CLASSIC BOAT FEBRUARY 2018 25BETTY II
He recalls her mainsail carried the letters 81, some
long-lost racing category, but that they “blew off after
the glue failed”.
“This was a boat I knew was worth all the effort,”
said Nick. Eventually, though, he let it be known he
wanted to sell her and accepted an offer from Burnham-
on-Crouch sailor Ray Austine, then changed his mind
and negotiated with me. After a night’s haggling he
telephoned me the following day to say: “Betty’s not for
sale after all.”
I was on the rebound and I bought Minstrel Boy, a
Contessa 32. Shortly afterwards Nick sold the boat to
Solent sailor Ben Collins, telling him with tears in his
eyes: “I’m glad she’s going away.”
He could not bear to be within view of her!
Ben Collins, a headmaster, had the boat transported
by road to Keyhaven. It was the fi rst time in Betty’s
history that she was to be kept out of Thames Estuary
waters. He cut part of the aft deck away to extend the
cockpit for “socialising”, then shaped some deal
boards to act as a cockpit hatch with a cockpitAbove: author
Dick in his new
saloon
Inset: she’s
renowned as a
slippery
performerBetty II’s next owner and he was hoping to fi nish her
rebuild. But work commitments and family pressures
requiring a new home meant he had no time to continue
the restoration and so he sold her to tool-maker Nick
Titshall in December 1986. This was the man who had
seen me off when I was at the helm of Powder Monkey.
Nick discovered a lot of her internal ballast had gone
missing, but was fortunate to know local sailor Mick
Jones, who was also a central heating engineer and
plumber. Mick was busy at the time stripping lead pipe
from households as it was considered a danger to health.
This lead pipe Nick melted down and forged into ballast
pigs for Betty II.
Nick took off the canvas-covered, pine-planked deck
to discover the deck beams had rotted at their ends,
though the beamshelf was in good condition. “Ray had
done a lovely job, if only he’d fi nished it,” Nick said.
Betty II was then fi tted with a single-bitt head into
which the bowsprit end slotted. He changed this for a
double-bitt head and the bowsprit offset in order to be
able to run it in.
He re-decked her with plywood, using zinc-coated
screws countersunk, then covered the whole deck with
GRP. He was advised by an old shipwright friend:
“Whatever you do, don’t run the glass up the side of the
cabin trunk.” Instead he laid it fl at, covered it with
mastic, then a quadrant.
Nick put in a new centreplate case, made a new
rudder and made all the new iron work: gammon iron,
bow roller, rudder fi ttings, six chainplates and a centre-
plate winch. Nick also dropped off the lead keel, which
he estimates weighs one ton, and re-fi tted it with bronze
bolts.