LUGGER OF LOOE

After a long life fishing under motor, the Looe Lugger Our Daddy is back to full lug rig for the first time in seven decades

- NIC COMPTON

“There are days when you’re working on board, stuck in a confined space, and you wonder why you’re doing this,” says Steve Styles, co-owner of the 44ft 7in (13.6m) Cornish lugger Our Daddy. “Then you sail into Paimpol for the traditional boat festival, and people line the quayside applauding that boat as you go in. Your chest swells with pride and you realise that’s why you do it. People become passionate about these old boats not because they’re a business prospect, but because of the emotions they evoke and how beautiful they are to sail.”

And well might Steve’s chest swell with pride, for it was that cruise to Paimpol and the Breton coast that earned Our Daddy the title of Regional Flagship of the Year in 2017, an honour awarded by National Historic Ships to just four vessels in the UK every year. It’s an award which Steve and his boat partner Tim Sunderland earned not just because of a major – and sometimes controversial – restoration of the boat, but for their public outreach programme, making the boat available to a wider public and sailing her well beyond home waters.

But then Our Daddy seems to inspire devotion from all who know her, not just in the port from which she fished continuously for 65 years but also among the nation’s nautical aficionados. Not for nothing is she celebrated as “Looe’s best-known lugger” (according to one website), while one previous owner describes her as “without doubt the best Looe lugger I’ve ever seen”.