The Life And Boats Of The Swiss Family Robinson

Nic Compton discovers the fascinating history of a much loved Drascombe Lugger

- Ken Duxbury

I’m not generally a fan of clubs of any kind – whether sailing, sporting, social or political. There’s something about submerging myself into a group that sends me into a blind panic. So, when we moved to a village on the River Dart four years ago, I only joined the local boating association because I needed somewhere to moor my 14ft Western Skiff.

It was only after we’d been in the Stoke Gabriel Boating Association for a couple of years that it dawned on me what an incredible resource it was (see panel, page 48). In addition to a large fleet of dinghies available to all members for a small fee, the association regularly receives donated boats of various kinds – recent incomers include a three-person rowing boat, an inflatable dinghy and a dilapidated 1930s clinker rowing boat, the latter which I snapped up as a restoration project in return for a donation to the club’s coffers.

Scillabub was another of these donated boats. The mid-blue Drascombe Lugger appeared at the SGBA looking slightly shabby in the summer of 2018. I had long been interested in Drascombe Luggers, ever since reading about Ken Duxbury’s adventures in Greece in the 1970s on his Lugworm, described in his book Lugworm on the Loose. I too lived on a boat in Greece in the 1970s, and our courses must have crossed many times without our meeting. Later, while working in the offices of Classic Boat magazine, I read about Webb Chiles’s extraordinary round-the-world voyages on his Chidiock Tichborne and was still more impressed with the design’s seaworthiness.