Writing now, over a decade since we started, I seem to have settled down to the production of an eclectic selection of quarterly Newsletters, and continued research into the origins and development of the Vertue class. I finished that initial research into as many of the boats that I could trace over two years ago, and this is now the only comprehensive, accurate, ‘list’ of boats built to the various manifestations of the Vertue design to be developed by the Laurent Giles Partnership over the years.
I have also managed to build quite an extensive network of Vertue owners and enthusiasts all over the world, and some of these have increasingly supported the production of the Newsletters with their own photographs and stories. This was always the aim, and gradually, I am hoping that we will be able to recreate a new version of what used to be the Vertue Owners Association.
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This is what we said on starting the Site in 2014
“The desire to take on the challenge of developing this website stems from a long personal involvement with Vertue yachts. It is a modest connection, more intellectual than adventurous, and started with my father’s acquisition of Hoitak, V 116, the first of the Cheoy Lee built boats to be shipped into London from Hong Kong during the early 1960’s. The cover of the sales brochure had a beautiful Beken photograph of an Elkins built boat called Raumati, beating bravely down the Solent in a fresh breeze, and I pinned a copy up on my bedroom wall!
Hoitak appeared at the January Boat Show, then we joined her in Birdham before Easter to sail her up to Whitby, her new home port. A few years later we sailed her down to Salcombe from where she continued to cruise within the confines of the English Channel and we lovingly re-varnished her gleaming teak topsides every year. Every spring her galvanised standing rigging was recoated with boiled linseed oil, the 8 hp Stuart Turner petrol motor was overhauled and she was taken out to her mooring in The Bag, above Salcombe town, awaiting more gentle cruising. A trip into the middle of rural France via the River Seine and those wonderfully tranquil canals was the only ‘voyage’ of note. She is now based in the Solent.
Many years later I owned Kandy V 39, which we also based in Salcombe. She was quite a different boat to Hoitak in many ways, but sailed equally well and had the same immaculate manners under sail.
When Mike Woodhouse offered to hand over the reins of the old VOA (Vertue Owners Association) website to my son George and me a year ago, neither he nor we expected this amount of time to pass before anything appeared! Many thanks, Mike, for your patience and for the amazing amount of work you have put in to the Vertue Owners Association over more than the last decade.
It is hoped that the worldwide communications and support for the site that we have already experienced will continue and we are looking forward to building a worthwhile successor to all the VOA work that has been done in the past.
Although it has taken far too long to get this website launched since Mike Woodhouse passed it on to us, we have not been idle. Indeed we would like to thank the many Vertue owners and others who have been in touch with information and yarns, all of whom have encouraged us to give it a go.
We have heard from Mike Mckean with a wonderfully colourful account of his tragic loss of Austral Vertue in the South Pacific. We have heard from Bill Rogers about his rebuild of Davalan in Massachusetts, and from the owners of Aries II in San Francisco. A visit to New Zealand over our winter revealed the results of an outstanding nine-year ‘deep’ refit of Vertue of Kent up the river near Whangarei. I even discovered a ‘racing’ Vertue in a barn near Keri Keri: Antonio Pasquale’s Vivaldi took a bit of finding as she was ten miles inland, but the hunt was worth it!
Across the Tasman Sea in Hobart Michael Vaughan kindly took us for a gentle sail aboard his immaculate Island Vertue. Watch out for the link to next year’s Vertue World Championships which he is organising as part of the famous Australian Wooden Boat Festival! Nearby Bruce and Thelma Morley’s breathtakingly beautiful ‘Ocean’ Vertue, Tui of Opua, lent tone to an otherwise patchy collection of craft in the marina.
We are aiming to bring you pictures and words about all these fine boats before too long……. Meanwhile, please see The Boats section with information on how to tell us about your Vertue: if you’re lucky enough to own one!”
Roger Robinson
speedwelltwo@gmail.com
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