70 CLASSIC BOAT JANUARY 2018
CLARE LALLOW
sometimes to the end of the year, but the aim was always
to keep customers racing. Late one Cowes Week
afternoon just such a call came. “I’ve sunk my X boat off
Stone point. She is old and not that robust. Can you
help?” Ian recalls setting off and finding her mast poking
out in the darkness, at a lucky point of the tide. He
raised her, pumped her out, towed her back and rang the
owner. “Your yacht is on the slip and will be ready for
racing tomorrow.” “Are you joking?” “No Sir, not at all,
just part of the service...”
Unforgettable, of course, were Britannia I and II, the
typically bizarre but brilliant (and bright orange)
self-righting and self-bailing Uffa Fox-designed creations,
with which John Fairfax rowed across the Atlantic
singlehandedly in 1969, and the Pacific with his
girlfriend Sylvia Cook in 1971.
Ian chuckles about the first launch day where the
clearly inexperienced John tried to row with the
rowlocks swinging the wrong way round, splashing
about in front of ranks of assembled press. He always
felt the man and his boats would make it through
somehow, although had either known about the
bothersome shark which was to bite John’s arm when he
dived overboard in mid-Pacific, they mightn’t have been
quite so relaxed. In total contrast to these ‘one-offs’,
Arthur Robb’s popular Daring provided steady bread-
and-butter work for Lallows: they were the official and
only designated yard for fitting out and servicing the fleet
of long narrow keelboats, ensuring one design uniformity.
Clare finally retired in 1977, although he still came to
potter in the yard when he felt like it. Over the next 19
years, under Ian’s ownership, the yard’s work ratio
moved towards a 25 per cent build/75 per cent service
and repair ratio. They made the transition to glassfibre
with professional interest in the new technologies, while
the Darings provided reliable income, just as Admiralty
work had given financial stability in earlier times.
The last big yacht they built was Robb Humphreys’
high-tech Bathsheba for Sir Maurice Laing in the early
1980s, but increasingly part of Ian wanted to get off the
treadmill. Even he began to feel the work-life balance of
running the family yard was getting difficult to justify, as
year followed year. He showed me an old hammer, the
wooden shaft with that deep shine which comes from
over a century of use; the head has an inverse CL, and it
was used by his great-grandfather (Clare), grandfather
(Sidney) and his father (Clare) to strike a log they had
selected for use, so the initials bit deep into the wood,marking it for the yard. If the continuity was to be
broken, it had to be with the right person, and someone
who would understand traditions built up over several
lifetimes since 1867.
Eventually Ian sold the yard to Laurie Boarer, who
himself had completed his apprenticeship there 22 years
before. There were much higher offers from developers,
but no question of accepting them. Since then he has
reduced his committee and regatta organising, although
he always helps out where he can, including for the
Squadron, which has made him its first ever Honorary
Bosun, in recognition of his input over the years –
including such things as regularly fixing complications
with the flag pole, and climbing a ladder with a heavy
painting on his back, which had proved too large to fit
up the spiral staircase. When I rang early in Cowes Week
he was out getting the Committee boat sorted, but Carol,
his partner, told me “you might catch him Sunday, late
afternoon when he gets back from manning the
Gateboat, starting the Fastnet...”
Laurie, in his turn, is now looking back on two
hard but successful decades of ownership. He has
repaid the friends and family who gave him unstinting
financial and moral support early on, and he too has
his eyes firmly on the future. The yard now specialises
in quality restoration, such as its meticulous refurb of
Ted Heath’s old Morning Cloud II, now re-named
Opposition.
Servicing clients’ boats remains the core of its trade.
Some have been coming for generations. Laurie told me
about his apprentice days when he was sometimes lucky
enough to work on jobs alongside Clare, and how much
he learned every time. Lallows has continued the
tradition of training apprentices, and many, as always,
have stayed on.
In time to come Laurie and his wife Pat, who runs
the office just as Sybil Lallow did before her, hope to
gift their shares in the firm to the workforce, as a way
for the yard to continue when they retire.
I asked another ex-apprentice, now yard foreman
Kevin, what he thinks being a Lallow’s employee
means to the staff.
“Pride,” he said without hesitation. “Pride in their
craft and our tradition of quality service.”Above left: John
Fairfax with his
Lallows-built
Atlantic rowing
boat Britannia.
Above: Ian
Lallow with the
timber marking
hammer used
by four Lallow’s
generationsAbove: foreman Kevin with owners Pat and Laurie Boarer in the office