Classic Boat – May 2018

MIHOW KOSAKOWSKI, C/O FREYA

This is the moment, late last summer, that years of work by buildings

surveyor Derek Stubley and friends paid of. Derek’s wooden Grand

Banks 32 Freya, built in teak by American Marine in Hong Kong in 1967,

left the shed at Brighton Marina after major surgery. She reached

completion early this year, and we have been out for a sail to learn

more about these iconic American trawler yachts. More to follow!

The graceful oyster dredger Vanguard that served in Operation

Dynamo in 1940 has been saved from a slow death. The 45ft (13.7m)

vessel was drawn by Norman Dallimore and built by RJ Prior of

Burnham in 1937, and served as an oyster dredger before and after the

war. She was privately restored in 1993 but was abandoned in more

recent years at the Smallgains Marina on Canvey Island, Essex. Now a

band of volunteers, led by Nick Skeens, has had her transported back

to Burnham, and she is sitting at the Mangapps Railway Museum,

ready for a new chapter of her life to begin.

BRIGHTON, EAST SUSSEX

Grand Banks 32 sails again

BURNHAM, ESSEX

Dunkirk Little Ship to be saved

C/O WILL DALLIMORE

Reader Nick Waite has been busy on a major

restoration of the 1951 Vertue yacht Kandy,

that has been in his family, intermittently,

since 1959, when his grandfather bought her.

“Gramps had many happy years sailing

Kandy the length and breadth of the English

Channel, often press-ganging his junior

oce staf to act as crew under the pretence

that they had an important meeting near

Poole on a Friday,” Nick remembers.

Later, Nick’s parents took the boat over,

and Nick “was conceived on the yacht in

1967”. She left the family in 1980. “In 2007, I

tracked down the owner who was refurbishing her

in Keyhaven, Hampshire. I went to meet him and

have a look around, and was somewhat

dismayed at her state. In 2013, he rang up,

admitting that he had rather given up on the

project and was worried about her deteriorating

further. We shook hands at a price that reflected

her condition. I surprised my parents with the

sight of her in my barn at home and my

mother’s reaction, rather predictable, was: “That

bloody boat – I thought I’d seen the last of it!”

Since then, Nick has completely gutted her

back to bare wood, removed all skin fittings and

engine, removed all 13 corroded galvanised iron

strap floors and used them as patterns for

casting replacements in bronze. This necessitated

removal of the accommodation. He has also

removed the partially rotten cockpit to access

the area under the cockpit sole, stripped fittings

from spars, rubbed them back and sanded back

and primed all interior paint. “I have done most

of the donkey work up to now,” says Nick, “but

I’m struggling to find a shipwright happy to

travel to her and help make the hull watertight

again.” Nick eventually hopes to cruise far

beyond the horizon, a feat the classic 25ft (7.6m)

Laurent Giles-designed sloop is famously

capable of. Kandy was built by Woodnutts on

the Isle of Wight, of mahogany on oak.

DARTMOUTH, DEVON

Reunited with 'that bloody boat'!

C/O THE OWNER

Right: Nick on the

Vertue Kandy as a boy