“The single halyard and mainsheet are
the only lines you use on a day-to-day
basis. It’s astonishingly simple”
CLASSIC BOAT MAY 2015 41airhead loo to remove complexity and through-hull
fi ttings, and the separately-accessed forepeak to prevent
the saloon table becoming a congested ‘through-traffi c’
zone. Junk rig really is astonishingly easy to handle,
barring the endless yards of mainsheet. The single halyard
and mainsheet are the only lines you use on a day-to-day
basis. That all-important halyard runs back to the cockpit
along the coachroof and through a jammer. No winch
here, although one would not go amiss: it’s heavy. The
main is sheeted to the pushpit (there is no pulpit as there is
seldom need to visit the foredeck). At the end of a sail, the
whole rig falls into its lazy jacks. Everyone on the
waterfront knows Tim Loftus and called out in
appreciation of this little green boat he has built. One day,
Tim Start hopes to sail her to the Med, and it’s hard to
imagine a more confi dence-inspiring boat to do it in.the coachroof line, which slopes gently down to a pair of
foredeck coamings to meet the sheer. At the aft end, the
sheer kicks up dramatically to disguise the height; this is
also a nod to the original Chinese junks with their high
poop decks. “We never really lofted the cabin structure.
That was a case of getting the cabin sole as low as
possible; low-profi le fl ooring helped here,” said Tim
Loftus. Much of the boat came together on the loft fl oor
in the end. “We mocked up what we could get away
with.” The transom-hung rudder was a no-brainer on
account of budget and also the transom stern.
Tim won’t be drawn on the (very low) end price
because the circumstances surrounding this build were so
unusual – and because he’s fearful of being scalped by his
fellow boatbuilders! A similar boat, with similar or
different rig, built to order the usual way with fi nished
interior would be about £85,000-£100,000 (+VAT), still
very reasonable for a 25ft hand-built wooden yacht.
On a cold January day, we sailed away from the
Underfall Yard where Leaf of Bristol was waiting
patiently with her crew of two Tims. A light breeze fi lled
in as we tacked in Bristol’s fl oating dock, and it was
enough to get a good sense of her unusual rig and
spacious interior, which Tim Start is busy fi tting out, in a
simple, sensible manner with some nice ideas, like the To see more pictures of Leaf of Bristol visit classicboat.co.ukLOA
25ft (7.6m)
BEAM
8ft 1in
(2.5m)
DRAUGHT
4ft 7in
(1.4m)
SAIL AREA
400sqft
(37.2m2)LEAF OF
BRISTOLAbove, left to right:
cutting keelbolts;
junk battens; the
increasingly
popular electric
outboard optionCB323 Leaf of Bristol 6 pages.indd 41 24/03/2015 17:19