The View from the Helm

DIGGING OUT 80-YEAR OLD FASTENINGS

I’ve enjoyed my retirement, really I have. Sure I miss the process, the challenges, my genius employees and the beautiful yachts we created, but I love the small boats most of all, the ones that attracted me  to a life of sailing. So when I phoned my brother from the midst of a winter holiday in New Zealand and he hit me with, “we’ve got this Herreshoff 12 ½ up at the boatyard and we can’t find ANYONE with your skills to restore it”, well…

The boatyard is on Cranberry Island, reachable only by a small wooden boat from Mount Desert Island, and this is the middle of winter. The commute itself is, can be, downright dangerous in an easterly wind. We leave at 6:00 in the morning and when we get to the island climb into a rusty old truck, an “island truck” that deteriorated beyond any hope of passing inspection twenty years ago, and spew a plume of blue oil-smoke another mile to the yard. This is a “real Maine” boatyard that forgot to leave the 19th century. There is no bathroom- all of the employees are male and find a spot out in back of one of the sheds for this necessity. But if you can find them beneath a century’s worth of too-good-to-discard chunks of hardwood, shelves of every color paint ever chosen by boatowners long departed, and modern batts of fiberglass cloth and epoxy resins– the bins full of ancient tools left behind by craftsmen sadly no longer available at any price in our benighted land are balm to a restless artisan like me who appreciates the  heft in his hand of a tool that was not made in China to look good in a blister-pack.

Next week I will be in Rome studying Carravagios and Da Vincis. What a life!

My Talk in London

Here I am giving my talk at the Cruising Association in London. It went well judging by the fact that everyone was still awake after 70 minutes, and there were a few good laughs (most at my own expense). For the first time in nearly 40 years I divulged the identity of the lovely young lady who was the inspiration for my first design, the Frances 26. That’s her peeking at you, Frances Cairncross, now a world-famous economist and the rector (president) of Exeter College at Oxford. She was a wonderful dancer and turned me from a pathologically selfish 22-year old into a functioning human being.

A FRANCES 26 at Warsash

I’ll be giving an illustrated talk about my yacht designs on 9 January at 7pm at the Cruising Association House, Limehouse Basin, in London. You are cordially invited to attend.

If your friends, crew or spouse love boating, you could give them the best holiday gift ever. Chuck’s book on yacht design is the most informative, most lavishly illustrated, most appreciated gift you could give anyone who loves yachts. Don’t miss out—there are only 128 copies left in print so you will not have this opportunity next year! If you buy it on Amazon by clicking here,

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the shipping costs are slightly lower. If you buy it on this website Chuck Paine will happily endorse the book for the recipient. You can be a hero, but act now… they’ll be sold out by Christmas!

Here’s Harriet Rose. The first time I ever got to sail a CAROL, something like thirty years after I first designed her. Everyone had told me that she sailed great, and my first impression was, they were right. We didn’t have much wind, though, and we had the engine ticking over to show a little wake, so I’ll just have to find my way to Chichester, England again next year to try her out in a bit more breeze. The interior is tiny but it really does work, albeit with the seat cushions closer to the floor that they would be on a larger boat. Once the depression gets going you could do worse in your unemployment than buy a set of plans for this wonderful minimalist cruiser and say to hell with it all, build a CAROL for yourself, and spend your time cruising.