It’s getting cold and wet. Will therefore call this the October edition after all. Many thanks for subs. received over the last few months; it helps. As usual, what was looking liked a pretty thin edition of the Newsletter became almost crowded at the end – but I’m grateful for M.O.s who mail or phone in. 

Three substantial bits of national magazine coverage this year about Memory boats and Salterns Boatbuilders, including the story of "Little Bear" making a few headlines. Yet again, Memorys doing the business when it comes to race results, some referred to later but also "Merganser" and "Nutkin" being second and third for the OGA Solent Davey Trophy. I mentioned race handicaps last time – and Nick Hillman adds an interesting bit about the Portsmouth Yardstick’s ‘variable’ calculations. I’ve not been able to include all of the pictures – but good to see them so thank you. As you’ll gather I hope, a number of these find there way onto our web-site; have a look. Max Manning, sailing his nice, little bit bigger, Tamarisk 22 – is still looking after the web-site for us, but waiting for another willing and suitably informed MOA member to take over….. There’s evidence of increasing numbers of people accessing the Memory web-site; so this is useful to us and Salterns. Easy when you know how…….not arduous……..volunteers……email Max.

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Bit of a lively scene, good to report. The new Memory at the Soton Boatshow has some ‘design development’, most notably the cockpit seating resting on substantial built-in buoyancy and the use of teak woodwork, which looks super and certainly easier to maintain. (See picture page.) She is going to Holland, further details to come I hope. And – three more new Memorys will be coming out of Salterns in the next six months or so, which is really good news after a bit of a lull new boat wise.

On the ownership changes, Max’s "Talitha", mentioned last time, has gone down to the West country with Giles and Hannah Frampton.  "Sophie" has been taken over from Giles by Ben and Nikki Sykes down in Exeter. For similar reasons to Max (no excuse of course) Mike and Dee have let "Merganser" go – to Colin and Katy Outlaw, who will keep her in this neck of the woods, the Solent, which is a comfort as the Solent fleet was getting a bit denuded. And also staying here will be "Gretel" which has been sold on by Dick New to David Gorrod and Glyn Foulkes. Neil Mordey’s "Dram" will now be cherished by Quintin and Zena Macorland – bringing her back from the East coast to the Chichester Harbour, one up to us ‘Southies’. Neil is not abandoning us, on the contrary his will be one of the new Memorys, this time with cabin and all mod cons. There may be one or two more changes in the next few months – all of which will be absorbed into our annual owners list. (Ed.)

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I first met Little Bear (then Peridot) on the Isle of Man about 1972. My college friend Gwyn, like me, had fallen in love with the boat show prototype - so different then from all the white plastic and long before most of the born-again gaffers had arrived. From the rhinoceros hide gaff jaws to the owl-and-the-pussycat green topsides she seemed a magical boat, something from another age, but also - able to perform. Stories were circulating of the Memory overtaking photographers' launches or racing one designs during trials. Gwyn had located a Memory in the Isle of Man. The plan was that three of us would take the ferry over and sail her back to Liverpool (He'd grown up in Birkenhead). None of us knew much about gaff rig. There was a little lawnmower engine that worked a variable pitch prop - the elastic band for the cooling pump had snapped and the engine overheated. She was loaded with all the gear for the crossing; a new blow up dinghy; charts; a new anchor and 30 fathoms of warp; a new compass; sleeping bags, she was the open boat version, but there was room to crawl on hands and knees under the foredeck and kip. The previous owner had lashed wet sacks of ballast to the Samson posts forrard (presumably to balance the lawnmower engine) which made damp & uncomfortable pillows. I was used to racing dinghies where you had to get your weight up on the windward gunwale as quickly as possible. I'd not yet learned to trust the Memory's forgiving and solid ways. First tack out of Douglas and I ripped the pocket of my jeans off on the centre-plate housing cleat. Second tack I barked my shins on the wire lanyard that runs to the forward bulkhead. If she were mine I thought darkly, the first thing I'd change is that centre-plate tackle - a lovely open cockpit - and a ruddy booby trap in the middle.

... is big. Once we were out of sight of land we saw only one boat, and that on the skyline in our day and night passage. It began to breeze up a little - the new dinghy began to take off, flying behind. We half deflated it; and lashed it aft of the mast. We had to burrow for halyards (they were led to cleats on the deck through turning blocks, rather than made up on a pin rail in front of the mast.) Rising wind and dark - we decided to reef, and reef again. I still remember the thrill of standing up in the cockpit, leaning over the boom as the phosphorescent bow wave and wake hissed off into the dark, tying reef points. We were learning to trust the boat. For a moment, in the dark, we could have been seaman in any century, leaning over a tree wood spar, gathering sail handful by handful, furling the topsails in a cape-horner, or riding a pitching Nobbie out of Lancashire. The seas near enough to touch; yet the boat reassuringly buoyant.

Gwyn pored over the charts by torchlight. We took turns to kip under the foredeck - where had Liverpool got to? No ballroom dancers or clubbers were ever so glad to see the light of Blackpool tower ! Now there's a navigation mark worth marking on the chart. We altered course for Fleetwood, where the illuminations ran out in a patch of dark.

The engine wouldn't start. We discovered later the elastic band has snapped again - don't say it - the one that drove the exhaust's cooling water, even though the engine was air cooled. And so it came about we learned to short tack a Memory to windward in the dark in the winding entrance of the river Lune, shaking out the reefs as the wind eased. Gently, don't pinch her - boom well out over the transom, get her moving, till there's a crunch of plate on sand - plate up a few inches, ease the jib to help her head up, hold the jib aback to spin her head round; steadily, sail her round, don't slam her like a racing dinghy; and again till we touch the shingle on the other side. And so it was, in the dark, feeling our way, with no engine, we beat up the tortuous channel till the shadowy trawlers and fish sheds of Fleetwood showed us we were safe. We made over to a splintered old staithe, rigged the warps & fenders as best we could, and crashed out in oilies and all in the cuddy. At dawn, two wonderful motherly ladies arrived to open a ramshackle hut on our staithe - the Mission to Distressed Fisher-folks or some such wonderful Victorian Charity - which served huge mugs of trawler tea and doorstop bacon butties. The Irish sea behind us - we felt we came within the provisions of the charity; heaven is port after storm and a hot mug of tea in a grey dawn.

Gwyn sold me "Bear" , as she'd now become, for a song on condition I looked after her and sorted out the cabin. Arthritis meant he couldn't sail her so easily; he's graduated to a wonderful Scottish Motor Fishing Vessel, trawler type motor sailor, - a Rogger.

"Little Bear" was in the Thames now near Twickenham, minus engine (thrown overboard long since in a fit of pique - not to be trusted!) and bowsprit - some one has stolen it. I was on Britain's muddiest river, the Parrat at Bridgwater in Somerset. I borrowed an ancient Seagull from my local undertakers: an old family firm; two brothers who loved ferreting & fishing; and were a fund of hilarious stories about being stranded in the radioactive mud off Hinkley Point Power station, struggling to race the coffin to church when their fishing trip went wrong. (that's another article).

Getting the boat out onto a trailer was easy. Getting the mast out first, almost impossible. She's one of the early Berquvist boats - the mast was solid and heavy. It looks and feels more like pitch pine than Oregon pine?! Old growth? - I had a back ache for six months afterwards. At the precise moment helpers on the quay were hauling, and I stood astride the foredeck lifting, a Thames trip boat went by, leaving us rolling in her wake. The mast still has scars a few inches from the heel where the deck caught it. I vowed to do something about a lowering mast as well.

First the plate tackle. The ex-engine left a handy space and bearers for a differential winch. I built it out of hunks of old pallets, some galvanised water pipe and a length of 3/4" iron bar, and shifted the turning block inside the case a couple of inches aft, to lead the tail out through an eye in the aft end of the case. I make it as big as possible, so there was no room for rope to jump off the drum and twine round the axle. It's worked wonderfully. The cockpit's free. And you can use the plate like a sounding device - only a few seconds to hoist. The wire lanyard wore out years ago - I've discovered ordinary rope lanyard is best - it can't jump out of pulleys. Make it oversize, or replace it every couple of years to allow for chafe. You don't need the dimensions: different scrap'll produce different designs. (Carpenters work to the nearest 1/16 of an inch; engineers to the nearest 0.001mm - and boatbuilders to the nearest boat, as the old saying goes.) Racing dinghies before the war had wonderful solid bronze winches like this when they still raced at sea without rescue boats (check the boat jumbles?) or make yours from what's around. (An afterthought; there's just room to make a tackle that runs under the aft cockpit decking, with the fall led up)

.... and the mast down.

A keel-stepped lowering mast ! I didn't want to saw the mast off at deck level and put in a tabernacle. The deep bury of the mast seemed one of the natural and desirable features of a gaff rig; and I didn't want to add runners - an unnecessary complication in a small boat I thought; cluttering the broad side decks; and especially if I was single handed, something else to get tangled up. In a funny way Gwyn's desire to see a little cuddy cabin, and the mast problem, solved themselves simultaneously. We sawed away part of the half deck for the planned cuddy and beefed up the mast beam with a bit of mahogany church hall door. We raised the mast step three inches so the heel of the mast heel could just clear the bunk flats. (I'd failed maths, and was always a duffer at arithmetic. I lay awake at night working our the difference in stability that three inches would make - I suspect infinitesimal; less than the extent to which the rig varies anyway, depending who's hoisting the main. A friend welded a great pivoted collar and pivot pin that bolts onto the beam: the mast is secured with paired wedges on leather and haven't shifted a fraction in 10 years.

We copied the cuddy cabin itself from the Friendship sloops of America - a little bow fronted shelter for boats designed, like the Memory's ancestors, to be handy and fast and well mannered for short handed pot lifting or inshore fishing. We soaked the ply in the bath for a week so that it curved nicely. The idea was for a couple of hatches - a sliding main one and a bolted down on gaskets inner one that would only be removed to lower the mast. We worked it out as we went. It's not perfect, but I can hoist or lower the mast without backache, single-handed; and for a while we trailed the boat down to the Dart for camping holidays annually. The hardest bit of the cabin building job was finding none of the measurements worked out between port and starboard. It took days to discover the main bulkhead was actually diagonal, a couple of inches skewed; invisible beneath the deck, but now that we were truing it in order to build a cabin, a real problem. "If it looks alright it is alright" - with little bits of packing we adjusted the new half inch ply cabin bulkhead; and built a bridge deck to restore the strength amidships, with hatchboards that dropped down like toast in a toaster. (A bit too clever & liable to jam). Following an 18th century model I'd seen in the Science Museum, the cabin goes a couple of inches forward of the mast. This adds strength to the deck at the pivot point. And the curves mean it seems much bigger inside than it is. The two oval lights just match the human eye - you can sit in the cabin, leaning against the bulkhead, warm, relaxed, almost as if the boat was a second skin or an extension of your own body looking forward or sideways. And by moving the cabin there, we kept the great 8'6" open cockpit which is one of the joys of the Memory. (I've had a dozen aboard when we were running a camp for families who didn't get holidays; though we didn't put to sea then - but cruised the quiet Dart at dusk, hurricane lamp in the rigging.)

Once, on Turf reach in the middle of the Exe - the cockpit hosted the wedding of two other Memory sailors; Graham & Lesley Rich of Topsham, the owners of 'Memory' and her tender 'Amnesia'. Groom & best man arrived on 'Memory' - top hats and tails. I'd imagined they'd wear Breton shirts & tarred pig tails, but no - the works. My littlest daughter put on her sailor suit, pretty as a Victorian postcard, as crew. The bride and brides-maids arrived on another Memory - with flowers twined up the rigging to the hounds; and Celtic wedding music playing - pipes skirling, fiddles fiddling, and bhodrans beating. Wonderful! Mother in law arrived last, in a very large fishing launch, looking worried. (You’re the vicar: your boat's the church boat !?) "Little Bear" sank lower and lower; the whole fleet made up alongside, all hanging from her anchor. And when it was time to proclaim Graham & Lesley man & wife; the wind caught the confetti and whirled it high in the air; spiralling up like and cloud of butterflies. Magic! And afterwards, in a garden on the river bank; more wine; and an old fashioned jazz band, and ‘Oh those summer nights !’ Keep your Rolls & Caddies. Memorys made the most lyrical nuptial barges imaginable.

You may see this as a compelling advert for Greg's new well! After the burial at sea of the Parsons Prawn, the only auxiliary power was the little Three and a Half Mariner rubber dinghy outboard. In extremis I lashed the dinghy alongside - and had to hop from helm to inflatable and back to perform any manoeuvre. I eventually built an extraordinary Heath Robinson extension to the Seagull bracket on the stern, to mount the same little outboard near enough the water to work. Reaching the controls was still athletic! And the engine wasn't really powerful enough. Trying to push out of Southpool Lake (Salcombe) against a buffeting westerly one summer, I discovered I couldn't even reach steerage way, and had to keep swivelling the engine hard over in its bracket to try and keep her head to wind as gusts zig-zagged her from shoal to shoal. We vowed to invest in new engine - a FIVE (mega power!!) horse Mercury that came with a bonus internal tank. It's worked well; always started; is relatively quiet, and pushes her along merrily at about 4.5 knots in most conditions at about half throttle. The first day I tried it; I pulled the gear lever forwards, cast off, twisted the accelerator. There was a resounding crack. The old Seagull bracket had broken clean off!! The engine skated past us like a water skier on one foot doing a Olympic manoeuvre; then sank in the river. The boat surged forward out of control and rammed a beautiful white topside Westerly. "Hold on", I shouted to my daughter, as the wife of the owner came from below shouting 'Rodney Rodney our topsides'. 'I'll polish your topsides in a minute Madame' I muttered through gritted teeth, but - 'please can we hold on; our motor’s escaped.'

We'd luckily put a safety rope on the engine, so hauled it out before serious damage was done. But it focussed the mind marvellously about an outboard mounting. I didn't trust myself to fibre glass below the waterline, so instead made a little hatch on the stern (like the Devon Yawls that fill the river Exe) and disguised it later with gingerbread work and a carved name board. It's not as good as a proper well for concealing the engine, or putting the thrust deep down and in front of the rudder. Manoeuvres with quarter engines are always a little exciting! But it can be pulled up instantly to clear it of weed, or for that extra 1/16 of a knot in the increasingly cut-throat Memory races. My latest theory is to make a gizmo: a little crank to connect the tiller to the outboard handle for close quarters manoeuvring, where it’s hard to get steerage way in the confines of narrow harbour or marina, which we generally try to avoid anyway. It will swing the outboard as far as it will go in the well, to aid close quarters steering. To be reported on later maybe.

O and I forgot: my most trustworthy auxiliary - a 10 foot sweep. I’d discovered most of the mudbanks on the Brue & Parrat (as I said, Britain's muddiest river: in the days of Empire the mud was sold as gently abrasive "Bath Brick" to clean cutlery of every self-respecting Imperial household; a trade killed almost overnight by the invention of stainless steel) Running aground on the Exe is less scary than being caught out in the Bristol Channel - but just as muddy. You can pretend to be scrubbing your bottom; or take up ornithology for 6 hours; but feel quite safe in the broad sheltered Estuary; and wave back (or studiously ignore) the cheerful waves from boats who have (at least this time !) kept to the meandering and changing channel. That oar saved us quite a few times. My shortest voyage was only 10 minutes ; huffing and hauling, we'd screw her head back into the, and bounce on the bowsprit end till the heel of the keel lifted and she'd slide back into the shifting channel. Then warily, reading the chart, and watching for the tell tale navigation marks - birds paddling not swimming - creep out over the constantly changing Exe bar and then down west to the deeper harbours of Dartmouth or Brixham and my favourite free anchorage (when there's no East in the wind) at Fishcombe Cove in Torbay. There the water's clean & clear for swimming and the fleshpots (or fishpots) of Brixham are only a few minutes walk along the cliffs. The oar has earned it's keep, but it's proved a real bother to stow. Too long for the cockpit, I tried the side deck; but it made sitting out uncomfortable. For years it lived hooked between the bowsprit end and the shrouds, ready for instant use. Latterly I sawed a few inches off and cut a keyhole right into the stern locker under the side deck, where it now lives invisible but secure, jammed between the transom and the cabin bulkhead. It doubles as spinnaker pole, with a notch cut into the blade to grip the sheet, and the heel held securely by the hatch runners. No expensive fittings, but it works.

"The Duvet" is a genniker flown from the bowsprit end. With boom squared off and duvet poled out on the opposite side "Little Bear" is wider (26 feet!) than she's long, but holds a good steady course downwind in moderate conditions with helm pegged. Several times, under this rig I've run up channel from Salcombe or Dartmouth at the end of my holiday in a homeward bound Westerly and an Autumn sea-fret which has hidden the seamarks and land marks. Steering by compass for Straight Point (the entrance to the Exe Channel) and puzzled by buoys (sewage? range? racing?) that seem to be in the wrong places by my dead reckoning, I discover she's made a far faster passage than I could imagine possible and, suddenly, here's the Sandy Bay caravan site on the cliffs and the drunken Exe no. 2 or 4 lying flat in the flood or ebb, covered in seagull droppings, that mark the shifting channel. The main cardinal is oddly elusive, hiding against the dark rocks inshore.

"Little Bear's " looking her age a bit. This year I replaced the centre-plate & it's pivots - worn to a third of their original circumference. And decided to check the other original galvanised ironmongery. The chain-plate bolts were also worn to knitting needle thinness; and several sheared as I unbolted them. All new bolts & plates, in rough unpolished stainless - after a few weeks they look as though they've been there for ever. But the moment she moves, the odd rust weeps and the rather tatty non-slip deck paint vanish; she's a fresh owl & pussy cat green (thanks to Epiphanes - really nice to work with) and as the bow wave curls up the prow (as it does in a Memory in force two anyway). The main with it's deep loose foot curves out proudly; the whole boat becomes a riot of sensual curves and excites universal admiration. (A phenomenon all Memory owners seem to report) A colleague here has been converted after one sail aboard "Little Bear" and there's now another Memory here. - Chris has brought Mike and Jessica’s ex "Scherhezerade", now called "Whisper". (Scher .. was impossible for the broad Devon drawl to pronounce; let alone shout as a hail across the Cattewater, the Plym or the Yealm ) We look forward to cruising in company and tuning up against each other. Who needs the Louis Vuitton cup? Eat your heart out Dennis Connor! What next? Well, as I shiver in the sudden autumn cold, I wonder about a solid fuel stove, like the old-time fisherman fitted in boats as little as 15 feet long (e.g. the Thames Peter boats) It would need to be tiny, not much bigger than a baked bean tin, and fuelled with charcoal for a fine dry heat for midwinter sails on those lovely clear high pressure days you sometimes get, when the sky is streaks of pink and grey, and the white plastic gin palaces and tupperware boats have been abandoned by their expense account owners, and the estuaries that first bred the Memory are haunt again of flocks of migrating starlings tacking and gybing in their aerial regattas; and indefatigable dowdy waders prod the saltings; and the thin midwinter sun washes the half-tide flats with a million different colours of light on mud. There's one cormorant I always talked to on the Exe: he always sat on the Turf Reach port hand buoy. I just know it was the same bird I met each voyage;,drying his raggety wings, eyeing me with one bright eye. I'm convinced he was the tutelary Spirit of the river, the King of the Estuary and it's winding channels - in disguise, dressing down, like the Prince and the Pauper. But he didn't fool me; I'd doff my hat to him each voyage: keep an eye on me please, you Majesty; see you soon. He'd nod, barely a flicker (Royalty are trained not to show emotion) but I'd catch the glint in his eye. And yes he has, each misty setting off and each dusk returning.

From Nick Hillman ("Letty May")

Greetings to all MOA folk ! It’s been a very different year for "Letty May". As you may remember we did not win Heybridge Regatta for a fourth time as it was decided that we had won it enough so our handicap was worked out after the finish to make us second (!) We did have the satisfaction of being first home though. Roy Hart ("Greensleeves") crewed for me for this year’s East Coast OGA race. Having had a nice sail over to Brightlingsea the previous evening, Roy met me on the morning of the race. There was almost no wind and at the start none at all. The entire fleet motored up the Colne an appropriate distance and turned off engines for the 5 minute gun. The fleet drifted down to the start, arriving just about on time - impressive. The fleet stayed with the strongest tide for the run out of the river and there were a few collisions and tangled bowsprits. We decided to work our way out of the tide into clearer air, where the lack of tide allowed the slight breeze to work on the sails. It worked and we pulled clear of the entire fleet for a time with the faster boats slowly catching up with us. The front runners met the filling sea breeze and pulled away from the main fleet. The breeze filled into a cracking beat out to the far end of the shortened course and we then had a run and broad reach home to the finish. "Letty May" was ninth boat home and second on corrected time. "Wizard", an East Coast One design, was first, but then she is a hotshot racing boat, and "Letty May" won the OGA Cruiser cup for the first bona fide cruiser on corrected time.

Shortly after this I was contacted by a film company who were looking to borrow (hire) a 19’ classic looking boat for a film called "SOMETHING BORROWED". A romantic comedy starring Debra Messing (Grace in "Will & Grace", an American sit-com). After some haggling we agreed a price. The original plan was to film her being towed around some lanes in Surrey then launch her into a lake near Guildford, to act as a background, and then finally to park her alongside a house in Chiswick for a week’s filming on location. After looking at the lake I decided that she would have to be craned in, the film producer decided to economise and said "No boat in the lake after all". Letty’s role would all be on dry land. I towed her down to Surrey on a Sunday morning and she then spent 12 hours on set and being filmed, towed behind a 4x4 up and down Box Hill. Then in the afternoon, same thing on the Drive of a large country manor house. She would have become really swollen headed except that, for the film, she was renamed "Jack Ship" - typical American toilet humour ! Ten days or so later I took her to Chiswick for a week’s filming parked on the hard standing in front of a very nice house facing a pleasant square. So that was how "Letty May" earned enough to take a family of four on a two week holiday to Portugal - thus missing the Wivenhoe Regatta and the Ruby Rally Maldon Regatta !

Only a few weeks ago I was trying to find out the Portsmouth Yardstick Handicap for a Memory. After some research it was decided that 1150 would be about right. I later learned that Roy has been racing "Greensleeves" with an handicap of 1140. I then did our own club’s single-handed race. I won it despite the handicap now being worked out on 1050. "Letty" did me proud finishing just behind a Super Seal 26 (with Mylar sails) and ahead of two Hustler 30's. A couple of years ago I was called "that handicap bandit" - this time it was "Nick in his flying machine disguised as an old gaffer".

Last winter there were a few improvements made to "Letty" to make her a bit faster. On the rigging I had a new pin rail made which now surrounds the base of the mast on three sides, the front of the cabin being the fourth. This allows jib and ghoster halyards to be made off forward of the mast along with the topsail halyard and the topping lift. The peak halyard and throat halyard are made off on the starboard side with topsail sheet and downhaul on the port side. Also on the port side pin rail is a turning block for the other end of a double ended peak halyard with a 4:1 purchase making it 8:1 in all. This allows adjustment of the peak possible from the cockpit in any strength of wind and the sail can be trimmed perfectly for any point of sailing. The major work, however, was the filling in of the prop aperture and the construction of a new rudder. The rudder is a laminated affair of iroko so that the blade has a maximum thickness of 1.25 inches. New fittings were made by a local marine engineer and galvanised. The blade is slightly different in shape from the original having a small amount of balance area forward of the axis, slightly less area aft and a little more draft. The idea was to allow a flow of water over the blade from the other side of the boat when the helm is put over to stop the rudder stalling and so less movement is required and therefore less braking effect. This is helped by less rudder area aft and it being slightly deeper. The experiment seems to have worked as she is easier to steer and definitely seems faster. I have included a couple of pictures to show how it looks. (See picture page. Ed.) The new skeg is laminated mahogany 5" thick with Marine ply, laminated to thickness, as an infill up to the counter. The whole thing was then epoxied and then filled and faired before being painted and then antifouled. This, with the new rudder seems to have made a vast difference to her handling. I can maintain good control even when over pressed and having water rushing along the lee deck, she always tried to round up and there was a lot of weather helm at a steep angle of heel. This has been reduced without losing that comfortable amount of weather helm that is needed for comfort and safety.

And this winter I intend to turn my thoughts to a better system for setting the topsail……….

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A number of us stick to the reasons for having the mast stepped on the keel, however awkward it is for dodging under tempting bridges, or trailing to the Italian Lakes for the weekend. It’s a hefty chunk to hoik out. As many of you will know, Greg has a wee hoist alongside the creek but he has recently put together a simple ‘A’ frame which conveniently does the job whatever the tide. (See diagram.) Preferably with two people around, but not inconceivably alone, providing you get the balance right and take each step nice and deliberate. The frame should be positioned, usually a bit aft of the mast, so that the base of the legs can be tied off on the chain plates. The lift strapping around the mast is positioned just slightly higher than the balance point, which is usually about three feet six from the top of the A frame. Best to use a rolling hitch but then take the line down and tie off also around the two blocks of the mast which support the boom jaws. With the base of the mast just clear of the deck, held there with a boot, the hoist can be tied off at the cleat whilst the mast is manipulated safely to the horizontal position. Then lower gently onto padding. Putting it back is the reverse process. Lifting a horizontal mast will soon tell you where the balance point is !

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PS. If your engine article prompts any further enquiries, I have a Dolphin engine overhauled over and rewired by the Dolphin chap, complete with brand new Dolphin exhaust and silencer and just about everything need to install: skin fittings, valves, filter, prop and shaft (courtesy of Greg) etc. etc. It was to be my next project before I sold Talitha - I had even put the engine in place to work out where to put the bearers. I guess I will want about £1200 for the lot. It would just cover my costs but would be a good deal for someone who wants an inboard. Contact me if you are interested.

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