SPONGE BOAT TO GREECE
T
o witness the characteristic raised stemhead –
the koraki – and garish fairground colours of
a Greek sponge diving boat in Maldon, Essex
is as strange as it would be to see the tan sails
of a Thames sailing barge in Corfu.
Eleni is a new-build trehantiri, a classic Greek
double-ended fishing boat. Traditionally, these boats
would be used by divers scouring the bed of the
Mediterranean for sea sponges. The intrepid divers
would seek out the sponges from the boat’s low
bulwarks amidships, using glass-bottomed tubes. When
one was located, they would pick up a flat rock from the
caïque’s wide deck and jump overboard down to depths
of up to 100ft in order to cut free the porous organisms
and stuff them into netted bags.
You don’t see much sponge diving in UK waters but
that didn’t stop furniture-maker Barnaby Scott from
Waywood, Oxfordshire falling for Eleni’s beautiful lines
and character.
Barnaby, his wife Kathryn and their four children,
normally sail Luely, a 30ft (9.14m) Sharpie, designed by
Iain Oughtred, in the Solway Firth but they were
tempted by sunnier climates. “We can only take so much
rain and mud so we’ve been in the habit of going to
Greece and chartering. We’ve loved every minute of it,
but a production boat didn’t suit me, it was lacking an
ingredient: character, and in particular Greek character,”
he said.
So the hunt was on for a classic Greek sailing boat
which was when Barnaby discovered that thanks to the
1983 EU shipwrecks-for-cash policy inaugurated to
prevent over-fishing which resulted in bonfires of ships
all along the coast as Greeks turned from tuna-netting to
taverna-running, they’d either all been burnt or
converted into motor-yachts with massive engines.
“I’d almost given up when I saw an advert on a
Danish website,” he said.
The advert was for Eleni, built as a labour of love by
Jutland bee-keeper Hans-Henrik Jorgensen.
“You have to be bonkers, in a lovely way of course, to
do what Hans did,” said Barnaby. “It took him seven
years, but he fell in love with these boats which are so
characteristic of Greece and he fell in love in particular
with the lines of this sponge-diving boat from which he
built Eleni, launched in 2001.”
Barnaby, 55, a member of the Chipping Norton Yacht
Club, started sailing 10 years ago on a West Wight
Potter, Hetty. He moved on quickly to a Shilling, a
Willow Bay Boats’ 16ft gaff yawl, “but she was still only
a micro-cruiser and I wanted to do more and sail
further” he explained.
He listened to his fellow club members and their
offshore exploits and started to feel daring “I am no
longer in the full flush of youth and although this boat
seemed totally impractical, I went to have a look at her
in 2015 and she implanted herself into my mind.”
The following year Barnaby and his nephew, Theo
Scott, sailed her to Maldon from the Danish port of
Faaborg. She then sported a Bermudian rig with “a
towering mast that looked like trouble”. Barnaby
continued: “Although Hans had got it right – she was
well-balanced – she was a little too well-balanced formy liking as I prefer a little bit of weather helm.”
But the rig was not right. He considered the sakoleva,
Greek spritsail, but felt it was “too exotic, too
unknown”. Barnaby said he preferred to stick with what
he knew and was pleased to discover that the gaff cutter
rig could be found among the boats registered in the
Greek Traditional Boat Association.
“Who would provide the rig? Who would advise
me?” he asked himself and discovered Jim Dines at
Downs Road Boatyard who had re-rigged the Cutty
Sark, and is currently rigging out the sailing barge Blue
Mermaid and planning to restore the Brixham trawler
Torbay Lass.
He next spoke to Jim Lawrence about converting
Eleni to gaff rig and he reassured Barnaby this was
do-able, then Mark Butler drew up a sail plan which
Barnaby says is “spot on”.
Barnaby is not interested in racing, however: “I’m
more concerned about sipping ouzo in the sunshine, but
we’ve left the door open to the addition of a topsail at a
later date.”
I went aboard Eleni at Maldon just hours before the
first leg of her passage to Corfu, with Max Liberson as
delivery skipper and Barnaby and his orthopaedic
surgeon brother Robert as crew.Hans-Henrik Jorgensen fell in love with Greek sailing boats during a visit to
Greece in the mid 1960s. But it was to be many years before he could realise
his dream of building one for himself. Following visits to the shipyards in
Samos and Spetses, he contacted naval architect Kostas Damianidis who
provided technical advice.
Eleni is based on a line drawing (pictured right) of the sponge diving
boat Konstantinus and Eleni built in 1936 which featured in Greek Wooden
Sailing Boats of the 20th Century, by Kostas Damianidis and Tassos Leontidis
of the Museum of Cretan Ethology. Hans took a year to make a model and
re-draw the lines into a bigger plan, which included a deepened keel and
displacement and stability calculations.
Her accommodation was inspired by the Danish double-ender
constructers Berg, Hansen and Utzon. Her keel, stem, stern, frames and
deck-beams are oak. The hull is 35mm larch. The deck is 35mm spruce. Her
keel-bolts are stainless steel, and the fastenings are galvanised ship nails.Hans-Henrik Jorgensen’s dream