Yachting_Monthly_2016-01

CRUISING LIFE

JANUARY 2016 http://www.yachtingmonthly.com 45

Jack’s design Celandine, built in 1967, is now owned by Christopher

Kerrison and moored in the Pyefl eet

I

t’s 25 years since Jack Francis Jones died and a hundred since he was born. He was my uncle and I

any real interest in his work.When we were children it was am beginning to regret that it’s taken me 60 years to show

all around us: he and my father, George Jones, had been allies from boyhood when they rejected their farming background and

regularly cycled the ten miles from Witnesham to Waldringfi eld in Suffolk to learn to sail on the River Deben. After the war they set

up businesses there: Jack a designer and surveyor, Dad a yacht agent. There was always some project on the go; some client giving trouble, some yard falling behind

schedule. We’d be on our way to Scotland for a family holiday then fi nd ourselves diverting to spend hours in Eyemouth Boatyard while Dad checked the progress

on Uncle Jack’s latest Inchcape. They were sturdy MFV-style yachts, marketed by Dad. As most of these visits involved long periods waiting in the back of the car, or

staying quiet during incomprehensible, sometimes tetchy, adult conversations. I quickly grew adept at tuning them out.

Trained to loathe glassfi bredesigned: waved joyfully at yachts Uncle Jack had On the river ourselves in Riduna, CoristaPeter Duck, Wing Sang, we ,

Debendouble fi gures in age, we had been trained to loathe glassfi bre. I learned to recognise certain classes of yachts purely because and Celandine. Before we reached

of the enraged reactions they so reliably produced. There were the ‘Depravities’, for instance...As the 1960s progressed, glassfi bre was

clearly in the ascendant and Jack and Dad bowed out of the mainstream, fulminating about the modern lack of 'individuality'.

was part of the rest of his life. His stroke of luck was fi nding The Old Maltings, a tall Georgian house overlooking the boatyard

and the river at Waldringfi eld, within a month of leaving the Navy. Alan Gurney was apprenticed to him there, and Kim Holman and Peter Brown with whom Jack

eventually went into partnership. One of his fi rst designs was a 16ft sailing sharpie published in February 1946 for Monthly readers to build for themselves.Yachting

There’s nothing undemocratic about them and I know myself how well they sail. Balance, seaworthiness and sailing ability His most popular class was the Kestrel.

are features of Jack’s cruising yachts and owners have taken them all over the world. As Brian Hammett, owner of Jack’s 1965 gaff cutter Avola and former vice-president of

the Cruising Association says, ‘He designed his boats to look after their owners.’I only wish I’d noticed at the time. W

They claimed that their rivers were becoming overcrowded, their customers ignorant and dull. Secretly I wondered

whether being a boat snob might also mean you were a social snob. For myself I was content to remain inland. When I returned to sailing two decades later, the wooden

post-war yachts of my childhood had mysteriously become ‘classics’.from which more than 1,000 boats Jack produced 110 individual designs

were built. I'd loved him as a person – fl amboyant, opinionated, touchy – but it wasn’t until I met the designer Alan Gurney that I began to realise what I’d been missing

by taking so little notice of his work.1930s when he was banished from his beloved River Deben and working as Jack had begun drawing boats in late

an industrial designer in Birmingham. He received generous encouragement from Griffi ths, and his fi rst important design Yachting Monthly editor Maurice

was published in Griffi ths had already been called up but Jack had a further year in which to stir up controversy and comment through the YM in December 1939.

magazine until he too joined the RNVR.twice seriously wounded and chronic pain Jack did not have a good war. He was

Julia Jones remembers her uncle Jack, who designed his boats

to look after their owners

My uncle

the yacht

designer

Holman and Alan Gurneydesigners including Kim trained other yacht own right, Jack Jones naval architect in his A highly regarded PHOTOS: COURTESY OF JULIA JONES

Jack's most popular design was the well-balanced Kestrel class sloop

PHOTOS: COURTESY OF JULIA JONES

Jack's most popular design