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NOVEMBER 1989 £1.50 |W Dov ydNH/8d ISSN O144-2910| Beach Yawls at Southwold As I mentioned last time, I borrowed a boat that had been built in the 1920s with the intention of sailing her in one of the regattas arranged at Southwold during August. The Southwold Regattas date from the early years of the century, when the small Suffolk town first became a fashionable seaside resort of the more respectable sort. Comfortably-off families would take a “cottage”, often a substantial house, for at least a month during the school holidays and the children, with mother and servants, would stay for the whole month while father came down at weekends and possibly for a week at some stage during the stay. Many of the early regular visitors came from Ipswich, but the origins of the “Southwold regatta families” are now widespread. To extend the range of entertainment provided for such summer visitors the local council let a concession to a company to provide a very small pier, a tea room and a boating lake at the northern limit of the town. There was already a small model yacht pond at the other end of town on the road to the Walberswick ferry and on this the Council itself promoted model sailing regattas. The Pier company quickly found that its various attractions could be supplemented by the addition of a model pond alongside the boating pool and set up its own regattas in competition. Entry was a penny a boat per race and pre-entry was the norm at an office on the pier. Races were run every Saturday and some days midweek throughout the season. The competitive promotion seems to have ceased about the time of the 1914 war and the pier and associated facilities were taken over by the council. At some time in the 1920s the organisation of the competitions was taken over by a committee elected from among the families who were regular summer visitors and this organisation has continued with very few changes to run the summer regattas ever since. In several cases three generations of the same family have now been involved, and family relay races are a feature of the programme. Over the years the pond, Above, a 27in. beach yawl model dating from the 1920s as she was when | borrowed her. Above and below, most of the other boats there had much more pronounced distortions of the full-size profile than did mine. Both these were somewhat /ater than mine. My model on the water. The sails are clearly too small for the boat and much smaller than those on the boat in the background. NOVEMBER 1989 which is maintained by the council, has been enlarged, improved and moved a short distance. The rating rule to which the boats are built is a simple hull length measurement with no restriction on sail area, bowsprits or bumkins. Boats range from 15 to 36 inches overall and have no rudders. Races are normally sailed as a “there and back” from one side of the lake to the other and depending on the wind will give a close fetch one way and a quartering run the other. Starts are on a handicap basis of so many seconds per inch of length. Boats start against the watch with the smallest boats going off first. The hull was quite slippery and moved well even with the reduced sail plan. Full-size Beach Yawls The boats in the early years were typically bought from the local fishermen who supplied a range of types, but from the earliest times one of the most popular was one based on the beach yawl. These in the full-size were lug rigged local craft which in the smaller sizes were used for fishing off the beach but developed into a specialist type used to service shipping passing along the East Anglian coast. They were used as pilot boats, as supply boats to feed and water ships anchored off the coast waiting for a wind and, most significantly, as salvage craft. All along the coast there were specialist Beach Companies that would own one or more of _ these big beach yawls in which they would seek to be the first to get a line on board ships in distress. The companies were financed on a cooperative basis by herring fishermen as a means of livelihood in the winter months when the fishing was at a standstill and the chance of salvage at its best. Typically a company would have 40 or so members and shares would change hands for £40 a time in the middle of the last century. Each company had a boathouse and lookout station from which likely targets would be sought. Despite the requirement to go to sea in all weathers they were open boats, up to 50ft. long, double ended, clinker built to very light scantlings and with little in the way of a keel to give a grip on the water. 56 Above, two beautifully built clinker planked hulls. These date from the 1920s and though much deeper in the body than the real thing do not have so exaggerated a deadwood. Stability was assisted by bags of shingle ballast which were shifted from side to side as the boat changed tack. There was provision for oars, but these seem to have been seldom used. The rig was very large with a dipping lug on the foremast and a standing lug on the mizzen. They were capable of great speed, 16 knots on a reach is claimed, and were sailed with the lee rail under, requiring a third of the crew to bail continuously to keep the boat afloat. The dipping lug, shifting ballast and bailing meant that they carried large crews, which would be needed for salvage work if they succeeded in reaching their quarry first and in negotiating a suitable price for the work. Model Beach Yawls Some of the earliest photos of models at Southwold showa race for beach yawls. These had been adopted as a model class by the model yacht club at Lowestoft in the 1880s. The drawings of the style of boat sailed at Lowestoft show craft essentially similar to the full-size boat in hull form, but decked and with the rigs adapted to suit model requirements with standing lug on both masts. The Southwold style of boat, as seen today, but with most of the boats having been designed and built in the 1920s and 30s, has developed much further down the road of the practical sailing model. Though instantly recognisable as deriving from the beach yawl, it shows very significant differences from its full-size progenitor. The hull is deeper than in the original; the keel is deeper again and there is a substantial lead ballast. The aft deadwood is much more pronounced and there is a significant drag to the keel line, so that the boats draw more aft than forward. The volumes of the hull are quite differently disposed from those of the full-size beach yawl. While the latter is a fine bodied shape with a long straight of breadth and essentially similar ends, the model is beamier, and is very definitely “full forward and fine aft”, as one would expect in a model designed to sail a straight course at various angles of heel. The rig is a standing lug on each mast and the sails are equipped with booms to MODEL BOATS Southwold skippers come in a full range of Sizes… spread the foot, a device never found on the full-size originals. The rigs stand high and the proportions of the sails are remarkably tall, showing that the hulls are much more stable than the originals. The boat that I borrowed was 27in. long and had been built in the 1920s for a girl whose father was in fact a resident of Southwold and a well known East Coast yachtsman in the first two decades of the century. Now a lady of over 70, she had kept the boat and had started to re-rig it. (Photo 1). In the very brief time I had to play with the boat before taking it to Southwold, I decided to keep the foresail she had made and to replace the mizzen with a “temporary” sail run up out of a white plastic bin liner. The idea was to do some sailing trials and replace the mizzen with a cotton sail when I was satisfied that I had the sail proportions right. As is always the case, there wasn’t enough time and once I had satisfied myself that the rig would sail the boat effectively on beat, … to suit the models. was sailed off on a complex series of round robin heats to ensure that all the kids had a fair amount of time on the water before being eliminated. Add on time for resails, and there can be a lot if you sail in six boat heats, and the start time for the yawl race was drifting out to the left at an alarming rate for those who intended to be back in London that night, so I decided that I wouldn’t push my luck in the race itself. It was an enjoyable and instructive day, but I don’t think I would have done any good in a serious race against the other boats that were there and the honour of the MYA is not to be lightly thrown away in competition with model yachtsmen so unserious that they only do it for a few weeks each year. The rest of the information about the photos is in the somewhat extended captions. Next month a discussion of the Vintage day at Poole and an important announcement about the future organisation of the Vintage Group. Contact address, R. R. Potts, 8 Sherard Road, London SE9 6EP. Tel: 01-850 6805. reach and run and that she looked quite fast when she was on the water by herself, I called it a day. With hindsight and having seen the other yawls when I got to Southwold, I should have made two new sails which would have been bigger. The hull, even though it was a lot more delicate than some of the other boats that were there, would certainly have carried a bigger rig and the performance didn’t look so impressive in speed terms when set against the other boats that were turning up during the morning. You will see from Photo 2 that the sail plan is modest compared to the similar boat in the background and that the sails do not fill the available space between hoist and deck so effectively. Despite this, they gave her a good turn of speed (Photo 3) and I managed to master the trimming required to get the boat to sail sensibly across the pond both ways. The regatta was a special to help commemorate the 500th anniversary of the Borough of Southwold and included a number of events besides the beach yaw] competition which I hoped to sail in. One of these other events was for children and NOVEMBER 1989 These shots show the much beamier hull form of the model yaw! and how the displacement is moved forward for better hull balance. Although there is no theory behind the shape, there is a lot of experience of sailing models and adapting their form to get a practical sailing model. 57
