Dads first boat

[Wansworth]

Sometime in the late 1950 he decided to buy a boat.We had a trial run in a slipper launch at Teddington but for some reason he bought a 15 footer with a three foot iron bowsprit and a lug rig on a bamboo mast.For some reason it languished in the front garden for several years until 1963 when with the help of a neighbours he designed a Bermudian rig using the same mast.1964 saw the family move to near Chichester and the boat was kept on the mud at Littlehampton.He taught me to sail in “Dora” and by 1966 it became virtually my boat

 

[johnalison]

Good story. My father always dreamed of having a boat. He bought a National 12 before the war and kept it at Bourne End on the Thames. I knew nothing about it until we were taken there one day and saw the hull sitting in a shed somewhere in maybe about 1950. I don’t remember hearing any more and presume that it was left to rot, never having been sailing since before the war. My father also ordered a sea-going boat, maybe something like a 2.5-tonner, from Mitchell’s at Portmellon before the war but events intervened and it never happened. This was the yard that Helen Tew’s boat ‘Helen’ came from.