which ultimately was consumed by the coast of Martinique.
“The 38 was fast, went like a bugger,” Johnson says. “It was
light. Had a lot of ballast.”
Some years ago Johnson was asked to design and build
a 28ft power boat to carry tourists at high speed through the
Grenadines. Aptly named Mostly Harmless, it fl ies over the
water, retaining its claim to fame of never spilling a drop of
beer from cans on the table.
As he begins his ninth decade, Johnson has reached an age
where looking astern is more pleasant than tackling the
horizon ahead. He lives aboard 42ft Cherub, and fi nds pleasure
in reliving through his library of logbooks a lifetime of voyages,
builds and wrecks – he logged an estimated 200,000 miles,
including 40-some Atlantic crossings (“I went to see mother
every two years”). Having
test-driven numerous models,
he’s come to the conclusion that
he prefers 42-footers. “You put
your sails up on one side of the
Atlantic and wake up on the
other.” Those sails in the early
years were hand-stitched
18-ounce synthetic fl ax cloth.
Johnson’s designs are guided
by a simple principle. “I used
to watch the water go by,” he
says, “and when you do that,
you learn a hell of a lot. A boat
has to be designed for perfect
water fl ow. When you get into
big seas, a big fat stern won’t
work. The stern on these boat
releases the water.”
An opinion persists that
Johnson’s fi rst home – the
Colin Archer – inspired his
double-enders, but he disputes
this. “Colin Archers were
designed to heave-to off the
coast of Norway – to take sick
people off ,” he says. “My boats
are diff erent. Buttock lines are
curved so the boat doesn’t pitch.
It makes the boat lift in the seas.”
Johnson is self-taught and
tested by trial, and happy to
admit to diffi cult times: “On the 18-footer, I tried passing the
Bay of Biscay but was blown back to England.” He reckons he’s
witnessed 40ft seas, but admits “most of the really bad
weather I’ve been in, I’ve done on purpose.”
This man of the sea now bears more than a passing
resemblance to Neptune, with unruly curls tinted by time.
He continues to preach gaff rigs, setting a mizzen at anchor
as a symbol of his faith. Johnson’s church is the deck under his
feet with a view of the taunting sea. Newfangled production
yachts anchoring too close quickly learn the folly of their ways- not for their proximity, but for buying a foolish boat.
These days he stays busy with pen and paper, still the artist
and sailing idealist. Amazed to have made it to 80, he’s
nowhere near the end. When asked if he still designs boats, he
smiles. “Yes, I do. They’re in my head.”
T
he yacht designer and builder Paul Johnson is a
legend among self-building bluewater sailors. And his
early boats were built from an abandoned church.
The name Paul Erling Johnson is synonymous with
Venus designs, jaunty double-ended gaff ketches both sweet
and stout. He designed them in various sizes, built several, and
sold and gave away countless plans. Hundreds were
constructed of wood, fi breglass, ferrocement or steel, but for
the most part they were built of dreams, in backyards, on
shoestrings. The owner and builder were often one and the
same; a person for whom sailing meant serious ocean miles.
The names of his vessels are orbital, not unlike Johnson
himself when spinning a rum-fuelled yarn. His early vessels,
all named Venus, inspired Moon, Eclipse, Pluto, Great Bear
and Cherub. One 34-footer trails
a dinghy named Uranus.
Born in 1938 on the UK’s
Hamble River, Johnson’s home
and inspiration was a Colin
Archer. His father, described as
a brilliant scientist and skilled
small-boat handler, taught
Johnson early and well. At 20,
the prodigy rebuilt a 1894
Shetland fi shing boat, then sailed
the 18-footer Venus across the
Atlantic – a voyage that would
become very familiar.
In Florida, Johnson was
planning on building a 28-footer.
“I was pedalling a bike around
the Everglades and saw an
abandoned church, built of Dade
County pine,” he recounts. “I tried
to buy a few bits, but the guy
said I could have [the lot].” Divine
intervention or dumb luck, that
church morphed into the fi rst of
a fl eet that now numbers over- Paul sailed hull No 1 to a
regatta in Antigua, winning the
traditional class, then around the
Caribbean and over to Britain.
Crew for the crossing was a
journalist whose published
accounts of the journey spawned
sales of the plans and fuelled a cruising account.
In the 1970s, Johnson was all set to build a 34ft Venus for his
family of three, until a friend convinced him to design a 42ft
version and build two. He did, in Bermuda’s Royal Naval
Dockyard, and disciples later used his moulds and methods
to construct another 11.
The fi rst 34-footer, strip-planked in yellow cedar, came to life
in St Barts in 1979. Johnson led a crew of two who each went
on to build a Venus in the Pacifi c Northwest.
Between builds, Johnson sailed west in the 1990s aboard
‘big’ Venus and would have looped the globe were it not for
a collision with the Great Barrier Reef. He and one crew made
it into a 16ft nesting dinghy with the last of the rum. After days
of sailing, they reached Australia.
That shipwreck inspired the plans and build of a 38-footer,
“Most of the really
bad weather I’ve
been in has beenon purpose”
The 34ft Venus
Segue