Dreamboats

Travels among the Great Unlaunched

- Sam Llewellyn

The mooring pennant splashes into the kyle, the mainsail draws and the bristle of masts in the yard slides astern: not many of them now, as most boats are in the water. The ones that will launch this year, that is. Some, the dreams, will not.

There was the enormous object, 60ft long, 8ft beam, carvel built, mighty bulb on the bottom of the keel, built for a long-forgotten Round Somewhere race -obviously fast, but equally obviously soaking wet (the windscreen was a giveaway) and totally uncontrollable. It sat in a corner, tinkered with for the first few years, then visited occasionally and reluctantly, like a mad old relative; and all the while the paint fell off and the planking rotted, and finally the digger moved in, and all that remained were a few bronze cleats and the mighty lead keel, £1,400 a ton, which the scrapper hauled away in lieu of yard fees.