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Offshore cruising in an open boat can be hard, cold, wet, lonely and occasionally miserable, but it is exhilarating too. To take an open dinghy across a hundred miles of sea, taking weather as it comes; to know that you have only yourself and your mate to rely on in an emergency; to see the…

Ian Proctor (1918-1992) possibly did more to influence small boat design and small boat sailing than any other designer. His innovative designs and ideas in hull shape, mast design and manufacture, production methods, and yachting equipment modernised the whole concept of small boat sailing and made a vital contribution to the popularising of the sport.…

Born in 1901, Percy Mitchell, of Portmellon, near Mevagissey in Cornwall, was variously described by some of his more technically qualified contemporaries as “one of the finest traditional boat builders in the world” and as “an artist in wood”. He left elementary school at the age of 14 just after the outbreak of World War…

One of the most prolific and pioneering boat designers of the twentieth century was Uffa Fox (1898-1972). Although responsible for fewer individual designs than some other well-known designers, such as Ian Proctor, Uffa Fox has designs to his credit covering a wide range of boat types, including sailing dinghies, racing keelboats, sailing cruisers in a…

Although a distinct design in her own right, in many ways Sea Queen looks like a smaller version of the better known Looe Lugger or Falmouth Working Boat. Mevagissey Toshers (Tossers or Toshers) is a name generically applied to small fishing boats), were built in Mevagissey and nearby Portmellon for use by Cornish fishermen for…

During the early part of the 20th century, post-war Britain was pursuing high speed technology. Between 1922 and 1936, for example, Sir Malcolm Campbell broke no less than twelve land speed records in a series of increasingly powerful cars. In 1929 at the Miami Regatta Sir Henry Segrave became the first Englishman to beat Gar…

Commander John Watkinson, an experienced and accomplished Naval Officer, left the Royal Navy in 1958 and bought a boatyard, Kelly and Hall, to try his hand at a new venture. In 1964 he sold the yard and moved to Drascombe Barton in Devon, where he set about designing a family-friendly sailing boat. In his own…

On 4-5 June 1976, Derek Hutchinson (leader), Tom Caskey and Dave Hellawell paddled their kayaks from Felixstowe Ferry, Suffolk to Ostend, Belgium, over 100 miles of open sea in 31 hours. This was to be the first recorded unsupported West-East crossing of the North Sea by kayak. In August 1975, Hutchinson, a school teacher by…

Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious or Superdocious for short, was sailed by Rodney Pattisson and Iain Macdonald-Smith to Gold Medal victory in the 1968 Olympic Games. They won a record–breaking 6 out of 7 races, and used the trapeze, a device which had in earlier years been banned as unsporting. The Flying Dutchman Class was designed through a collaboration…