Bristol Channel Pilot Cutters

Alpha sailing off Staffa island - original watercolour

Seeing all the gorgeous photographs of the Bristol Channel Pilot Cutters racing these last two weekends has set me to thinking about our long relationship with these beautiful old boats. We have strong connections with Peggy and Alpha,  and Dolphin to a lesser extent.  In fact we went  to look at Peggy in 1973 before we bought Britannia, as we were looking for a boat that we could sail off shore but would be comfortable to live aboard.  Pilot cutters were designed for the pilots to live aboard for periods of time whilst waiting for ships to pilot up the Channel, so we figured that one of these would suit us well.  Peggy was for sale at the time and was on a mooring in Penarth.  We travelled from our home in Somerset to take a look, but decided against buying her - can't remember why now - maybe she was out of our price range!  Anyway, not long after that we came across Britannia and Sam fell in love. And then we heard that Peggy had been bought by Mark and Diccon Priddy and was based in Bristol, so we caught up with her again in 1974 when we took Britannia to Bristol.

Peggy had an almost catastrophic accident in 1980, whilst waiting for the tide to get back into Bristol docks.  The crew had been instructed by the lock keepers to lay alongside the quay, and as the tide dropped, and she was drying out, a baulk of timber that was waterlogged and submerged,  pierced her hull, leaving a hole a couple of feet across.  When the tide came back in, she rapidly filled with water and despite many people baling and pumping for hours, she didn't lift. Bristol Docks Authority gave them 24 hours to move the boat or they were going to dynamite her as she was blocking the entrance way to the dock.  So Sam decided that the only solution was a coffer dam, which would contain any water coming in and allow Peggy to float again.  He designed and constructed a coffer dam in the few hours before the tide came in again, working with Martin Cornes as his mate. They worked in the dark, fitted the shaped box, sealed it to the hull, and when the tide came in, up she popped!  They were then able to move her to a safe place where she was patched before eventually getting into the safety of the floating dock.  Sam remembers being interviewed by a news team and defended the crew against some allegations that they had caused the disaster through negligence, which was not the case at all..When we left Bristol, Diccon and Mark gifted us a beautiful tender which was the first fibreglass boat out of a mould taken off a 19th Century American boat that Mark had brought back with him from the States.  We still have her!

Alpha - photographed by Beken's of Cowes

Alpha was very much part of our lives when we were in Scotland.  Sam organised and sailed her on a delivery trip from Lowestoft where she had been stored for 18 years.  The owners then were Neil and Pauline Pettefar and they, having watched us sailing Britannia from Portree, decided that they wanted Alpha brought up to Skye.  Unfortunately, Neil suffered a major stroke just after she arrived in Portree and they were never able to sail her.  They sold her to a good friend of ours, Dr Michael Humphries, and then Sam led a major rebuild of her in Corpach in 90/91.  We then became involved in chartering her with Mike, her owner, from Portree, and managed and skippered her chartering in the Canaries for a winter's season.  Sam has skippered her in one of the Bristol Channel races but we cannot remember the year!  Despite loving Britannia, he says Alpha is the most sea-kindly boat that he has ever sailed and it has been a privilege to have been given the opportunity to do so.

Our relationship with Dolphin is a little more tenuous.  One of her previous owners, Ken Briggs, sailed with us as crew for a week on Britannia around the islands so that he could become more proficient sailing a large gaff-rigged boat.  He got on well with our skipper at the time, Tim, who then worked for Ken for a season, skippering Dolphin.  We also met the present owner, Roger Capps in Bristol at the Festival of the Sea in 1996 when we had Britannia up for sale.  Delighted for Roger that he won this year's Cock of the Channel race in Dolphin - well deserved.   It is a small world isn't it - traditional wooden boats?  So many connections.

We have a facebook page, britannia sailing trust, and a website - www.britanniasailingtrust.org for anyone interested in Britannia's progress.