Classic Boat – August 2019

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ELBOW


POWER


58 CLASSIC BOAT AUGUST 2019


After fi rst seeing her age 11, Paul


Mimmack now owns the beautifully


renovated motor sailor Mary Islay


WORDS AND PICTURES NIGEL SHARP

P


aul Mimmack’s seagoing career began in his
pre-teen years but it must have been in his
blood all along. His great-grandfather was
the captain of a Jersey brigantine that traded
between Newfoundland, South America, Italy, the
Baltic and London in the 1870s and 1880s, a career
cut short when he contracted yellow fever. Paul fi rst took
to the water on the Hamble river when he was about
11, “just messing about in dinghies and helping my
mate’s dad who ran tripper boats and hire boats”. It
was around that time that he fi rst saw, and admired,
the motor sailor Mary Islay when she was kept on a
mooring just off the Bugle pub in Hamble village. The
memory must have stayed with him because 30 years
later, by which time both Mary Islay and Paul had
coincidentally made their homes in Jersey, the boat
came on the market and he bought her.

BEKEN
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