It is proven beyond opinion that Robert Tucker’s Corribee design is a true classic of the British boat building golden age. The design has proven itself time and time again, and even to this day remains an incredibly popular boat. Indeed, Mr Tucker had many great design to his name, including the circumnavigating 19ft Caprice. It is certain that in the 1960’s and 70’s, Britain was one of, if not the, world leader in yacht design.

Sadly, this pioneering attitude doesn’t seem to have made it to the factory floor of some boatyards. When I had Vreli, my Tyler’s Cinder 22, I thought it was home finished because of the diabolical quality of the interior (not just beautifying trim, but bulkheads and other important structural areas), but having since found a few pictures of the factory finished models, I’m starting to wonder if it was indeed home finish at all.

My own Corribee has revealed faults too. In 2009 I was sailing off the Norfolk coast and was shocked to experience hideously loud bangs which sent equally violent shudders through the boat. A subsequent investigation revealed the lead ingot ballast was free to flop three inches from side to side in the encapsulated starboard keel. It had been as such since it left the factory at Newbridge.

Of course, these small boats where made to a price point, and because of that I don’t expect Halberg Rassy quality finish, but it seems that some of these British boatyards (at least Newbridge and Tylers) employed either incompetent, or more likely, lazy staff.

Take my latest discovery, for example.

The wooden pad under the mast compression post had gone a bit soft, so I set about replacing it. In doing so, I lifted the cabin sole boards, and while they were off I noticed the floors were all wobbly. Using ONLY my hands, and anybody who’s met me will agree I’m not the most powerfully built of chaps, I pulled them all off the hull.

The floors were held to the hull with two single layer pieces of roving. This is a pathetically weak construction at the best of times, but whoever put my boat together seems to have been particularly apathetic on that day, because as you can see in the picture above, it wasn’t even wetted properly. There’s bone dry roving there! Considering these men were supposed to be competent craftsmen, using a material that by 1976 was very well understood, I cannot believe for one moment that whoever was doing this job didn’t notice that what he’d done was entirely faulty. This is not once piece of roving, they were all poorly bonded. I should have not been able to pull the floors off the hull at all, even with just a single layer of properly wetted fibreglass.

Fortunately, both Tyler’s and Newbridge seem to have been very competent at moulding the hulls, but if this was the quality of work after that process, I must say it’s little wonder that both Newbridge and Tyler’s eventually went out of business.

I hope the few British builders that are left in business employ less bone idle staff.

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