Clive’s boats
A seaworthy and stable craft that can be launched by hand from a trolley
Clive Marsh discovered small boats while working for Canadian Pacific Steamships and is a past Commodore of the Merchant Navy Association Boat Club. In this series he shares tales from his 50 years of boat ownership.
The Tideway is a marvellous craft. My Tideway was No.462, a GRP version that was named Jackdaw by a previous owner presumably because she is black. Calling out her name on the VHF would be a bit of a mouthful –‘Juliet/Alpha/Charlie/Kilo/ Delta/Alpha/Whiskey’... too late!
But I liked the name and kept it. However, if ever I name a boat it is always ‘Tui’ after a little bird that lived in my garden in New Zealand. Tui is easy to spell out; ‘Tango/Uniform/India’.
When naming a boat it’s worth keeping to just a few letters. The tui bird was named as such by the Maoris because the sound it makes is ‘too eee’.
Jackdaw’s GRP hull is simulated clinker and she’s very well fitted out. The wooden mast and spars all fit neatly inside the boat and the gunter rig uses both throat and peak halyards. The mast steps onto the supported forward thwart and is kept up by a forestay and side shrouds.
With the jib halyard and topping lift, there is a fair amount of rope going up and down the maypole and it is necessary to be organised. Using different coloured ropes helps.
Mast up and down
When lowering the mast I tend to attach all halyards, the topping lift and forestay to cleats at the base of the mast and lash them to the mast with a single tie. Keeping the shrouds attached to the chain plates I then lower the mast into the boat. Once organised the whole operation doesn’t take too long either lowering or stepping the mast.
On balance, I’d prefer less rope and have the mast stepped onto the keelson supported by a gunwale-level thwart, unstayed as it is in my Emsworth Lugger and Smack’s Boat. This might mean the mast may not fit into the hull when down but this is no a bad thing for if it’s carefully supported fore, aft and midships it would hold up the all-over boat cover and help drainage. But this is just a personal preference and I suspect most owners like her just as she is.
Having owned so many boats I’m always tempted to incorporate all the best bits of every boat into one boat which is not always possible in the ‘compromise’ world of boatbuilding
I bought this boat because I wanted a seaworthy craft that I could launch by hand from a trolley. She uses a combination road trailer or trolley and there’s no need ever to immerse the road trailer wheel bearings. This saves a lot of time when regularly towing a boat to different locations since you don’t need to check th
