Ian Lallow on Boatbuilding
Tracy: So, when you were looking after the boats, what would you have to do to them?
Well, just the general maintenance you know? Painting, scrubbing, we always kept a stock of spare masts for boats like the Dragons and the Darings and the ‘X’s’ so if anybody broke a mast lets say on a Saturday, we could get them racing again on the Sunday.
They’d come into the Yard, leave the boat with us, we’d whip the broken mast out, transfer all the rigging and get it up … especially Cowes Week.
I mean we used to do lots of what I used to call ‘miraculous jobs’ Cowes Week.
One that I remember well was a Daring which is a fibreglass boat, there’s a Class of them in Cowes, it got holed, you know, right through. Only the topside, it wasn’t going to sink or anything, but we pulled it up and the fellow was sort of in tears.
I said, “It will be ready for you tomorrow sir” so we literally patched it up and launched it off again and he went sailing the following day.
But then you had that job to do during the winter to do a proper job on it, which those sorts of jobs were nice, you know. On another particular occasion.
I remember a customer, he came into me about 3 o’clock in the afternoon, and “Oh Ian” he said, “my boats sunk.” He’d sunk it, this was an ‘X’ boat so I jokingly said, “Well that’s alright sir, you can get a new one on the Insurance Company” and he was a bit upset.
I said, “Anyway, where is it?” So, he told me where it was and it was over off the mouth of Beaulieu River. So, I said, “Well, I’ll go across …”
He said, “We’ve managed to get it in as far as we could get it and we’ve put an anchor down” he said, “so it won’t move.”
I went out at 4 o’clock in the morning on my own, took the launch with me, and it was just showing above the water, literally just, dead low water. I started up the pump that we used to have in the launch, pumped it out and it raised up.
Towed it back to Cowes, pulled it up the following morning on the Slipway, phoned the owner up.
I said, “It will be ready for you tomorrow sir.”
“You’re joking” he said.
I said, “No, pop down and have a look at it” I said, “there’s only a little scratch on a rudder, we’ll patch that up and you’ll be back afloat for racing tomorrow.”
He just couldn’t believe it but that’s the sort of thing we used to do.