Practical Boat Owner — November 2017

Dave Selby is the proud owner of a 5.48m (18ft)

Sailfish, which he keeps on a swinging mooring

Mad about the boat on the picturesque Blackwater estuary in Essex

Dave Selby

I’

ve been reading again, and it’s been

an education. And what I’ve learned

is that the 1960s represented both

the peak of sailing yacht development

and civilisation in general. Of

course, that was only a few years after

Tom Cunliffe had invented sailing, and

long before ‘Brexin’, but there’s no doubt

boat design has gone backwards ever

since. I discovered these amazing

revelations in a box of sailing annuals I

found at a boat jumble.

It’s hard to believe what was going on in

1964, but it shows just how far we’ve

regressed since. I quote from a boat

review: ‘Deck and cabin top are a one

piece moulding and deck-head leaks just

cannot occur.’ Amazing! That sounds like

the Holy Grail of all modern boat owners,

but the industry had to stifl e such

innovation as it would have threatened the

sealant business that makes up the major

part of today’s global marine industry.

These days we all wonder at the

high-tech antics of The America’s Cup,

but the subject of this 1964 review was

light years ahead of the game. Again I

quote: ‘Twin hydrafoil [sic] bilge keels and

large skeg give her a remarkably high

performance.’ Wow!

This spearhead of revolution was the

epoch-making turtle-backed Westerly 22,

pioneer of GRP mass production. It was

amazing to be alive back then because all

the boats reviewed

possessed

qualities today’s

owners can only

dream of. Every

one of them was

attractive, lively,

fast, dry, stable, amazingly roomy, capable

of crossing oceans, and, in the case of

GRP ones, built to last forever – there was

no need for warranties.

But there was more going on. Terylene,

which had been developed so that

travelling salesmen’s jackets didn’t crease

or bend when hung in their Ford Consuls,

migrated into sail cloth. The development

of non-breathing nylon, invented for

encyclopaedia salesmen’s shirts, was

funded by the male-grooming industry

which simultaneously produced the most

The golden age

of yachting

The1960s were the high-water mark of design

excellence... and marketing hyperbole

powerful masking scent on the planet –

Brut aftershave. And industries worked

hand in glove – literally, for when nylon

was spun off into boat ropes this led to

the development of sailing gloves to

protect hands from the bristles.

But an even greater revelation was that

feet and inches were much longer back

then, because every 20ft boat had at

least four berths, sometimes more; even

boats smaller than that had the luxury

of full lying headroo m – and that even

included every open boat on the market.

Many yachts even boasted ‘fl ush toilets’:

they didn’t fl ush, but their seat lids

were fl ush with the bunk top. Sadly

this development eventually stalled.

But the most notable thing of all was

that journalists were a lot nicer back then

and far more amenable to a long lunch

in an agreeable gentleman’s club with

these trailblazing blazered titans of

British industry. Back then, journalists

had standards, and wore blazers too.

But that all changed.

How saddened I was to see how chippy

and unsupportive they became in the

1980s and cite an article which sourly

rounded on the Westerly 22 for its

‘hideously ineffi cient looking shallow bilge

keels’. All I can imagine is that this

journalist had had to buy his own lunch.

To trace the origins of this unpatriotic

malaise, I leafed through later editions of

this fi ne annual tome into the 1970s, and

was amazed to see no mention of the 18ft

Sailfi sh’s famed ‘six-berth accommodation,’

• admittedly people were shorter then – or
  indeed of the Sailfi sh whatsoever.
  What I did notice, however, was that
  boats produced by the manufacturers
  who advertised were all uniformly
  attractive, lively, fast, dry, stable,
  seakindly,
  amazingly
  roomy, capable
  of crossing
  oceans, and
  built to last
  forever. And
  it’s only now, thanks to a free and
  independent press, that I can at least
  reveal the key innovation of 1971 that
  set the Sailfi sh apart and scared rivals,
  namely the inclusion of a fi tted polythene
  washing-up bowl as standard. You have
  a right to know.

‘Well, the standing

headroom is in the

cockpit and the two

extra berths are in

the car....’

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the PBO website http://www.pbo.co.uk

Terylene, developed for

travelling salesmen’s jackets,

migrated into sail cloth