 10 in the Irish Sea: Peter told
me of pumps not keeping up, cabbages and apples floating round
the priceless, now useless, computer and his muscles beginning to
fail as he threw bucket after bucket of water upwards out of the
hold, while more kept pouring in. Once again the sea had a go at
him and once again, thanks to the very supportive Donnaghadee
lifeboat which shepherded them into Belfast Lough, he survived.
Incurable sickness? Peter’s
serious love of the sea
Top: Peter’s lifeboat, John Gellatly Hyndman,
currently moored at the yard. Above: Ripple