Sailing Magazine
By Richard Crockett
One has to admire the tenacity of pioneer boat-builders from days of yore who had little reference to work from, but an insatiable desire to build a yacht – especially in steel.
SA Yachting magazine in the 1961 November/December issue featured an article on the experiences of readers who had taken the plunge into building their dream boats in steel.
From East London, E W le Grice said this: “Although there seem to be no books devoted specifically to building in steel, I was determined to have a steel boat – and this also notwithstanding the fact that a couple of designers to whom I wrote considered that steel was not suitable material for a sailing yacht under about 30 ft. in length.
“Fool rush in where angels fear to tread ··. So against the advice of experts I decided to have a hull built to my own rough sketches, based mainly on a design published in Motor Boating, November 1955.”
John Knight built a 46-footer 400 miles from the sea, and said this: “Much has been written in Yachting News about the building of round-bilge steel hulls for amateurs. Having recently completed a 46ft. hull of this type with some measure of success, I feel a brief article on the subject at this stage might be of some help to the many people who, encouraged to a certain extent by previous articles, still fight shy of the problem of forming compound curves.”
READ MORE HERE: 1961 11-12 – SA Yachting – they built in steel – OCR
