A celebration of traditional boats old and new on the Deben

With bright blue skies and blustery breeze, the weather was favourable upon the River Deben in Suffolk for the East Coast Old Gaffers Association (OGA) Jubilee Rally over the bank holiday weekend in early June.

Making the most of the long weekend, 32 classic and traditional boats took part in the rally including classic yachts, a fishing smack, winner of Classic Boat’s Newbuild of the Year 2021 ‘Longshore’ and eight boats built by Everson & Sons, now known as Woodbridge Boatyard. On the Thursday evening the boats and their crews congregated at Waldringfield Boatyard, the rally’s base camp, for a gentle briefing, beer and BBQ. Friday’s focus was Felixstowe Ferry, four or so miles downriver against the flood tide, where fish and chips awaited. On the way back upriver the flotilla congregated at the beach at The Rocks with the dinghies going ashore to sit and enjoy the afternoon sun. At their leisure, the boats all gradually headed home for the evening to Waldringfield and Woodbridge ready for the final day.

Saturday the gods of wind and weather smiled again upon the massed boats who set off upriver, this time to Woodbridge. A stiff northerly was blowing again making for fun and exciting sailing as the boats beat their way into town. The collection of boats coming into the town together made a pleasing spectacle in the confines of the Deben with those not flying four-sided sails dressed in signal flags. The Notice to Mariners for a Ships Salute for Her Majesty’s Platinum Jubilee at midday was marked by those with horns or even in some cases canons adding to the celebrations.

The Woodbridge Boatyard had organised a barbeque to welcome the OGA rally participants. Workshop doors were all open and adorned in bunting, the aptly named Deben Cherub ‘Jubilee’, built 1935, the year of King George VI’s Silver Jubilee, and part way through a spruce up (currently seeking a new custodian), sat atop the quayside overlooking the river, Union Flags fluttered and sausages sizzled for the arriving sailors. The barbeque, and indeed the whole weekend, was used not just to celebrate the Queen’s jubilee but also the launches of two special boats from Woodbridge Boatyard. ‘Clytie’ was built and launched from the yard 100 hundred years ago making her the longest resident boat on the Deben and a local flagship and landmark. At the other end of the timeline a brand new boat, ‘La Mouette’. ‘Clytie’s story is thankfully well documented due to her surviving ship’s logs, countless photos and her unbroken chain of matriarchal ownership. Now sailed by the forth and fifth generations, passing down through the female descendants of her original owner, Sir Clifford Paterson, she is part of a very exclusive number of boats (I cannot name another) which after a full century is still in the same family and still returns to the yard that built her each year. ‘Clytie’ is in fine condition thanks to her deep roots within her family, the care that they give her and the fact that she is well used so to see her bedecked in flags, moored in central Woodbridge left nobody in any doubt that she has a long future ahead of her as she sails into her second century.

A hundred years younger, a new sister to ‘Clytie’, ‘La Mouette’ was launched to coincide with the celebrations. A new traditional clinker dinghy eleven feet in length and built of copper-fastened larch on English oak with a mahogany transom, shear planks and thwarts with douglas fir spars and bronze fittings, ‘La Mouette’ is a testament to enduring craftsmanship. Designed to be a faithful replica of the dinghies built in great numbers by Everson & Sons from the yards foundation in 1889 until the 1960s, she is immediately recognisable as a Woodbridge boat to those in the know thanks to her soaring shearline and open gunwhals. Completely designed, built, rigged and varnished  inhouse with her gunter sail also made in Woodbridge at Suffolk Sails, Vicki Jessel who commissioned ‘La Mouette’ was keen from the outset that supporting the local marine trades was as important an aspect of the build as any other and her faith in those local trades has clearly paid off. “For me”, says Vicki, “’La Mouette’ is a perfect combination of past, present and future; memories of hazy summers sailing with my father, the inclusion of oak from our farm in her stern knee and being able to see her and the yard that built her from our home in Woodbridge, and knowing that unlike so many things these days, she is built to last, an heirloom.” ‘La Mouette’ charged around joyfully in the gusty chop of the Deben amongst the Deben Luggers, Smacks Boats and other dinghies with Vicki and Woodbridge Boatyard manager Matt Lis aboard proving herself nimble, seakindly, stable and fun. It is hoped by Woodbridge Boatyard that ‘La Mouette’ might mark the return of clinker dinghy building at the yard alongside their growing reputation for repair and restoration work of wooden boats. ‘With four experienced shipwrights and a trainee in our team we thrive upon the diversity of jobs which come our way, we currently have clinker, carvel, hot-moulded and GRP projects underway, but to bring the regular building of clinker dinghies back to the yard has an irresistible romance about it with their timeless charm. We have seen an increasing number of traditionally-rigged dinghies, old and new, on the river in recent years used for picnics, tenders, exploring the more secret stretches of water or visiting the various waterside pubs. They’re a joy to see and to sail, can be rigged as quickly as any modern dinghy and can drop their rigs in an instant to pass under bridges and explore upriver so they have a huge and diverse appeal and ‘La Mouette’ is testament to this.’ With an eye to building more in the future and a nod to her lineage, ‘La Mouette’ is being referred to as the first Everson 11 and who knows, like the Everson boats of last century, we may see clinker dinghies from Woodbridge in numbers again not only on the Deben but on decks, davits, ponds and rivers around the world and may they all have such long and loved lives as ‘Clytie’ does.