Hi, my name's Leo and I'm a boatbuilder and a sailor
and I'm on a mission to rebuild and restore
the 1910 classic yacht Tally Ho.
And that project is happening back in the US,
but right now I'm visiting the UK
and we're here in Millbrook,
where we're going to look
at a couple of interesting projects,
and I'm going to be talking
to a very experienced boatbuilder and sailor
called Chris Rees.
So right now he's working on the rebuild
of a 1905 pilot cutter
which was a Bristol Channel pilot cutter,
built in Pill, which is just at the mouth
of the river Avon near Bristol.
This is boat of a vaguely similar
sort of style and design as Tally Ho.
Of course Tally Ho wasn't a pilot cutter.
She was built as a yacht,
and she has a different stern as well,
and she's a slightly different size.
But like Tally Ho, this boat has been completely rebuilt
and there's very little left of the original.
[Music]
Well, we've known each other for a few years,
but the last time I saw you was in the Cillies,
when you were on your lugger
which you haven't got anymore.
— That's right. Three Brothers.
And you were on your little float boat.
— Yeah.
— And I think when I first met you
it was a year or two before that,
and I gave you a little bit of timber
for a frame or something.
'Cause you were in the quay, or something,
and you came in and took an offcut
from when we were building Grayhound.
Got some bits of timber there.
— Yeah.
So, Grayhound was an amazing project, wasn't it?
— Yeah, so I gave you offcuts from that.
— Yeah, so, could you tell us a bit about that,
like the backstory behind it?
— It's a replica of an 18th-century lugger.
Sort of general-purpose mini-warship
of the sort of, like, privateer,
or smuggling vessel or whatever.
Which we built not quite full scale.
The original was 76 foot. We built her at 66, 65.
That's a charter boat. A 3-masted lugger.
Which is a good project for ...
— Yeah, I mean, a huge boat to build traditionally.
— Yeah, yeah.
Biggest boat built like that for a long time.
You know, many years, well, it was the 70s, really,
since the end of the trawler building
and nothing that scale's been built since.
— And you've — even before that,
you've been building luggers, haven't you?
— Yeah, I built another replica lugger,
but much smaller scale, 38-footer.
— The Spirit of Mystery?
— The Spirit of Mystery, that got sailed to Australia
as a replica of a sort of voyage,
an emigration voyage, really, in the 1850s —
some Cornish fishermen sailed it
to Melbourne in Australia and... to live.
— Yeah, that's an amazing story,
even the original story of the fisherman,
sailing to — what, he sailed from Falmouth?
— Sailed from Newlyn.
— So, Newlyn, in Cornwall.
— In west Cornwall, to Australia.
And they stopped in Cape Town,
and then they took the mail, the post
from Cape Town to Australia,
because there were no ships going that way
that month or whatever, I'm not sure.
— And that was in what era?
— I think it might have been '54, 1854 ...
I'm not quite — it was in the '50s, anyway.
1850s, yes, a long time ago.
— And they were just fishermen,
they had no navigational —
— Yeah, just fishermen who wanted to emigrate,
and they couldn't afford the passage until,
well, they couldn't sell the boat,
and it was a down time in the fishing here, obviously,
and they decided to sail the boat there.
But one of them must have been a professional,
you know, ship's captain of some sort,
because he was a proper navigator.
You can't get to Australia
without being a navigator.
You can fish out of Cornwall, back and forth
on, you know, dead reckoning and luck
and local knowledge, but you can't row to Australia.
Somebody must've had a sextant. [Laughs]
— Yeah. So what is it about luggers specifically,
but traditional boats in general,
that inspires you to take on these big projects?
— I don't know, really. I mean, I was a fisherman
when I left school, I was a fisherman.
The first boat I was on was an ex-lugger. FY519.
And the owner of that was a real enthusiast
for those sort of boats and old wooden boats and stuff,
and he obviously had a lot of influence on me.
That's all green work, that was.
Making a pattern to continue this coating
for the cap which comes right 'round the back,
and continues, and the winch bases
which are down there, part of it.
But it's quite a complicated shape.
So I'm making it out of cheap plywood
before making it out of expensive hardwood.
— And what timber will you use for that?
— It's all iroko, all the deck gear on this boat is iroko.
That's a Douglas fir deck, which, it's a composite deck,
laying down ply and glass and then Douglas fir.
Oh, sorry, then iroko.
OK, like this, this is iroko, the same timber.
And the hatches and everything.
Should be teak, but we can't afford it.
— Yeah. [Laughs]
Do you feel that iroko holds up pretty well,
compares pretty well?
— It's all right for this sort of work.
It's really good for this sort of work.
In fact, I don't like it structurally very much,
you know, for, like, hull structures.
You tend to — you see quite easy-to-find hidden rot.
You gotta stay in the middle of it.
I've had it a few times on different, jobs, but —
— Yeah.
Yeah, this is a Bristol Channel pilot cutter
called Letty, one of the original ones
built in 1905 at Rauls of Pill,
which is the main Bristol pilot cutter,
boatbuilding area at the time.
It was on the estuary at Bristol.
Worked with pilot cutters
until the amalgamation in the '20s
when they were all sold off.
I'm not sure, I think she went as a yacht then,
but then ended up as a fishing boat in Ireland
renamed Roaming, I think that's correct.
Worked out of Arclow for quite a few years
and then in the late '70s, I think,
was sort of rediscovered as a pilot cutter
and taken to North Wales
and had a lot of work done on her
and then the present owner bought her from there.
They spend a lot of time and money and effort
on bringing her back to being
what we'll be launching next year
and she'll be perfect and ready to go again.
— Fantastic.
I gather it's more or less a complete rebuild?
— Yeah I don't think there's really much left at all.
We didn't do the hull. Another yard did the hull.
So I'm not positive about this,
but there's a little bit of,
in the fore end of the keel is original,
and the forefoot, and I think
there's some bits of framing that are original,
but, you know, all the plankings
and all the framing you can see here is all new.
So I don't think there's really much left at all.
The shape, and the history —
— And the name.
— And the name, that's right.
— Yeah, that's quite interesting.
I've looked at a few different projects recently
at different stages of build,
it's quite interesting to see this one
sort of midway, partway through the fit-out.
So what portion of the work of building a boat,
would you say, is in the fit-out,
as compared to the hull?
— Well, depends on the size of the boat, really.
And the bigger the boat gets, rapidly,
the fit-out becomes a bigger proportion of it.
So if you're building, you know, like a 25-footer,
you can put a fit-out in in a week.
because it isn't very much,
it's 2 bunks and a couple of lockers, you know.
but, and now if it's 80 feet,
it's probably, it's well over half of it, is in the fit-out.
And at this stage,
the owner is quite keen on a certain look
and we spent quite a lot of time, you know,
with these fielded pawls, and changing things around,
and being, having it exactly how he wants,
so that takes a bit more time
than if we were just throwing an interior in,
and just sort of painted tongue-and-groove
and oak trim, which would be perfectly OK.
But yeah, having said that, there's plenty of work
in building the hull of a 53-footer.
It's not nothing, as you know from your boat,
which is quite comparable to the thing.
— Yeah, I mean, we were saying this
Netty is probably a similar sort of size and tonnage.
— Yeah, they're both about 30 tonnes displacement.
This one's a bit longer but a lot of that is in the counter,
so they're quite comparable boats, really.
— Yeah. And this boat will be a private yacht again.
— Yeah.
— Do you think there's sort of work available
for young people coming up into the —
— Yeah. There is. You know,
it's more of a problem with finding people than —
— I think some people watch my channel
and would love to know
how to get started in boatbuilding.
How did you learn, or how would you suggest
you get into it if you're interested?
— Well, I was lucky in the sense,
when I finished with fishing,
I knew the chappie running the yard
at the head of the creek here in Millbrook.
And he just took me on as a, you know, labourer,
but willing to learn, and I just, kind of,
picked it up quite quickly,
and it was very soon that I was a boatbuilder.
And I just kept going with it.
Yeah, a good way is to do a —
well, like, you've been working before, obviously,
but just to have your own, get some terrible old boat
that you like the look of, and work on it
until you've learned something,
and then it's not costing anyone else anything.
And all you've got to do is find a few bits of wood
and some nails or whatever it is it's fastened with.
You can learn a lot like that.
It's, you know, a lot of the best boatbuilders
are people who've come in from that,
because they've got the real interest in a boat.
And also, going to sea is a really good idea
if you want to be a boatbuilder.
So you know what you're trying to achieve,
you know it's nice and strong, and won't leak.
— Yeah, that is a really good point.
— Well, I think it's critical in boatbuilding,
to have some idea of the seriousness of what you do.
Rather than thinking,
oh, we'll putty that up and it'll be all right.
Which is, you know, if you're building a house,
it works perfectly well.
Filler and paint, and it looks right, so it is right.
But boats aren't like that, are they?
— No, no. You do a lot of sailing as well, don't you?
— I have done. Yes, I do a lot of sailing as well.
You know, I've done similar stuff to you,
going off to the Caribbean,
[unintelligible] when I was younger, you know.
The last 2 years, I've been in Greenland
for the summer sailing.
— Fantastic.
Well, behind me we've got
another one of Chris's projects.
and this is the Cremyll Ferry
which used to run between where I am now,
which is just inside Cornwall,
and the other side of the river Tamar, which is Devon.
And this ferry was recently in an accident,
and was getting pretty tired anyway,
but Chris thinks that before that
she may have been the longest continuously-running
passenger ferry in the country.
Now Chris's intention is to try and rebuild the ferry,
get her going again,
and put her back on the water, back into service,
but with green power,
so, with an electric motor, electric engine.
— Built in 1926 as the Ferry of Cremyll,
which is between Cornwall and Plymouth
across the Tamar,
The last ferry — there's been a ferry
crossing there for 1000 years, apparently.
It's the oldest of the ferry crossings on the river.
And running continuously, well, so far as we know.
This was called the Armadillo,
and the other one the Shuttlecock.
Strange names.
— Yeah, I like them.
— As a steamboat, and then she was re-engined
after the war, in 1946 or '47, I can't remember now,
to go to diesel, and then ran as the ferry
from then until 4 years ago
when she was unfortunately in a collision
and also was getting quite tired.
I think at the time she was the oldest passenger vessel
in continuous use, wooden boat.
— In the country?
— Yes, I think so. We're intending to rebuild her
and put in an electric motor
with solar panels and the whole bit, renewables,
and including systems ashore to support that.
She was built as the Armadillo,
and you can just make it out here in the cap block.
And then renamed Milton Bell in 1947
when they did the diesel conversion.
It was a steamer before that.
We had to go for electric,
with the intention of being, you know, we've gone
with the complete cycle of power supplies.
— Yeah. What's that length?
— 69.
— Well, great. I hope you can save her.
— Yeah.
— Thanks, Chris, it's really interesting
to see what you're up to, and, yeah,
best of luck with this ferry and the other boat.
— Well, nice to see you again.
— Thanks.
[Music]
So, that's it for now.
We've been here in Millbrook in Cornwall
looking at some of the work that Chris Rees is doing.
And I'm going to be here in the UK
for a couple more weeks, I think,
before I go back to the US, to Washington,
where I'm rebuilding Tally Ho,
which is a 108-year-old English wooden yacht.
So thanks for watching
and a massive thank you to everyone who's donated
or otherwise supported the Tally Ho project.
It makes a huge difference
and it means I'm able to take the time
to make and edit these videos,
so I really appreciate it.
I'll see you next time
when we're going to be checking out
some other boatyards and other projects
and boatbuilders elsewhere in the UK.
All right — cheers!
[Music]
