Yawls In The Sun

A baby cries as she rubs sand into her eye while nearby two boys are digging a moat around their castle. Prone on a sunlounger, mum glances from behind the pages of a magazine as a handful of seemingly identical wooden sailing boats glide past on the afternoon breeze, yards off the beach.

Salcombe on a hot Sunday afternoon is as classic an English seaside scene as there is – and the town’s native yawls, weaving their way through the family-boat melée on the first day of their annual regatta – add a glorious twist.

The yawls can trace their history back to the early 1800s, when they were lobster or long-line fishing boats, the straight stem bolstering progress out through the estuary tide, before the man and boy on board dropped the main to operate under mizzen and jib alone, up to 10 miles o the coast.