VICKY MASONGUN PUNTS
Above: drawing
by Keith
Shackleton
Below, l-r: Dick
Wyche’s
hard-chine punt,
designed in 1953;
Redwing, built in
2004Surprising as it may seem, punt gunnery with
weapons up to a bore of 1¾in (45mm) is still
legal in Britain today and a handful of taciturn
enthusiasts keep the arcane skills of marshland
stalking alive in traditional craft. There are even rumours
of a minor resurgence, with a CFD-informed new-build
with a 3D-modelled breech-loader joining the muzzle-
loading museum pieces of a Sunday morning.
Meanwhile, under the stewardship of the Norfolk
Punt Club, the humble sailing punt has developed out of
all recognition since the first rules were drafted in 1926.
Originally defined as “a strongly-built light-draught open
or partly-decked wooden craft with pointed stem and
stern, very low freeboard and nearly flat bottom, suited
to the purpose of being quanted, rowed or sailed to
fowl”, the Norfolk Punt is now a sophisticated, high-
performance racing dinghy.
The early sailing punts were simple hard-chine,
plank-on-frame craft. Progress was rapid, with an
unusual build of carvel bottom and clinker topsides
ruling the roost in the 1930s. While this build method is
vanishingly rare, it is also ancient. It originated at the
dawn of seafaring with ‘built-up’ dugouts, and was still
represented in plank and frame examples of North Sea
cogs from the 12th to the 15th Century. Remarkably, a
1935 example of this type was placed in the top three in
the Norfolk Punt Class Championship as recently as 2008.
Present-day punts are about as fast as a Flying
Dutchman, based on historic Portsmouth Rating returns.
The skimming dish hull-form references the turn-of-the-
century raters from the boards of Linton Hope and
Joseph Soper – boats that had the potential to plane on
flat water decades before Uffa Fox’s Avenger.
There is more diversity in the surviving Norfolk Punt
fleet than perhaps any other dinghy. The class rules
reflect the punt’s history with a fascinating blend of
exceptions and variations. The goal posts have been
moved regularly, mainly to avoid ‘own goals’. The fleet
now embraces examples from 16ft-22ft 2in (4.9-6.8m).
As often with restricted classes, the moving
targets of ‘rise of floor’ and ‘rocker’ limits have raised
temperatures. Both are critical to performance and
handling, although one suspects that modern rig
tensions make the whole issue a moot point today.
Gerald Sambrooke Sturgess was appalled when Herbert
Woods successfully argued that rocker could be reduced
with a hog fillet. Perhaps this early exposure to such
sharp practice inspired that stalwart of the class to make
the yacht racing rules his life’s work.
In recent decades, most new boats have been built to
a rather conservative one-design which constitutes a
‘class within a class’. Back in 1953, Dick Wyche (of
Graudate dinghy renown) was invited to develop an
economical plywood hull. His hard-chine punt proposal
was informed by the lines of Swallow II, Herbert Woods’
all-conquering 1935 design.
Aesthetically, Dick’s one-design punt is something of a
masterpiece. Comment at the time was that “best of all,
the new design had a bow profile just like a proper gun
punt”. These punts are subject to a luff length limit on
the mainsail and carry fractional spinnakers. Even so, the
hard-chine boats are by no means a ‘second division’ –
quite the reverse in light to moderate airs and on
restricted water. In this context, they are the weapon of
choice to contest the 50-mile Three Rivers Race, which
they can finish in just seven hours, including lowering and
raising masts. Consequently they have remained popular.
Commitment to new-build in the ‘open division’ is
more risky and considerably more expensive with high-
tech materials being de rigueur. Of these, the Morrison
boats designed in 1998 have proved the most popular.
They are quick in a breeze and undeniably beautiful,
although the tear-drop waterplane is said to compromise
performance in light airs. Sporting twin trapezes and
masthead asymmetric kites, with a hull weight of just
250lbs (113kg), these skiffs offer quite a ride for the
“marshmen in thigh boots” who sail them (as Uffa Fox
quipped in the 1930s).