Affixed to the wall of the harbormaster's office in Durban, according to Vertue myth, is a notice. 'In winds over Force 7, no yacht may depart without my authority. Unless she's a Vertue.' It is the kind of story owners of these modest little cruising yachts tend to take with a pinch of salt. Vertues have made pioneering voyages, survived savage storms, written themselves into sailing history. Indeed, more has been written about this 25ft 3in Laurent Giles designed vessel than almost any other. There is no need for myth. The reality is enough.  Most extraordinary, perhaps, for a yacht whose wake has criss crossed every ocean, is that she was originally designed to do no more than potter about the Solent, cruise the West Country perhaps and hop down to the Channel Islands, and that today you can pick one up for well under £12,000 (an early Vertue went for £4,000 quite recently). Legends don't come much cheaper than that. The sum buys arguably the best loved small cruiser ever designed, complete with ready-made family, worldwide. It's not close in the sense that you'll find Vertue Owners' Association rallies every weekend where they poke about each others' topsides, before heading for the barbecue. Vertues tend to eschew that kind of thing. If there's a fair wind they'll like as not skip the rally and head down Channel. 'They're not into this "my varnish is better than yours" scene,' says, Matt Power, who sailed his 35-year-old Chinita to Spain last year, singlehanded. Peter Stevenson who restored Andrillot, V1, has been known to appear briefly at classic boat rallies, but is more often than not somewhere off the Casquets dodging the shipping, en route for favorite Brittany haunts. One rally he could not miss, however, was the class's 60th at the Royal Lymington some years ago. But then, very few classes have reached such an age. It's not smugness, just a spirit of individualism. 'Point a Virtue's nose to the horizon, and she just says "where shall we go?",' says Matt. Indeed it was just such a spirit that spawned the first of the class, Andrillot, in 1936. Weary of being bossed around aboard Roger Pinckney's old pilot cutter Dyarchy (he once had to retrieve old Mrs Pinckney's false teeth from a bucket) Guernseyman Dick Kinnersly approached Jack Giles for a boat of his own. The commission would not have been worth much, for the effort expended on such a small vessel, but he drew her well. Giles said he based the lines on those of French fishing boats, with a touch of West Country pilots, all leavened by current RORC's notions of a seagoing yacht.  Andrillot's lines echo those of Giles's little 23-footer, the Lymington Class. 'In general character she was like a Lymington One Design,' Giles's erstwhile partner Alan Roy once told me. 'Similar to a number of boats he produced, certainly pretty.' But not especially magic, he implied. Seeing them together you would never guess that one would achieve fame through her ocean exploits, the other remain a Solent day racing boat. 'Could you just draw out the LOD's lines a little,' Kinnersly had asked Giles 'as I want a boat in which two people can sleep, cook and go cruising.' He didn't mind a transom - it was cheaper not to draw the ends out - but the entry had to be good and he wanted 'plenty of air aloft,' which meant a topsail. Kinnersly had scant time to enjoy his overgrown Solent day sailer before war intervened, singlehanding home to Guernsey and up the Beaulieu River, engineless in the days when you could without T-boning Lord Whathisname's Nic 45. All modest enough stuff, until Humphrey Barton, keen to make a name for himself and his partner, Jack Laurent Giles, slipped Kinnersly £15 for the loan of Andrillot and set off down the Lymington River in the early hours of 12 June, returning after'a most enjoyable cruise...' 855 miles and 22 ports later, during which he proved that'the little boat certainly did go.' He then sailed Monie, No3, from Berthons in Lymington, round Britain anticlockwise to her new owner in Wales. 'Left or right,' he was supposed to have asked -at the mouth of the river. The reputation began. Lawrence Biddle was to add to that reputation two years later when he and Tony Hills sailed the fifth, Epeneta, to Belle lle and back to win the Little Ship Club's Vertue Cup, after which the class took its name. It was to be the first of four such cups won by the class (the latest being Melusine for a round Scotland voyage in 1995). Over 60 years later they still certainly do go. The Vertue has been through many changes above the water - higher topsides, longer coachroof, doghouses, rigs - but below they are the same. Andrillot's hull is identical to Vertue XXXV's hull in which Barton sailed to America in 1950, and survived a knockdown which shifted the coachroof off its carlins; 'the most perfect small ocean-going yacht that has ever been designed and built', said 'Hum' after arriving in New York, 47 days later. The same hull shape too as Cardinal Vertue which placed third in the first OSTAR behind Francis Chichester and Blondie Hasler, and became the smallest yacht to have rounded Cape Horn. Sold to Bill Nance, Cardinal Vertue was to circumnavigate the globe, one of four by the class, three of which were singlehanded. By then 100 Vertues had been built, the lines unchanged as Giles said some years later'l had not found a way to better them.' Transatlantics are two a penny. In 1956 David Robertson sailed singlehanded from Falmouth to the Bahamas, encountering hurricanes Connie and Dione with wind speeds estimated at 70mph. In 1953 Commander Hamilton had sailed his Speedwell of Hong Kong from Singapore to Portsmouth; in 1968 John Ryley sailed Sekyd, now owned by marine photographer Lester McCarthy from Woodbridge, via the French canals to the Red Sea. But roll calls don't tell the real story - of modest little boats, touched by greatness, which epitomise all one could ever ask for in a cruising yacht. If the term 'little ship' could apply to any class, it would be the Vertue, a friendly, boaty boat which brings smiles to the faces of those who own them, and to those who watch them drop anchor, and can't wait to row over to ask the perennial question 'is she a Vertue? Lucky man'. One such was Russell Heath, who sailed Kainui from Juneau, Alaska to Ecuador, then west to the Galapagos, Pitcairn and up through tropicai isles to Fiji. He then sailed south to New Zealand, across the Tasman Sea, where she was knocked down, shifting her doghouse, cracking her deck and injuring her skipper (who hit the deckhead). To cut a long story short, he sailed on, via Sri Lanka, Sudan and Suez, arriving back in Alaska four years and 37,000 miles after he set out, all singlehanded. In a letter to Matthew Power Heath refers to his adventure as 'just another trip'. When the time came to sell her, the emotion bit deep. 'With tears in my eyes she has passed from my life, though she still visits me in my dreams.' Power himself came under the spell of his Chinita 15 years ago, and the story is typical. In 1992 he sailed her to the West Indies, largely singlehanded, and the friendships he made, and the memories gathered, have sustained him ever since. 'I'd have been so lonely on a Beneteau,' he says. 'It's the boat that does it.' On a trip last year to the rias of North Spain, which won the RCC Bowl, he found himself being scooped up by local cruising club folk wherever he dropped anchor, taken to parties, fed and watered. Let's take Chinita as a case study. 'I doubt whether the shipwrights involved in building Job No 1122 ever imagined her still to be around in 35 years time,' says Matt. 'They certainly never thought she would one day be regarded as a classic.' Chinita is planked in 1 in teak on ipol frames, a form of teak that is now impossible to obtain. She was built in Kowloon to Lloyds 100A1 by Cheoy Lee. Delivered with Ratsey sails, teak cradle engine and full inventory she cost £3,000 from Salterns Yacht Agency in Birdham Pool. Matt stumbled upon her in Chichester'with an hour to spare' between a business meeting on a wet November day in 1984. 'She seemed rather like a down at heel actress who had seen better days. l was hooked,' he recalls. Despite her sagging tarpaulin and air of neglect, he made an offer, which was rejected. 'Maybe it was folly to try and buy a boat I could not really afford. l felt fate would continue to give us a hand. l felt meant for Chinita.' His persistence earned him an invitation to dinner at the owner's home in Reigate. 'It was a bit like taking his daughter's hand in marriage. l suppose in a way it was. A few days later he rang me to say that she was mine if I wanted.' Chinita claimed her next victim. 'The surveyor said she had been "built like a bloody cathedral".' Brought up on Peter Pye and Eric Hiscock, Matthew sailed away in the spring of 1991 on a classic transatlantic circuit, throwing up pension and career. 'The whole voyage lasted just under a year and cost me probably the same amount as a moderate used car. Unlike the car, the memories of that experience and the friendships gained will always remain with me. There is something fundamentally romantic about crossing oceans in an old wooden boat.' Especially a Vertue, one might add, from whose lines Giles 'scaled up' the sublime Dyarchy, near the top of most people's poll of all-time greats which spawned the Brittany, Wanderer and Channel classes, establishing Giles as a designer. 'A great little ship. Strikingly shapely'wrote Yachting Monthly of Andrillot in 1935. 'Every inch a thoroughbred and an object of admiration wherever she goes,' according to Andrew Pool in Yachting Monthly 1975. And today, when so many boats lack in character what they have gained in headroom and electronics, the Vertue has never looked prettier. My own boat, Sally II, has no grand exploits to her name; in fact she was born somewhat under a cloud, as the 'great' man appears to have got his ballasting sums wrong. A few weeks after I bought her I took her to YM's Classic Rally in Cowes, and within hours I had discovered the name of the shipwright who built her, joined the Vertue Owners' Association and met Matt Power, the secretary. Having quite rightly decided I might be fit to own her, l was welcomed into what seemed like a select club. A year later, direct from a West Country cruise, she sailed into Lymington astern of Andrillot on the class's 60th anniversary rally. Sally is a modest little vessel, with no headroom and simple accommodation. She was never meant to sail anywhere other than the confines of the Solent and around the Western Approaches, which she has been doing now for over 60 years. l have traced many of her owners, including the wife of the man who had her built, now living in Falmouth. We saw her again only last year. 'I loved her, though,' she had written to me 'and we had some lovely sails in her.' In 15 or so owners she has travelled neither across ocean, nor to twenty Brittany ports in as many days, like her predecessor Andrillot, but her owners remember her with affection just the same. Graham Miller, who owned her in the late 1960s, wrote to me in 1995 of escapades in the Channel Islands, engines refusing to start and the smell of frying bacon from the galley in Lezardrieux. Of landfalls in Force 9s and scraping the Shingles bank. I had sent him some photos of her as she is now. 'The photos arrived and they tell a story,' he wrote back. The letter covered three closely typed pages, recounting all manner of exploits 'Sally is loved. And as her ex-lover, I am so pleased that she is in good hands.' The secret of her success lies in many factors: her reputation as a seaboat far beyond her size; her pioneering exploits in the hands of famous yachtsmen and her looks, which are almost a child's idea of prettiness -bold sheer, lofty rig, perky bow, neat, pert transom. Pre-war Vertues are especially attractive, if cramped, as the topsides are a strake lower. Unless you enjoy yachting as it was in the 1930s, sitting room only, these are strictly for the purists. Owning one is a commitment. 'The romance can go out of it after a year,' says Matthew. 'Like a beautiful girl. It's all wonderful for a while then it's time for a Beneteau, with a big, powerful engine that goes astern. Owners willing to keep boats like a wooden Vertue year in year out are harder to find. The romance wears off.' For those who decide to persevere, tackle the gribble in the sternpost, recaulk the garboards, learn the ways of an old yacht, wonder at the mundane skills of the common shipwrights working for pennies in unheated yards, any old boat will pay back more than she cost. A Vertue, so their owners would have us believe, pays back a little bit more. BUYING A VERTUE Wooden Vertues seldom come on to the market. When they do expect to pay between £12-25,000, depending on condition. At the time of writing there were, unusually, two on the market, Vega of Bosham and Tom Thumb, built in teak, originally to Lloyds A1, by Kimbers. Hong Kong-built, teak, Cheoy Lee Vertues are highly sought after. Scantlings in all cases are massive, by today's standards, the Vertue is probably the heaviest cruising boat for its size ever built. Pre war examples, despite being over 60 years old, have fared well, as the timber chosen - mostly impossible-to-obtain longleaf pitch pine - was premium grade and the craftsmanship superb. Immediately after the war timber shortages and high wages conspired to reduce quality overall, but there are exceptions. When good wood reappeared, quality returned, and the 'never had it so good' 1 960s saw a final flourishing of traditional boat building, before the slide into glass fibre. Pitch pine on oak is a classic combination that, with bronze floors keel bolts and lead keel will endure virtually for ever, if maintaine8. Teak examples are equally durable, but heavier. A good combination is teak above and pitch pine below the waterline. Mahogany is much more common. A few have been built in steel and a handful in epoxy/strip planking. Surveyor Eric Adams remarked some years ago of the class: '...they are extremely well designed structurally, using the best boatbuilding practices at the time of build. Naturally, older boats will have suffered some deterioration of perishable items such as the canvas-covered decks and coach roof tops.' He suggested checking hood end and garboard fastenings for signs of dezincification and drawing a keelbolt or two, along with a chain plate fastening. 'The construction,' he concluded' was very sound with all scantlings and fittings of adequate size to pass the test of time. You do not often find fractured timbers or signs of planking working on a Vertue.' In the 1970s the idea of a glass Vertue was mooted. 'I cannot help but feel that any such project could only result in the production of a yacht very different from the present Vertue,' wrote a wooden Vertue owner at the time. 'I think it would be wrong to attach the title of Vertue to any such craft.' Thank goodness that elitist attitude no longer prevails, and over 30 glassfibre Vertue lls are afloat, and welcomed at Vertue gatherings. These are a shade lighter, a touch beamier and much more civilised than pre-war. |
