Tela revisited

Judy Brickhill continues her reports on family dayboats which have stood the test of time with a return to Salterns Boatyard.

Some people start building boats by design, some by force of circumstance and some by accident. For Greg Dalrymple of Salterns Boatyard, the accident was a serious on ewhile riding his motor bike in the early 80s. His physiotherapist prescribed rowing so Greg set about building his own traditional rowing skiff.

This was so successful on all fronts that Greg decided to pursue a long-held ambition. He owned Memory, one of the 19’ (5.8m) GRP gaff sloops built in the 70s on the lines of the traditional fishing boats which worked the estuary of the River Colne. Greg came to an agreement with the designer Toby Robinson to make a new mould to put the popular class back into production. Thus he established his place in the boatbuilding world and continues to develop designs from traditional sailing craft with modern materials and construction to augment his range, as well as building one-off wooden boats and offering full repair services.

So Salterns Boatyard is now firmly on the map, albeit quite hard to find, as Ches and I have found every time we visit Greg in his little wooded time-wrap, complete with free-standing Victorian gas lamp ad pillar box, amongst the backwaters of the Hamble near Bursledon. The range of boats he chooses to produce reflect Greg’s appreciation of the role which can be played by modern material and techniques in ensuring that the designs of the past, especially those of the unsung little workboats, are not lost in our rush for ‘the new’. Along with the 16’6’’ (5m) Hamble rowing shiff which started everything and 19’ (5.8m) Memory, these is the 18’ (5.5m) Sou’wester cove boat which comes as a bare hull or a finished gaff sloop and the 12’6’’ (3.8m) Wagtail, moulded from an old clinker sailing dinghy typical of the better kind built around the Solent in the 1930s.

There is also on old favourite of mine, the Tela, a 16’6’’ (5m) dayboat based on a 1911 Barry Dock’s ‘seeker’, the little sister of the Bristol Channel pilot cutters. The seekers piled their trade f supplying pilots to incoming ships in the vicinity of the docks rather than out at sea as far to the south west as the Scillies. Completion was fierce, so speed was of the essence but unlike out-and-out racing boats, the seekers were working vessels which had to be able to handle as great a variety of weather conditions as possible, so the emphasis on speed was tempered by the demands of seaworthiness. After her ‘retirement’ the original Tela remained an extremely successful racer, competing until the early 50s and spawning the 16’ (4.9m) Barry racing class. The modern centreboard version comes from the original GRP mould made by Chris Libby of Penrym in the early 1980s but she has undergone a serious make-over at Greg’s hands since I last sailed one in Carrick Roads nearly 10 years ago, so I was looking forward to assessing the latest model.

The Tela is a traditionally straightstemmed, fine-lined little number with a lovely sheer sweeping back to a transom that is not so much wineglass as champagne goblet. She has a very fine entry and exit and with a beam of only 5’6’’ (1.7m) on her 16’6’’ (5m) length, she is slender enough to make rowing an easy option, her firm bilges give her stability and buoyancy and combine with her fine ends to create and easily-driven hull. Her draught is a mere 14’’ (0.33m) with the plate up and a useful 4’ (1.2m) when it’s lowered.

The hill is hand-laid GRB up to 12 oz in the keel, reinforced with web frames and bulkheads and framed out at 2’ (0.6m) intervals below the waterline; a strong, durable and resilient form of construction. The GBR decks help to strengthen the gunwale and large buoyancy chambers fore and aft further stiffen the hull. The centreboards case is moulded integrally with the hull and unusually, the gelcoat is applied seamlessly inside and out, including the centreboard case.

The cockpit is large and spacious, thanks in part to those firm bilgeswhich increase the belly of the boat and in part to the positioning of the cross thwart and side benches which allows plenty of room for the crew. She is in fact, very much a small yacht, rather than a dinghy, which you sit in rather than on. There is ample stowage under the full length foredeck and in the locker under the after deck, as well as a place for the oars under the side decks. A Whale bilge pump is bolted in position below the midships thwart with the pipe running to a skin fitting in the hull well above the waterline. The cockpit coamings, rubbing bands and seats are all teak left natural, the bottom boards oiled spruce and the spars varnished Douglas fir. All deck fittings, including the rudder gear and mast bands, are bronze or Tufnol.

She has a total weight of just over 1100lbs (500kg), with ballast in the form of 440lbs (200kg) of removable lead ingots secured in the bilge. This puts her under the maximum weight allowed for an unbraked trailer and means that she can be towed for an unbraked trailer and means that she can be towed by the average family car. There is additional weight in the hot-dipped galvanised centreplate. This is one of Greg’s modifications, his own design, with the 3/8’’ (10mm) steel plate, shaped rather like a sideways view of a short, stern-facing boot, pivoting on a heavy duty pin bolted through the keel at the lower corner of its forwarded end or ‘heel’. From the upper corner 3/16’’ (5mm) wire strop leads through a hole in the casing to a block and tackle system with a 4:1 purchase set up under the thwart. The plate drops down to 45¡ , leaving about a third of its area still supported within the case but because of its length, the draught is now 4’ (1.2m) instead of the 2’10’’ (8.86m) of the previous centreboard set-up.

By positioning this weight so much deeper below the keel Greg was able to increase the sail area from the former 130 square feet (12.8m2) of gaff main and jib to a more racy 150sq. ft (13.93m2), with the additional option of a topsail for lighter weather to give the Tela a much more powerful rig. Her mast is stepped securely against the forward bulkhead, supported by 5/32’’ (4mm) stainless steel side stays. the loose-footed, boomed mainsail has a high peaked gaff. the sheets run from a block and becket on the port side of the after deck to a double block on the end of the boom, down to another block aft on the starboard side, up again to the boom and down to calm cleat on the aft coaming. This arrangement avoids the need for a horse and its attendant tackle across the transom. The furling jib is set to the end of the bowsprit, which projects 2’3’’ (0,69m) outboard through a custom-built bronze gammon iron. The size of the teak rudder blade has also been increased by extending it horizontally along the line of the keel.

The Tela is number 10 I had come to sail, fresh out of Greg’s workshop, with her new owner about to arrive to trail her away to a mooring in Cardiff Docks, not so far from her ancestral home in Barry. It was a good day for a launching, the clouds scudding over to remain us that April showers were still s possibility but with some real warmth in the sunshine as we waited for the tide to creep us the muddy inlet too slipway where the Tela waited rigged and ready on her trailer.

The wind was blowing straight out of the creek so we were able to drift gently down towards the Hamble proper while I dropped the rudder into position and Greg’s right hand man Bob unfurled the jib and stood by to hoist the mainsail as soon as I had room to bring her up into the wind. With little fuss we were away, beating upriver towards the marina with the boat pretty much tacking herself. As we close-reached towards a handy channel marker to round, a squall cine through and i could see for myself how well the additional depth and weight of the centreboard worked in conjunction with the greater sail area. She sat comfortably over on her ample bilge and powered straight on, with only a little more weight in the tiller to give me a reassuring degree of weather helm - enough to bring her head to wind if I let go of the helm but no so much that she was difficult to handle.

That first gust set the pattern for the rest of the sail, with the wind changing strength and direction with little warning, which meant that we could find ourselves dealing with different conditions at any stage of a manoeuvre. Gybing in a gust is always a good test of a boat’s handling capability and in my opinion, the Tela is definitely on of the better ones. I found the mainsheet system much more user-friendly than the more usual horse arrangement, where the lower block goes crashing over when the wind flips the sail round however gradually on tries to play the sheet. The fact, too, that the mainsheet is just behind the helmsman and the jibsheet just in front makes single-handed sailing a much more viable prospect, though there is still room for a crew, if available, to tend the headsail sheets without sitting on the helsman’s knee.

With water -and our time- running out, we had and exhilarating reach back to the mouth of Greg’s creek where we stowed the sails and took a tow from Ches in the support boat. As the boat was wheeled away for a rub down, I enthused about her sailing qualities to Greg and asked the inevitable question. Fully completed to Saltern’s standard sailway specification, she cost £9,635 inc VAT, to my mind a very reasonable price for such an enjoyable, versatile craft. The Tela can accommodate the whole family for an afternoon’s sailing and picnicing; a couple for a creek crawling weekend’s camping; just one for a quite evening’s singlehanding or even an adventurous crew for an expedition across the Bristol Channel, as was done by the old seekers.

Greg’s catchphrase is ‘boats that work’ and I think Tela is a prime example. But don’t take my word for it; here’s a postcript which comes from the happy new owner of Tela no 10: Sailed the boat on Friday, Saturday and Sunday in Cardiff and she goes wonderfully. Attracted quite a crowd when packed on the Town Quay. Love it. What more needs to be said?