SAVING ADLARD COLES' YACHT

Cohoe IV has been in the Osborn family for more than 30 years, but she was commissioned by none other than Adlard Coles

- NIGEL SHARP

Siblings Jack and Erin Osborn (aged 16 and 14 respectively) have spent almost all of their lives waiting to go sailing on their father James’s boat. Jack did at least get to sail on her before she was laid up for 15 years, but he was too young to remember it. “I’ve only seen photos of this smiling ginger baby on board,” he said. The boat in question is the Nicholson 36 Cohoe IV, which has been in the Osborn family since 1989 when she was bought by James’s father Bob and his great friend Chris Morrow... but her rst owner was Adlard Coles – the illustrious sailor, author,and publisher – who commissioned her to build in 1963.

The first of Coles’ four Cohoes was a modified Albatross (an extended Tumlare), designed by Knud Reimers and built by AH Moody and Son in 1946. She was already named Cohoe, which is an Indian name for a species of Canadian salmon and, as Coles later wrote, “is quite an appropriate name for a fast kind of yacht, although it took me some time to get used to it”. Coles and his wife cruised and raced her extensively, as he would with all his Cohoes. In one season alone he made 16 Channel crossings, but her most famous voyage was the 1950 Transatlantic Race from Bermuda to Plymouth. Coles was under the impression that the 35ft minimum length requirement would be waived for the 32ft Cohoe, as it was for the 24ft waterline RNSA 24s; it was only when the boat was about to be shipped across the Atlantic for the start of the race that he discovered that it wouldn’t be. However, Moodys worked miracles to extend