Page 50 - Yachter Spring/Summer 2021

50 FEATURE
ALTERNATIVE ACTIVITIES OR AYACHTSMAN’S SOJOURN DURING LOCKDOWN
The south coast of Fife, facing
the Firth of Forth, made as good a place as any for a young boy to grow up during the wartime years and experience the sea.
At high water, the waves beat on the rocks just 30 yards away from the front door.A short walk down the bray led to the fishing boats nestled in the tiny drying harbour of Lower Largo, the birthplace of Alexander Selkirk, on whom Daniel Defoe based his novel Robinson Crusoe. My stay in Lower Largo lasted five years and left me with a profound interest in boats, sail and the sea, which fortunately manifested itself in a life- long obsession in sailing, marine painting, model shipbuilding and the restoration of wooden boats. I was fortunate indeed. So, when the lockdown came a big line had to go through sailing and to looking after a wooden boat, but the other two were then able to flourish.
I have always admired the schooner rig
as possibly the most beautiful of all rigs. Many years ago, I built a model of the American Gloucester fishing schooner Elsie. Her shape, proportions and rig are to die for. For her size she was amazingly fast, but in the fishermen’s races of the 1920s -30s she could be no match for the enormous Nova Scotian schooner Bluenose.These sailors disdained handicapping, but had they been handicapped she would have trounced Bluenose. In March last year, when I could
no longer get to my boat, I decided to paint a picture of her, yet to be finished, she is still a ghost ship at sea. One of the great advantages of painting in oils is that you can correct your picture as you go, either by scraping out or by painting over. Elsie’s hull adopted several different poses as the days went by until I could get her settled into a good groove, beating to windward off the
Grand Banks loaded with her cargo of cod. As you all know, the shape the seas take depend not only on wind and tide, but also
on the depth of water.The Grand Banks off Newfoundland was a shallow and a nasty place in which to be during a blow. Her skipper and crew would have been glad to have her cargo safe in the hold, and her dories secure on deck able to set their