Bosun's Bag

Practical Tips For The Traditional Boater

- Tom Cunliffe

BOOT-TOP

This is that critical line painted fore-and-aft just above the waterline. If it’s a classy job, it might be picked out in a different colour to the bottom paint and the topsides. Where budgets are tight, a boat may have no boot-top at all, merely a defined interface between antifouling and load waterline, but whichever it is, that line tells us things about an owner that his partner probably never knew. Check out the drawings of a pre-war design from the board of Dr Harrison Butler. You’ll notice that the boot-top line is plotted on his plans, and you can’t miss the fact that it is definitely not parallel sided. Its upper edge describes a shallow parabola whose arc lies part-way between the flat, lower waterline and the springing sheer of her toerail.

Harrison Butler’s boats were typically around 26ft, so the difference between his curving boot-top and one drawn with a straight edge is little more than an inch or two at most, yet it brings the yacht to life. Now take a stroll around your local yard and look carefully. Modern boot-tops are almost invariably painted parallel to the water and they kill a yacht’s looks stone dead.

If the poor vessel has no sheer to speak of, the designer does not have much choice. Neither does the painter, because a curving boot-top under a flat deck would look ludicrous. Where she has a kick to her profile as she should have, a touch of movement in the boot-top works wonders.