While we are looking at designs from distant shores, I think this one deserves some attention, as you are not likely to come across it otherwise. It was featured in WoodenBoat No.176, 2004, and I have not seen it anywhere else (there is no website featuring it), so my thanks to George Pray of Honolulu who was good enough to send me a copy of the magazine when I confessed ignorance of the boat during an email conversation with him.

The WoodenBoat article was written by John Little, Australian yachtsman and writer, after he had built his own Salty Heaven. John encountered the boat purely by accident when he saw it being sailed by shipwright and designer Mikey Floyd of New South Wales, in waters only five minutes away from his home; it was love at first sight, the perfectly-proportioned hull with its English work-boat heritage standing out from all the samey GRP yachts with Bermudan rigs around her. I can understand the attraction, as the photographs which accompany the article show a boat that exudes a sense of drama as well as displaying perfect proportions.

To me, its graceful lines are reminiscent of Alan Glanville's yawl, or Roger Barnes' lugger, and the rig is similar to that used by Roy Downes on Surprise, but Salty Heaven is definitely an individual, with a wineglass transom, straight stem, and hollow lines at the stern and bow, which make it a double-ender underwater. She is 17 ft overall with a 5ft 9" beam. Construction is glued lapstrake using marine plywood, classic Iain Oughtred style, and she is fitted out in Douglas Fir, with tough exotic Australian hardwoods jarrah and karri in areas subject to high wear and abrasion. The keel is straight, but she has a centreboard. The mizzenmast is stepped slightly off-centre to keep it out of the compass of the tiller. She carries standing lugs on two unstayed masts, with three reef points in the main and two in the mizzen. As often happens with boats which are inspired by craft from a bygone age, their modern builders have to embrace the idea of adding ballast as readily as their forebears did: 110 lbs under the floorboards keeps her performance to windward (and, one suspects, adds stability). When her designer/builder sails her solo in heavy air, he throws in a 65 lb bag of sand, too, to show there's no ill feeling. The first reef goes in when the breeze reaches 15 knots, and when it reaches 25 to 30 knots there are three reefs in the main and two in the mizzen. Under bare poles in a near-gale the boat is apparently very controllable downwind as the bigger mainmast leads her along by the nose, but I'd take his word for that.

Mikey Floyd's world-view and attitude to boats and design remind me very much of Mukti Mitchell's: the designer lives a minimalist, alternative life-style on the far-north coast of New South Wales. The first Salty Heaven was built using hand tools only. He hand-stitched his own sails. The boat's equipment comprises belaying-pins, thumb cleats and cleverly-placed but simple knots and splices. The sheet is made fast to the clew of the mainsail by a simple toggle and eye, which only takes seconds to reeve after taking in a reef. And so on ...

Early in 2004 the five sheets of plans cost $300 Australian. If you want to find out more, Mikey Floyd's address is (or was) 61a, Hudson Parade, Clareville, NSW, Australia 2107.