AUTUMN NEWSLETTER -28- OCTOBER 2024
Welcome to the antidote to budgets and elections!
I’m delighted to introduce this autumn Newsletter with a couple of images of Wellow Maid, one of those rare and elegant Vertues built from the Monie drawings. The first image, above, shows the wonderful conditions in which her every need is carefully administered by her doting owners Richard and Marion Heming. The boat is based in Yarmouth, Isle of Wight, and can be seen sailing in the western Solent and beyond, where she appears in the picture below.
Wellow Maid surging along on a sparkling summers day in the Solent.
We are just completing an update of the background technology of the website, after which we are planning a number of further improvements. As ever we’re very keen to receive more news, ideas and illustrations from all of you fellow Vertue enthusiasts…..
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Here is Ben Deveson’s smart steel boat Virtue bustling along in her home waters of the Netherlands.
Ben publishes an excellent website Vertue 61 describing his adventures with Virtue which was the first of the Dutch built steel Vertues from the early 1950’s. It’s always good to hear vertual news from continental Europe, where wooden, steel, grp, foam sandwich and an aluminium boat are based.
Just proving that Vertues are fast, here Virtue V61appears to be sailing straight past the metre boat!
This is one of Ben’s beautifully evocative photographs of the nature of sailing in Dutch waters.
Like all Vertues, details of this boat, and some of her history can be found by typing her name into the search box, which appears on every page.
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Karesta Farida, a ‘Giles 5 tonner’ like her sister Sally II, is still sailing out of Rhode Island, on the east coast of the USA.
Dominic Zachorne has owned the boat for a number of years and is a very skilled rigger and shipwright. As can be seen, he keeps his boat looking immaculate. She was built in Pin Mill at the outbreak of peace in 1945. Alongside her was Arthur Ransome’s ‘marine bathchair’, Peter Duck, that Jack Giles had designed for him. Dominic has also taken on the completion of a major project with Bill Cabeen’s old Alaria. After Bill’s untimely death, the boat was taken to the US East coast and various works were completed before she was bought by an enthusiast. Perhaps having seen and admired what happened to Kainui, the well-travelled Vertue in Maine, it was decided to replace the standard doghouse and coachroof with a smaller, lower coachroof without a doghouse.
Alaria‘s transformation in progress
Unfortunately, as Alaria’s latest owner has now also passed away, Dominic has stepped in to complete the work, at least as far as making the boat seaworthy again. His aim is to put the boat back on the market, so if anyone on the US East coast wishes to take on one of the nicest Vertues around, then please get in touch with me, and I will pass you on to Dominic.
Alaria under sail off the Californian coast.
My wife and I have very fond memories of sailing on the boat with Bill, out of Los Angeles about twenty years ago, and hope very much that she finds a good home before too long.
Another boat we remember from rather further back was the old Kitto-built Pilot Cutter Raider, ex Rene B. Dominic tells me he has also taken on her restoration, and having spent almost a decade doing the same thing with the Olga through the 1970’s, we can appreciate his excitement at the prospect.
Raider has been in the USA for many years now, but in 1969, we were moored near to her in Gibraltar, in between a couple of yacht delivery jobs. The ‘dockyard’ moorings and nearby, rickety ‘marina’ berths were largely occupied by young, impecunious (like ourselves) enthusiasts in those days, with not many pennies between them to rub together. The Raider, a cheap ‘liveaboard’ for a delightful young couple, was moored to one of the broken-down ‘marina’ walkways, when a very smart, rather flashy, aluminium motor-yacht came and moored alongside, to await her turn on the slipway for some work to her huge twin engines. A few days after she arrived, it was noticed that Raider‘s copper sheathing seemed to have become a bit cleaner, as the weed dropped off, and in a couple of weeks it was quite shiny. In due course, the motor yacht was duly towed over to the slipway, and as she was hauled up, both engines fell out of her wafer-thin bottom. We have always thought of the Raider as rather a lucky ship, and would like to wish Dominic the best of luck with her.
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Sally II anchored in Studland Bay in 1965
Having mentioned Sally II earlier, I recently came across this image I took almost half a century ago with my little box camera. We were sailing the boat from Salcombe to her home on the Hamble river, and after a wild overnight sail across Lyme Bay, anchored here for a while before completing the passage. Sally is now for sale and her details can be found in the Vertues for Sale section elsewhere on the website. You can see here how she was built without the usual thickened sheerstrake that is one of the hallmarks of the Vertue Class.
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Fionne is an Australian built Vertue, looking for a new owner in Essex.
Fionne shows her ostensible ‘working boat’ ancestry more than most. Her gaff cutter rig, proper bowsprit bitts, channels, and deadeyes and lanyard shrouds make her probably the most traditional Vertue afloat. She has also come onto the market and I am about to add her to the growing list of Vertues for sale, elsewhere.
Even Andrillot‘s gaff cutter rig was more ‘yachty’ than ‘working boat’ compared with that of Fionn.
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The ‘Big Vertue’ Fairlight is For Sale.
After many years of cruising in northwest Europe and the Mediterranean, George Hayes has very reluctantly decided to pass on Fairlight to a younger owner. I have had the good fortune to sail aboard her several times over recent years and can only describe her as absolutely outstanding. I have often wondered why more, larger Vertues, such as Kalliste at 28 ft. overall, and Fairlight, 39ft. on deck, with her elegant, long ‘stepped’ coachroof and easily handled rig have not been replicated like, say the Brittany’s or the Channel Class. (I don’t consider that the Wanderer class is quite central enough in the Vertue Design Dynasty to be included here, as they were designed to quite a different set of parameters that the Giles Partnership had developed since the conception of Isabella and Andrillot.) She strides along with dry decks and has the space below that we Vertue owners can only dream of! George has lavished endless care and attention on her for decades and I hope that she will continue to grace these West Country waters for many more years. (Although she would clearly make the perfect ocean cruising yacht for the Vertue enthusiast who requires something with luxurious deck space, accommodation and the seakindly manners that only we can understand.) See also March 2023 Newsletter for more details.
Fairlight is lying near Falmouth in Cornwall. Built by J. Hinks and Son in Bideford in 1938. 5 berths in two cabins. 39’on deck, 32′ lwl, 10’8″ beam, 6′ draft. 50 hp. Volvo diesel. £78,000.
Contact me for more details.
Fairlight. The ultimate big Vertue.
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Our old friend Steve Ogglesby, who helped us launch VertueYachts.com over a decade ago, has retired and handed over the background technology that keeps the site afloat to new brains. Thank you Steve, and welcome aboard Richard! My apologies for the slight hiccup for a day or two recently, whilst the technicalities were handed over and sorted. We’re back on course now, and hope you have all enjoyed this latest Newsletter.
We have a number of ideas for improving the site, and hope you will continue to enjoy it as much as we do. We’re going to revisit the boat entries and update them, and hope that you will check yours, if you have one, and let us know of anything new that should be included. We’re also planning to extend this ‘listing’ feature to include some of the Vertues’ fellow designs from within the Design Dynasty that has developed here in the past couple of years. So we are also going to highlight the Lymington ‘L’ class and the Wanderer class quite soon and are keen to hear from any of their owners. Please see the links we set up to keep up to date with the expanding database being developed by our new friends in the Normandy class gang!
With best wishes and fair winds,
Roger Robinson
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