It all started at the Rally of Classic Yachts held at Falmouth in 1994.

Crossing Carrick Roads between Falmouth and St. Mawes was a small craft with dhowlike sails, as pretty as a picture. When we got closer I could see that she was a slim craft with a low-freeboard and she had a lug-yawl rig with very high aspect-ratio sails set on well‑raked masts. She was Nigel Irens’s Roxanne and I fell in love.

I have always had a penchant for the lug rig: remembering the beautiful captain’s gig carried in the training cruiser HMS Devonshire. (This 30’ boat had two similar-size dipping lug sails, and was very fast when off the wind).

At this time I was looking for an interesting day-boat to keep and sail in Chichester Harbour, and Roxanne made me determine to find a gig-type of boat into which I could install a replica of the lug-yawl rig. I wanted a boat about 18 to 20’ long that could be trailed behind the family car. I looked at the Drascombe Lugger, which most closely fitted my boating needs, and also the Explorer. However both boats are relatively expensive, and modifying them to my ‘funny rig’ would damage their resale value, so I hesitated. I spent nearly a year looking for, and considering the costs of building or modifying a traditional open boat.

Then the maxim that ‘everything comes in time to he who waits’, was proven and I found my boat. Lying derelict at Dell Quay we found a 20’ sharpie, full of mud, crabs and leaves, with the tide flowing in and out of her at high water, and a sign saying she was for sale. She had a mast-step at the bow and a transom to which an offset mizzen mast could be fitted. Inspection showed that she was expensively built of solid iroko — not marine ply. She was a Chesapeake Bay Skiff, very tatty but had no serious damage or rot. She had no sails or spars, and had been built about ten years previously by Lytham Marine.

I had no intention of restoring the boat to its former glory — I had had a beautiful, varnished Tideway dinghy, and a Lone Gull 2, a classic wooden yacht. The new boat was to be kept clean and tidy, but with no worries when it was beached, or damaged by other people’s boats. It would be kept in a half-tide dock throughout the year.

We slaved for a week on the hard at Dell Quay, cleaning and scraping to get her ready for the voyage to her home port at Emsworth. A coat of paint on the topsides, and the brightwork touched up with Weathershield varnish, sufficed, and Diana made an excellent job of recalking and refurbishing the laid decks. A chance meeting with a visitor to the hard provided a nearly new Mercury Sailpower outboard engine and a pair of oars, so that although there was not time to fit a sailing rig, we could motor her home.

I carefully measured the boat with the intention of calculating the stability and righting moments and hence design a prudent sail plan. Then I found in a boat-design software package a standard design for an 18’ Chesapeake Sharpie, by the famous American archivist Howard Chapelle. Re-scaled to 20’ LOA, the dimensions agreed exactly with my boat. Its ancestry was therefore confirmed, and I had full hydrodynamic and stability data already calculated. A subsequent meeting with Tom Hart at a DCA winter gathering was equally helpful because he was a able to lend me two books about these boats, with the drawings of the original Chapelle design. (It is probable that my boat was built to these same drawings). Chapelle was most enthusiastic about these Chesapeake skiffs, which he regarded as one of the best working-boat designs originating in the USA — fast and seaworthy.

The question of spars then arose. I was inclined to use substantial aluminium tube for the spars, as the masts would be unstayed and the original wooden mast had been broken because, I think, it had too small a diameter. The mast aperture in the foredeck was 4½” fore and aft, and 31/8” athwartships. It had been 26’ long supporting a single 150□’ spritboom sail.

Using a conservative modulus for aluminium, I calculated that a tubular spar with a minimum diameter of 3” would just do, and 3½” would be better, whereas a wooden spar would need to be about 5”, necessitating major modification to the foredeck. I studied the relevant formulae for unstayed masts given by Skenes, John Leather and Hasler/McLeod (Chinese rigs), and calculated that the minimum diameter for spruce masts varied from 3.3 to 5.1”.

A specialist glass-fibre flagpole manufacturer said he could make me custom tapered spars for about £1,100, but was not enthusiastic to accept the responsibility for supplying boat equipment. A yacht mast manufacturer quoted £700 for a proper spruce main mast. Another quoted approximately £4,000 for a set of Irens-type high-tech, carbon-fibre spars! I contacted various commercial suppliers locally, but could not find suitable aluminium tubes.

An advertisement in the Bulletin led me to DCA member, Adrian Lewis-Evans, who had some suitable aluminium spars for sale. The mast tube however proved to be only 2½” diameter, which was not thought to be strong enough, but worth trying out. It was already fitted with some Tufnol chocks, just the correct size to fit the mast partners without modification. I had a 175□’ lightweight, dipping lug-sail available, so we went for a trial sail. In a force 3 breeze the sail pulled like horse, but in the gusts the mast bent like a fishing rod. I also found a fundamental design limitation — the mast strength would be limited, not by the wind pressure on the sails, but the inertia of the rig when the boat rolled in the wake of fast motorboats! This was probably due to the high initial stability of the sharpie, hard chine sections — so back to the drawing board.

Then a sailmaker recommended a firm at Sittingbourne, who was able to supply me with the correct size aluminium tube that I wanted — 6m by 90mm (20’ by 3½”), and my main mast problem was solved. Adrian Lewis-Evans had provided the mizzen mast, and the local TV aerial shop supplied aluminium tubes suitable for the yards. The main yard was designed to fit between the two masts as the ridge-pole of a camping tent.

Provision of sails was the next matter to solve. Sail area parameters in the good books indicated that the skiff needed sails with an area of about 170-190□’, so I designed two replica rigs to the Irens concept, one of 170□’, which enabled me to restrict the mast height to the same length as the skiff (20’ loa), and one of 150□’ if trials showed that the skiff lacked stability but was fast enough with the reduced area.

Then I found a supply problem — all the local sailmakers were far too busy; they could not make sails before the end of the season and preferably for the next season. Prices ranged from £800 to £1,100.

My brother solved the immediate problem by bringing me a little-used Bruce Banks mainsail from his Swallow (racing 26’ sloop), saying, “Why not make a set of sails from this?” This Bermudan sail was 155□’ of modern hard sail cloth and I, at first, could not see how to use it.

Then the DCA Bulletin came to my rescue again — John Cannon published his article ‘Sailing with a Sprit’. I was interested; I had never sailed with sprit rig, but I had seen in Chichester harbour the nearest boat to the concept I was seeking — the original American version of the Explorer, the Sharp Shooter 20, which had a sprit-sail, schooner rig. It was simple to cut off the headboard of the Swallow sail, and then cut along one of the seams two thirds of the way up the luff, to create a mainsail and a mizzen sail of a shape suitable for Cannon’s version of a sprit rig, with a total area of 145□’. A weekend’s work with sewing machine, needle and palm, and we went for a trail sail.

The rig worked well, although it did not point because the Swallow mainsail was cut very full, until the main sheeting position was moved to tension the leach and reduce the twist in the sail. It was a very powerful sail off the wind, and confirmed that the skiff could handle a much larger sail area. I did not have the Irens rig that I wanted, but I had an interesting traditional rig and I had saved about £1,000.

Some months later a friend gave me a bolt of sailcloth, from which he had made a set of sails for an Enterprise dinghy, so that I could make a boom tent for the skiff. When I measured the cloth I found that there was enough to make the full 170□’ set of Irens-rig sails. Without previous experience, except for modifying the Swallow mainsail, but with Jeremy Howard William’s book Sails at hand, I started work, since I could not resist the challenge. A week later I was bending on a brand new, light-blue, set of lug-yawl sails.

Trials are progressing well; the Enterprise sailcloth is a little too lightweight for the size sails I have made, but the intention is to use them for gentle sailing only, they are not intended to work to windward in gale-force winds. The sails have full-length battens, which are still needing development. The sails are loose footed, and the battens help when sailing off the wind, and when hove-to or head-to-wind, the sails do not flog but lie quietly.

The new sails look the part and they cost little; the boat is beautifully balanced with this rig and a pleasure to sail.

I now have my dream boat, six years on from the first idea.