Winner In The Trad Class

Polly was first in the Traditional New Build class and overall winner of the Classic Boat Awards of 2018. Tom Cunliffe goes aboard to see how she made the cut

My official job with Polly was to write an article about her, but there was a second agenda. Having authored a textbook on gaffers, I’d been buttonholed to help out with some of the practical rig detail. I joined her on the Beaulieu River one autumn morning under a cloud-swept sky with a moderate breeze blowing. There’s always a concern that the first sight of a boat will send one’s heart plummeting into the seaboots, but I needn’t have worried. The judges at CB knew their business.

The mast came into view before the hull and the finer points a seaman always notices stood out loud and clear. The proportions were good. A pole-masted cutter can be a tricky design challenge. Too tall, it looks overbalanced; too short and somebody seems to have forgotten something. This was just right. The upper spar carried a neat wooden appendage on its aft face that I already knew was the groove for the topsail luff. More of this later. Lower down, the spreaders were spot-on for upward tilt, both precisely at the same elevation, bisecting the cap-shroud angle to a tee and lifting the eye as spreaders should. The standing rigging was obviously galvanised, not stainless, praise be! Good galvanised wire properly dressed and maintained will outlast stainless, and you don’t need an expert to tell its condition. Any sensible person can confirm that by inspection, more than you can say for the glitzy pretender.

Standing alongside Polly on the dock, the first impression on this grey day was the homely smell of bacon frying. None of your health-promoting muesli here. It fitted perfectly with the feel of a vessel that was not a workboat, but not the standard idea of a yacht either. She looked to me like the best of both worlds.