“I’ve been a secret Old Gaffer all this time”
I don’t own Wendy May, she owns me. I’m just the custodian. She was built for an army officer in 1936 by Williams & Parkinson in North Wales. Their brief was to ‘build a boat that can sail around Brittany and dry out on legs’. She has a frame or rib every 6in and is fantastically strong – so she easily meets that brief. It’s the most magical thing you can do, sailing an old classic boat – but I’ve owned many boats beforehand.
Back in 2010 I was offered work in Gallions Point Marina in London. I needed somewhere to stay and so bought a broken-down ferrocement schooner for £1,500. The boat, called Gloria, was in a terrible condition. In the sunlight you could see right through the coachroof. She’d been built too heavy and floated 6in below the waterline. She was never going to be a good boat. The first time I went hard astern, the engine moved, but not the boat. Little things like that are a dead giveaway…
When my job finished I stepped the masts and put a new coachroof on. I managed to get her round to Battlesbridge, near Southend-On-Sea, and met my good friend Edmund Whelan, who’d just retired from the RYA where for 24 years he’d been working as a legal
