Soon after the mate and I married we found our first boat to own. Christobel’s experience at this time was a week on a Thames hire motor boat, a weekend on a 28 foot ketch and a rowing boat on the Serpentine…

I came home on leave from a ship in 1980 and Christobel said that there were a couple of boats for sale at the Leigh-on-Sea SC. One was a ply-wood constructed Yachting World Peoples Boat, seen below.

After a trial sail and a look at the boat aground on the foreshore off Chalkwell Station, we decided to purchase he boat. Her name was Blue Tail, sail number PB4.

The story of these boats is told in my book, ‘The Jottings of a Thames Estuary Ditch-crawler‘ which is still in print. The boats were born out of a Yachting World Magazine challenge soon after the end of world war two. The aim was to get designers, professional or amateur, to come up with a ‘simple’ boat that could kick start affordable yachting.

Blue Tail with a new (blue) jib.

For us, the boat proved a useful trial to see if I would be able to instill some salt into my mate’s veins: she was still relatively fresh out of the English Midlands! I succeeded and we decided to look for another boat.

A trial sail on a GRP Steadfast 24 down on the Solent was interesting but the type was not for us. We looked at other craft before a visit to Alan & Shirley Platt’s Daws Heath boat yard to look at a Finesse 24. We were both immediately smitten!

The rest is history: we took the plunge and our new build boat soon became a part of the family.

While moored at Pin Mill this last summer and returning from the village (Chelmondiston) after a stores run via the back pathways I spotted a boat at the back of the boat yard close by a fence. It had the look of a Peoples Boat but with a deeper keel.

The fence petered out and in we went … yes, the poor old thing was a Peoples Boat. I knew that there were some built with deeper draft whilst the one we had was fitted with a centre plate. She was painted in the same blue that we had too. Our upperworks were white painted though.

The Peoples Boat found in a yard at Pin Mill. her name plate was still afixed, read: Naiad

The Pin Mill boat has clearly been ashore uncovered for some while and her days could well soon expire. If she was built in the 1950s then she would be around seventy years old. A cursory look round told me that there didn’t seem to be a lot wrong with the old girl.

Peeling varnish adorned Naiads’s upper works.

Below is a picture of Blue Tail out of the water back in 1982 (with Christobel posing in front…). The boats are virtually identical with differing details such as the deck edge rails.

Christobel remembered me once scarphing a new piece of wood into the top of Blue Tail’s mast. I also replaced one side of the centre board case too. The biggest project undertaken was the fitting of a new Vire petrol engine to replace a vacant space once taken by a Stewart Turner. A lack of headroom within the boat was its biggest shortcoming… Our old boat was purchased by a Burnham ‘big yacht’ crew member and went away to the R. Crouch. We never came across her again.

It was an interesting find, not only for the memories…

Note: The Yachting World Peoples Boat and Finesse stories are related in ‘The Jottings of a Thames Estuary Ditch-crawler‘ published by Amberley. The book remains in publication.