Two traditional daysailers

Salterns Tela

     If you’ re looking at trailable daybots that combine sailing performance and classic charm in equal measure, you have a limited choice. But David Harding has tried two – one new, one with a long history – that offer plenty of both.
    Daysailers have traditionally come in two varieties. First, there are those with roomy hulls, shallow draught and modest rigs, designed for people who want to pile family, friends and relations aboard and amble along at a relaxing pace.
    The other main type is the racing one-design. Large fleets of XODs, Redwings, Victorys, Sunbeams and others provide close competition and make a wonderful sight at regattas such as Cowes Week. Many lend themselves equally well to being sailed in a more leisurely manner away from the excitement of the race course, but their performance pedigrees, fixed keels and relatively slim hulls are often seen as drawbacks by those in search of multi-purpose daysailers.
    The area in between is more thinly populated. A wide variety of local racing classes often provided the solution in years gone by, but many are now extinct. Others, through, continue to thrive – like the Salcombe Yawl. Fast, stable and seaworthy, she’s the epitome of the ballasted dayboat based on working craft designed for their local waters. She’s expensive, and most new boats are bought principally for racing, but the salcombe Yawl’s glassfibre derivative, the Devon Yawl, is cheaper to build and more widely used for day-sailing.
     The Yachting World Dayboat is another example of a design that’s responsive and fun to sail without being tippy or physically demanding. But your choice of boats like this, with good performance, glassfibre hulls and ballasted centreplates that let you slide them on and off a trailer, is otherwise fairly limited. That’s one reason why I was pleased to meet the Tela.

The quest for speed

    She’s anything but new, the Tela. She started life in the early years of the last century as a ‘seeker’ boat, among a number of similar craft based in the South Wales port of Barry. These little boats – typically about 16ft (4.9m) long – lived in the docks and completed for trade in the same way as the Bristol Channel pilot cutters, only closer to home. Since the first one to reach the incoming ship gor the business, speed was crucial. So, too, was seaworthiness, because it was no good settings off at high speed only to be swamped or capsized.
     As time passed, the seeker boats also started to race each other for fun, and one called Stranger almost invariably showed a clean pair of heels to the rest of the fleet. Her dominance prompted Gustaf ‘George’ Hellstrom, a Norrwegian sea captain who had settled in Barry, to design and build a boat with the specific intension of beating Stranger. That boat was Tela. History does not relate how she fared in her competitive quest, but we know that she was slightly finer-lined that her competitors. Otherwise, her hull from deviated only subtly from that of the established designs. ‘Things that have developed slowly, generally work’, says Greg Dalrymple, who now builds the Tela at Salterns Boatbuilders on Hamble.
     Greg;s invilvment is relatively recent. The original Tela disappeared for about 20 years form the early 1960s until Chris Libby, a boatbuilder in Cornwall, found her on a beach where she had been left to rot. Chris reckoned she would make a perfect daysailer in glassfibre, so he made a mould from the original hull and put the Tela into production. He built about dozen boats before the moulds moved to Salterns in Bursledon.
     Greg has revived a number of designs over the years, choosing those with good sailing qualities and refining them to make the most of their potential. With the Tela, for example, he discarded the original shallow, L-shaped centreplate in favour of a deeper, higher-aspect ratio casting that increased the draught form 2ft 10in (0.86m) to 4ft (1.22m). Weighing 80lb (36kg), it combines with 550lb (250kg) of lead in the bilges to provide a 50% ballast ratio and enable to boat to carry her largest-ever rig. At 150sq ft (14sq m), the sail area is 30% greater than in Chris Libby’s day, and supported by a taller mast. The spars are made from spruce, and complemented by oiled teak trim and bronze fittings.

Sweet and slippery

    Adding ballast, lowering the centre of gravity and increasing the sail area should give almost any boat some extra fizz, though it helps if she has the right lines to start with. The Tela has, and she glides along smoothly, accelerating rapidly in the gusts without developing weather helm. The tiller, in fact, stays so light that she can be sailed upwind on mainsheet tension alone. Pin the sheets in to induce extra heel and you will find it hard to get the gunwale wet even in brisk conditions. But she will still bear away, there’s no broaching tendency with the Tela.
     For dinghy sailors, one of the delights (or drawbacks, depending on your point of view) of sailing a boat like this is that there’s no need to throw your weight over the edge in every gust. Perching on the gunwale will help, of course, but it’s not essential unless you’re intent on extracting every last ounce of performance: the 630lb (285kg) of ballast does most of the work for you. Even so, this is a responsive boat. The helm balance changes appreciably as the crew moves forward and aft, and careful attention to sail trim is rewarded. Dinghy sailors who have had enough of leaping around will find the Tela a rewarding yet physically undemanding boat to handle. She responds to subtle adjustments while being easy to sail reasonably well.
     ‘A little yacht, not a big dinghy’ is how Greg describes her. And that highlights a fundamental difference between the Tela and some of her competitors. Unlike boat such as a Devon Yawl, she has a displacement hull. Narrower and deeper than that of the Yawls , the Yachting World Dayboat or the Drascombes, it has shallow, full-length keel which give her good directional stability and a great turning circle. You can’t spin the Tela, you need to sail her gently through the tack. Neither can you expect to her to make a habit of exceeding hull speed downwind. In terms of handing qualities, she’s the Contessa 32 of the dayboat world: calm, capable, smooth and predictable.

Internal affairs

   With her relatively narrow beam and low freeboard, the Tela is less roomy than some of her higher and wider competitor Nonethless, there should be plenty of room for a family of four. Gear can be stowed on the half-height buoyancy compartment beneath the foredeck and in the locker under the after-deck, while water tight inspection hatches in the buoyancy tanks each end would create more dry stowage. A 2hp long-shaft outboard can be lashed alongside the centreplate case. You would leave it on the transom if you were stretching out on the Douglas Fir floorboards for a night’s sleep, though fitted with a boom cover, the Tela would make a great camper-cruiser and weighing around half-a-tone, she can be towed behind a modest-size family car. But she’s probably not a boat you would trail and sail for a day. For that sort of use, something lighter and with a flatter bottom would make more sense.
     If the concept of the Tela appeals, you may find yourself struggling to find things to complain about. I would want a kicking strap to control twist in the sail – even if it is not traditional on gaffers and would call for a larger boom section – and I would have the tiller made lower and fitted with an extension. Since each Tela is built to order, minor adjustments like that should present Salterns with no problems.