The skiff as she looked
when first builtNic’s venerable skiff is loved by the whole family – here it’s pre-restorationIt took all my spare time plus two weeks’
holiday spread over four months to
complete the skiff, but finally in July 1997
we launched her in the azure waters off
Seaford beach. There was a brisk onshore
breeze blowing that day which created a
small surf, and within minutes the boat was
flung into the lap of a friend who had come
to help launch her (she still bears a scar
from that incident, as no doubt does he!).
But that breeze also showed to me how
fast the skiff could go under sail, and I had
an exhilarating couple of hours tacking up
and down the two-mile long beach. As you
might expect of a dinghy primarily
designed for rowing, she was extremely
tender (read ‘tippy’), and even with her
modest 61sq ft of sail, she would capsize
in a thrice if you didn’t ease the sheet in
time. But that was all part of the
excitement, and I immediately felt very
comfortable with the boat, as if we had
struck a personal rapport.
In truth, I became a Western Skiff owner
by chance. Yet, over the years, my
appreciation of the boat has deepened
and my attachment to her has
strengthened. Since I built her, I’ve owned
three yachts – ranging from 22ft to 36ft
long – but, while the bigger boats have
come and gone, my skiff has remainedconstant, and I’ve never been seriously
tempted to sell her. Partly that’s because
the investment and overheads are so
much lower that there’s never been
any great financial incentive to sell, but
also it’s because she has proven
remarkably adaptable and (mostly) suited
to my needs.Changing with the times
After the initial sail off Seaford, I kept her
on a trailer at a rowing club on the river
Ouse, in Sussex, with occasional trips
rowing upriver to Hamsey or sailing
downriver to Newhaven. My kids loved
those forays upstream, and their evident
pride as they steered the boat past familiar
landmarks made me glad I could pass on
a tiny piece of my boating life to them.
On the downstream trips I learned to
‘shoot’ the bridges by lowering the mast
on the approach and raising it on the
other side – the one time I forgot, the
almighty crash of wooden spar against
stone wall made sure I never forgot again
(miraculously there was no damage).
Despite being only 14ft long, the skiff
could be a sociable boat, and the
90-minute trip to Newhaven was an
opportunity to cement friendships. On one
occasion a friend astonished me by
pulling a flask and china cups out of his
rucksack and proceeding to pour us both
a cup of tea (or was it coffee?). It doesn’t
get much more English than that!
Over the years, I tried giving the skiff a
proper name (like a real pet). First she
was Hara, Greek for ‘joy’ and the name of
a favourite haunt when I was a child
growing up in Greece. Then I decided to
go ultra-traditional and named her Sally,
after my mother. But somehow neither
name stuck and I’ve always simply
referred to her as ‘the skiff’. It’s taken me
nearly 20 years to realise that I don’t need
to force a name onto her and that ‘the
skiff’ is a perfectly good pair of words, full
of romantic connotations and richly
evocative in its own right.
Three years after the skiff was launched
I was divorced and living (alone) on an old
12-tonne cutter in nearby Newhaven.
Between the heaps of scrap metal andchildren (Zennor, 8, and Sam, 6) had
great fun assembling the building jig,
using wedges to lock the tenons in place.
Getting the planks fair proved a bit
trickier, but I managed to get the basic
structure assembled in time to put it on a
trailer and drive the 300 miles to our home
just outside Brighton in East Sussex.
REFURBISHING A SKIFF