This is the story of a boat whose history, or at least the early part of it, is not entirely certain. Wave’s current owner, Charlie Couture, is 70 per cent sure that she is the same Wave that first appeared in Lloyds Register of Yachts in 1934. She is listed there as having been designed and built in 1930 by PM Coode in Truro, although it is thought that she might actually have been built in the village of Coombe just off the River Fal. Her owner at that time was John Chellew, a resident of Falmouth, although it isn’t clear if he had owned her from new.
Philip Melvill Coode was a solicitor in St Austell but “spent a lot of his time building boats not only for himself but also for other relatives,” Alan Coode, Philip’s great nephew, told me recently. Philip had also designed a 40ft (12.2m) yawl called that had been built in Mevagissey in 1902, and he owned , a 35ft (10.8m) motorboat which had been built by JL Thorneycroft in 1930 and would later take part in the evacuation of Dunkirk. Rather strangely, from 1936 Lloyds Register attributes the design and build of to WD Coode, Philip’s cousin Walter Damarell Coode who was a
