Working boats for leisure

Strong and often cheap, retired working boats make good leisure vessels if you don’t mind fettling to repurpose them

- Clive’s boats

Many of the small leisure boats I have owned have been derived from the hulls of working boats either directly by using an old hull as a mould or indirectly by being influenced from a well-tried and tested working design.

This generally works very well although it should be remembered that working boat hull design is developed to meet local conditions. For example the Yorkshire Coble’s hull (beached stern first) is different to a Hastings Lugger (beached bow first). Some examples of leisure boats I have owned that have been influenced or derived directly from working boats include my Drascombe Lugger, Drascombe Dabber, Smack’s Boat, Emsworth Lugger, Cornish Cormorant, Tideway 12, Foreland 10, Winchelsea Lugger and Yole 14. All of these boats are excellent in their own way.

Of course it is possible to buy a retired working boat and use it for leisure purposes rather than buying a derivative. This has certain advantages and disadvantages. On the one hand it will probably be stronger, more heavily laid up and normally less expensive. On the other hand you may have to do a certain amount of fettling to get it suitable for your intended use and its heavier weight is likely to make it more difficult to manage on the slipway and ashore.

Grounding test