On the 21st of August, Sheila has a new guardian. Peter Mather transfers her to Mike Burn.
In August, the refitting start immediately at A.V. Robertson in Woodbridge. The first steps were to clean and clearance of old fittings. Then the coach roof was redone and the cockpit was protected with undercoats of paint and varnish.
First invoice for August is toward : Clenching up rivets on knee inside boat. Taking. fittings, hatch and old canvas of cabin. Cleaning inside and sanding and varnishing knees. Cleaning up coach roof ready for plying. Sheaving coach roof with plywood, by means of glue and screws. Rounding up corners and filling all screw holes, sanding down and epoxiding. Cutting and laying glass fibre onto coach rood and giving two coats epoxide paint.
Stripping paint work off inside of boat. Sanding down coach roof and epoxiding. Taking old varnish of doors and lockers.
Cleaning up doors for cockpit, lightly rubbing down inside of boat and then undercoating inside. Corking and priming seams where necessary.
The focus was then put on the rigging, the design of a new bow sprit and sampson post, so that new sails could be ordered. The rig and sailplan were drawn with reference to the original sail plan of Mist.
In september, a Taylor parafin cooker was bought.
The focus moved to the refit of the deck, but in December the two petrol lamps were found at an antique dealer.
The December works by Robertson include : Levelling up boat and taking sheet hose and eye bolt of deck. Getting out wood for spars and starting to round them up. Making up spars and sanding down and varnishing. Scarfing in piece of wood into knee of boat. Fitting bearers and cabin sole. Fitting in small bulkhead inside cabin door on boat. Cleaning up scarfing joint on knee. Starting to make up bulkhead inside of cabin. Fitting wood slats to make up bulkhead inside cabin. Fitting shelf and bearers in between bulkheads scraping and sanding spar and mizzen masts. Varnishing mast and spars. Making up boom crotch. Fitting shelf in between cabin door and bulking, fitting up bulkhead. Making up and fitting in bulkhead accross boat. Fitting in bunk fronts and starting to make up small locker door, making up locker door and fitting onto boat. Dowling up bulkhead and fitting cockpit hatch. Scraping and sanding masts and spars. Saturating them with Deks Olje No 1 • Cutting cockpit doors down to fit, Making up template for bulkhead and starting to cut out bulkhead. Roughly, cutting out bulkhead and gluing and fitting extra pieces of wood onto bulkhead, starting to replace battern accross aft locker. Fitting in bulkheads and cleaning them up. Starting to fit in suitcase locker under bunk, making up bunk tops on port side. Recoated mast with Deks Olje. Starting to burn of portside of sheila. Finishing of portside and starting to burn of starboard side.
ALBERT STRANGE ASSOCIATION CHRISTMAS NEWSLETTER
SHEILA IN THE SHED
It must have broken Peter Mather’s heart to have parted with Sheila after so short a while. However, those who know Peter also know that he would only do so being certain that she was being offered into the right sympathetic hands. Mike Burn is so obviously the right person to take possession of this most famous and loved A.S. design and I am sure we can all breathe a big sigh of relief.
Mike’s account of his work so far on Sheila is set out below, and whilst he apologises for the syntax, I would point out that it was written in great haste in response to my urgent request for copy and obviously took up a considerable amount of time he would rather have spent on his lovely boat.
Bless you Mike, I was delighted to receive it and to hell with the syntax say I, it’s the content we’re all interested in!
When I decided that 15 years of Vintage motoring no longer held me in its grip (or supplied the essential balance to running the business), I decided to go and find a Gaffer. Two premises were used in the selection, or hunt, it must be a yacht rather than a workboat, and must be a boat of unimpeachable pedigree. She also had to be handeable by one capable person. I thrashed round England with no real luck, and found ‘Sheila’ on my doorstep. After Peter Mather had enthused and converted me to a Strange fanatic I then had to persuade him to sell. Mercifully I was able to do so, by convincing him that I could do the restoration and do it much faster than he could. I find that I have become part of a select cult and have the oldest ‘object’ in that cult, both things that I am proud of.
I rapidly decided that the main aim of the Restoration of ‘Sheila’ was to keep faith with Albert Strange, and to a lesser extent with Robert Groves, though it is completely thanks to Groves that it is possible to achieve the former. I have sailed since I was 7, though there are sone gaps in my cruising experience, and I am an engineer and own an engineering business; I have restored motorcars and have a considerable aptitude for details and thoroughness and a positive delight in ‘rightness.’ My knowledge of early sailing methods, in detail, and the way that legion problems were solved and how everything ‘should be’ was almost non-existent. So, while the first of the major tasks was under way, the recreation of the lovely laid deck (properly) I set myself to reading all that I could reasonably find on the subject. It is pure coincidence that the two prime sources were themselves opthalmic surgeons, my father also being one and knowing of their perk in both fields. Claud Worth and Harrison-Butler are essential reading for the practiser of the Gaff art. If you would know how to reef a topmast or set every type of topsail Worth gives a delightful insight into cruising techniques of the last century, culminating in him collating a huge quantity of information collected over some thirty years and going to Albert Strange and asking him to design a boat to his own specification; the result being Tern III which embodied an enormous amount of real cruising analysis, during which, I like to think, he carried out his definitive work on “Squint and its Causes”! If you would know how the hull of your boat ought to be, and a multitude of important details of rigging then Harrison-Butler is a delight. You may never get to working out the Metacentric analysis of your hull, but by the time you have read him you will have a very sound idea why she does what she does, or doesn’t. I have a very good idea just how good ‘Sheila’ is going to be, and why, by a close study of Harrison-Butler. It is no surprise that he knew Strange well and in fact after Strange’s death acquired his Planimeter which he used all his own life for his designs. It is naturally vital to be conversant with Strange’s own definitive article written in a number of issues of Yachting Monthly before the Great War. This is serious stuff and has coloured the things that I have done to ‘Sheila.’ She herself was so small that he could not incorporate humber of the points he advocated but it is quite clear that the hull is a winner by any standard. It should not be forgotten that Groves asked him for a Humber Yawl to cruise in the Hebrides with and this is what Strange produced; it is significant that 5 inches were put in the draft when she was rebuilt in 1915. I suspect that Strange’s considerable experience with Humber Yawls made him keep the draft lighter than he might otherwise have done – she started life at 3ft. 5 ins. and is now 3ft. 10ins. Neither was she designed with a topsail, though this may have been dictated by Groves, since Mist was, and she was designed by Strange for a man who had seen Sheila and wanted one exactly the same. In fact Mist is very interesting since in the short space between th two boats Strange had had some second thoughts. Mist was to be ‘the same as the one that I saw being sailed by Mr Groves in Belfast Lough’ and was indeed built there, though her dimensions are just slightly different, 3 inches here 4 inches there, no more. She carries a higher mast, much better stayed, a topsail and a truly amazing spinnaker. Her mizen is Bermudian rather than Gaff.
Sheila has no shrouds to truck, both pairs going to the hounds; this feature is well made in Groves’ original pictures. She had them run to the truck with spreaders when I bought her, so I suspect that this was done in the Great Rebuild after she was wrecked of Dublin in 1914. There are numbers of other tiny changes, though none of then amount to much. She has never carried runners. Here I had an ethical struggle since I wanted to set a topsail (Harrison-Butler well makes the point that a well set topsail improves the windward performance as long as the luff is efficient). I left the after shrouds running to the truck over the spreaders and have arranged some runners based on a simple design of Strange’s fron one of his prize winning Y.M. designs.
This arrangement, I am aware, will not look quite so uncluttered and spindly as she looks in the Groves drawings, but the East Coast is a great one for lee shores. With this in mind and being well aware that Gaff weatherliness vanishes when the topsail is sent down I have designed a really demon reefing topsail yard that will come down with the main to the first reef position, thus maintaining the luff; the design is all Burn, but is carried out in the style of the times, simplicity, I hope, being the keynote.
Work proceeds on the recreation of the interior that Groves knew, and which he drew in one of his cruise reports. It leaves quite a lot to the imagination but the main feature of the new are due to Groves, again simplicity. My passion for design has been kept to ensuring that every cube of space is used for a specific function and much thought has gone into the detail work. A number of Strange ideas have been incorporated, specially where there is evidence that they may have been there in 1905!
I have the inside stripped right back to the original coat of paint, cream, und then had that off as well. When everything was bare wood it was primed and painted cream. It is light, looks well and is undeniably the original colour, all facts that give me much pleasure.
I am myself tackling the dreadful job of raking out the deck. It is 1 1/4” Kauri Pine with teak covering boards and Kingsplanks. The only way that is ever going to be really right is completely raked right, the groove sides cleaned, recalked and ‘payed’ with marine glue. I went to Jeffries for their advice which they were delighted to give and spent some time to give me all the demon tweaks for doing it well. I have spent some 80 hours so far and have got 3/4 of the way raked out. I ground up some fairly sophisticated tooling for this and it has been eminently worthwhile. Anyone who wants to know to do it and how to save a lot of time and effort should write to me and I will willingly tell him. I hope that the effort will be worthwhile since I could not possibly see myself canvassing the deck sine Peter Mathers had got the old canvass off to reveal how good it was. I will follow up with how to put the glue in after I have made all the mistakes and learnt how to ! (Hopefully in the next newsletter? Ed.)
The sail situation presented one or two avenues. She has a new suit of plastic sails, somewhat cut down. I happen to think that one of the main joys of an old boat is cotton sails (wooden blocks and primusses as well). I had a suit cut for a delightful gunter dayboat I restored and they were a constant joy and pleasure to handle, and everybody said how lovely they looked. So a complete new suit was planned. The boom was put back to its original place and after much study and heartburn the excellent roller reefing and the lacing were abandoned. She will now have the original loose foot and mast hoops, which apart from being original, it is quite apparent are much more efficient for the shape of sail considered. The new main will be ‘vertical cut’ that is to say along the leech. This is original too and has the blessing of Worth, and sense, since the main load is from boom to gaff and cut vertically the stress does not come on the stitching. I have gone to some trouble to arrange the reefing so that I can do it alone and ‘on the wind’, fairly vital point for river sailing. The clew lines are led through thin sheaves in the boom at their respective points and run to cleats on the boom at the task; quite normal this though the luff is held down by a pair of ‘sister hooks’ at the tack for speed and simplicity. The body of the sail merely has eyelets in which take small rawhide toggles, faster and stronger than reef points and since they don’t patter on the sail, quieter.
The next Newsletter will tell more gripping details if I have not gone bonkers doing this deck. I hope to have her in the water about March.