Ian Lallow on Boatbuilding

Tracy: So, when you launched a vessel, how would you go about it?

Launching a vessel? Well, it was always a last-minute thing to get the vessel ready and you’d work late into the night, so you didn’t disturb the Boatbuilders that were working on it. We’d move it out, put the mast in, put it on the Slipway and then build a platform up the front fore end with a gantry to hang the bottle on.

A bottle of Champagne, father always used to give the lady that was going to do the job a little bit of a message about how to bang it and make sure to give it a good wallop. Don’t just let it go, give it a good punch, and we also used to of course just nick the bottle with a glass cutter which helps it.

Father did it a bit too much on one occasion and the bottle went up before it actually got to the boat, so there was a mad rush round the town to find another bottle of Champagne and then of course she’d go down the Slipway and we always went sailing.

With the exception of ‘Drumbeat’ because she was slightly differently built, slightly different part of the Yard, and they couldn’t actually put the mast in until she’d been launched, but other than that, we always went sailing the day the boat was launched.

Tracy: So why would you have done that? To make sure she was alright in the water.

And of course the customer wanted to, being he’s got the boat in the water, he’s going to use it, so you had to make sure that everything was working.

We would never launch a new boat on a Friday, that’s unlucky.

Tracy: Why is it unlucky?

Just tradition. I mean we did do two launches to my knowledge, two, possibly three, a minute after midnight knowing that the owner wanted to use the boat the following day and the tides were such that … no, father would never launch a new boat on a Friday.