CORNISH CRABBER 24 MK3

Far from being a lightweight trailer sailer, Nic Compton finds the third version of this modern classic to be a serious little cruising boat capable of handling far more than a little creek crawling

- NIC COMPTON

The village of St Just in Roseland is best known for its stunning 13th century church, described by the poet John Betjeman as 'the most beautiful churchyard on earth'. Set amidst a semitropical garden, the churchyard is a slightly anarchic mix of exotic plants and ancient gravestones, including a child's grave dating from the 1700s featuring skulls and crossbones – an emblem of mortality at the time and nothing to do with pirates.

Keep walking and you get to Pasco's boatyard, partly located on a spit of sand that stretches across the creek. There has been a boatyard of some kind here since 1771, and hundreds of wooden workboats were built here, first for local fishermen and later the Admiralty. Nowadays, yachts of all kinds are moored in the creek, though like any harbour in this part of the world, it’s hard to avoid the preponderance of Cornish Crabbers.

I've come here to meet Kevin Chipman, aka Chip, who grew up in the village and returned to live here just before he retired in 2014.

'I went to school in Falmouth, so I travelled by boat every day from St Mawes across to Prince of Wales pier,' he remembers. 'My father had a little motorboat, which he used for fishing locally. And then we had a small sailing dinghy, smaller than a Mirror, which we learned to sail on. When I got to the age of 15, I started to work in the holidays at the boatyard here, hiring out boats and teaching people to sail. So I really got into boating then, and it was just great, fantastic fun.'