I
n 1967, Leslie Hills (“a seasoned East Coast and
East Anglian campaigner” according to Yachts &
Yachting) commissioned Kim Holman to design,
and Tucker Brown to build, a new boat.
Hills’ choice of designer and builder was well
judged, as seven of the nine divisional winners in
that season’s East Anglian Offshore Racing Association
championships had come from Holman’s board, and his
new boat would be a near sister ship to Meriva – a recent
Holman/Brown collaboration – which was second overall.
Meriva had been described in some detail in Yachting
Monthly earlier that year as “a good example of the
collaboration between an imaginative designer and a
modern builder” and her construction included
“prefabrication of unique interdependent parts working
from drawings to limits that would not disgrace an
engineer. Modern boatbuilding of this kind is a far cry
from the skilled but less accurate methods of the past”.
Hills’ new boat was built with Honduras mahogany
planking above the waterline and pitch pine below on
steamed rock elm frames, and was christened Negomi
when launched at Burnham-on-Crouch in April 1968.
A month later Yachts & Yachting reported that Hills
and his crew had been “practising hard since the
launching. As a new boat with a keen crew and nothing to
lose Negomi could be in for a good season”. After that
prediction, Hills must have been disappointed with what
followed: third in the West Mersea to Burnham race, albeit
just 21 seconds behind Meriva; then fourth in the Harwich
to Hook of Holland race, won by her sister ship, “having
put in a much longer starboard tack after the last mark”,
according to Y&Y; and in the West Mersea to Zeebrugge
race Negomi grounded, having confused Blankenberg pier
with Zeebrugge Mole. Meriva was third.
Hills kept Negomi for 14 years before selling her to
Bernie Yendell, a shipwright from Penpol in Cornwall,
and one more owner followed before David Offord,
who had been looking for a family cruising boat, bought
