A unique rig

I was taking my weekly walk along Chichester harbour when I first saw her. There, on the hard standing at Birdham Pool, was a vessel like nothing I’d seen before.

Approaching from the bow the first thing that struck me was the… mast? At least I thought it was a mast. I’d never seen anything like it. I still haven’t.

I walked slowly along her length, pausing to examine the hull and keel. I looked up at what was now obviously, in my mind, the mast – or at least the structure that supported the sail. Or was that sails? Two tapering wooden ladders were inclined inwards and joined at their tops. There seemed to be a boom for a main sail (something, at least, was reassuringly familiar), but there were also two additional booms that looked like they might wing out for downwind use, and also two forestays and halyards – side by side, not behind one another – that reinforced this idea.

I was just about to say something to my partner, along the lines of how unusual this vessel was, when she beat me to it.

“That’s the weirdest boat I’ve ever seen!”

Then we examined the stern and the weirdness level increased. Eventually, after studying various other aspects of the design, I noticed her name. Boleh.

The designer

Commander Robin Kilroy, DSC, was a naval aviator and keen sailor. In 1932 he was posted to China and it was there that he first came to admire the sailing qualities of the junk-rigged vessels used along the coast, and the seamanship of their crews.

He’d also been impressed by the lug-rigged vessels he’d previously seen in Gozo, and in 1937 had taken two extended sailing trips in the Eastern Med where he began to formulate the qualities for his ideal cruising yacht.

The outbreak of war curtailed