Yard News
Edited by Steffan Meyric Hughes: +44 (0)207 349 3758 Email: steffan@classicboat.co.uk
FAIRLIE, SCOTLAND
Duncan Walker’s
Duncan Walker and naval architect Paul Spooner were at the helm of more large Fife yacht restorations than anyone else in the world in the heyday of big yacht restorations (17 in all) – the late 1980s to around 2010. Working until 2016 as Fairlie Restorations on England’s south coast, they were behind names like Tuiga, Altair, Mariquita, Hallowe’en and Moonbeam of Fife.
Duncan has now moved temporarily to a large shed just half a mile from where these boats were built, in the village of Fairlie in Scotland, to take on the restoration of his last Fife. Why his last?, originally built as a Clyde 32 linear Rater named , similar to our January cover boat, , the 1904 Clyde 30 linear Rater. was built just one year after, in 1905 and, like was originally gaff rigged and since converted to Bermudan sloop rig; in this instance with an aluminium mast and wooden boom. The rig will remain as is, but most of the rest of the yacht needs attention, having suffered much “bodging”, much of it involving steel and iron, over the years. The planking, which is to Fife’s closed-seam carvel method, where the caulking sits in seams routed into the planks edges, has been a particular challenge, but with the knowledge and experience of Bob Flack who worked at Fairlie Restorations for 25 years, Duncan is finding his last project to be a fun one overall, (mainly because he can concentrate on the yacht and not on running a company) helped by the owner, a gentleman from Cork, who comes to work on the boat one week in every four. The owner’s wife, who is a carver in stone, has just carved her first two dragons onto the timber of bow. is scheduled to be completed early this summer and, after sea trials on the Clyde, will return to Cork.
