Best ever boats

AS REVIEWED BY YOU

‘The Dabber is about as near a perfect boat for its intended use’
CLIVE MARSH

‘The Macgregor 26 allows for a huge variety of boating at relatively low cost’
ROLY SIMPSON

‘The Tanton 43 makes sail-handling easier for shorthanded cruisers’
NICK CHARMAN

CLIVE MARSH

Drascombe Dabber

I was staying at the Coast Guard Cottage on Wembury Point on the River Yealm. The only practical way to get there from Newton Ferrers, where I parked the car, was to row to the cottage’s little jetty. This was, of course, fun on a fine day but you needed to take some care when the tide was running to weave between the moored yachts. Like most rivers and creeks on the South Coast the Yealm has become a boat park.

My tender could get a little crowded with four people and their luggage so I normally made two trips.

On one occasion with six of us I was ferrying back and forth most of the day. I noticed that a resident in another cottage had a more substantial tender and on closer inspection I could see it was a Drascombe Dabber with no rig, just a pair of oars. I got chatting with the owner who told me that he’d never sailed the boat but that there were bits of rigging left in the boat shed.

Upon inspection we found a mast, spar, mainsail, rigging, rudder, tiller and mainsheet with a few blocks. Missing were the jib, the mizzen mast and mizzen sail.

I asked this gentleman if he’d like to come for a sail and he said he would in a few days so I set about rigging the boat. With half the sails and rigging missing I expected we’d need the oars. However, I was