|
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. |
