BARNACLE GOOSE How an English yacht became a Scottish workboat by Julia Jones
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| 'Sula' in Scotland |
For me, Sula is Barnacle Goose, ‘Barney’, the
yacht my parents owned 1951-1957, in the first years of their marriage. They’d bought her in Rye, fitted her out in a
mud berth, then sailed her home to the River Deben in Suffolk. My father was building
up his business as a yacht broker and was also offering a small variety of
craft for charter. In September 1951 Arthur and Evgenia Ransome hired Barnacle
Goose for a 12-day ‘carpet-slippered’ cruise from Waldringfield. They
visited Pin Mill on the River Orwell, the Walton Backwaters, the Orwell again. They
met old friends, visited favourite places and caught up with the East Coast gossip.
It wasn’t undiluted pleasure. The cabin top leaked. It was foggy and they
could get no food at the Ramsholt Arms ‘not even an egg’. When they finally
returned Barnacle Goose to Waldringfield (in the rain), the Ransomes
discovered that their car battery was flat.
Perhaps she made some small difference to their lives?
Arthur’s ‘best little boat’, Nancy Blackett, had been a Hillyard. Then
there had been Selina King (aborted by the war) and Peter Duck (unloved by the
Ransomes though not by us). The Ransomes had been unsettled, vacillating
between London and the Lake District but after their little holiday with
Barnacle Goose they made the decision to buy another Hillyard, their first Lottie
Blossom (now Ragged Robin III).
Almost 50 years later, I mentioned this brief charter cruise
in an article written for the 2000 Aldeburgh Festival programme: 24 years after
that, Robert Armstrong, on the Island of Kerrera, near Oban, read the article,
found my email address and sent me a message. He wondered whether I’d like an
update on Barnacle Goose’s new life as Sula. I hoped I could
reciprocate with some more detail of her past and responded with almost embarrassing alacrity.
Before we left for Scotland I reread my parents’ logbooks. In 1952 they’d spent their two weeks holiday cruising
in the Netherlands and Northern France, then in June 1953 Barnacle Goose
took them to the Spithead Fleet Review celebrating the Coronation of Elizabeth
II. There were seven people sleeping on board 24’ Barnacle Goose when the
new Queen inspected her fleet. They had all undertaken war service of various
kinds. It was a poignant occasion for them to see the remnants of the fleet re-assembled
and to dip their ensign to HMS Surprise,
which was carrying the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh and the Home Fleet flagship HMS Vanguard 'the last battleship in history'.
They dressed ‘Barney’ and proceeded to their
designated area within the anchorage. But the wind got up, the anchor dragged,
the engine wouldn’t start, the yacht rolled, the flags stuck – all the familiar
tribulations of ceremonial occasions at sea. Finally, they gave up and
re-anchored under the lee of Old Castle Point (East Cowes) with about 130 other
yachts. They opened their bar, cooked a festive supper and watched the fleet
illuminations and the firework displays. They let off some flares and blew
their foghorn, which was then taken up by assembled yachts.
That was Barnacle Goose’s big day out. Her guests
went home. My parents spent another week cruising the south coast then returned
to their favourite East Coast haunts of the Deben, the Alde and the Walton
Backwaters. I was born nine months later in April 1954, soon followed by my
brother in 1955. As we children continued to grow, so ‘Barney’ shrank, until in
1957 she was sold and our parents bought Peter Duck.
I used Lloyds Register to follow Barnacle Goose’s
story over the next 10 years – three different owners, three years each, two on
the east coast, one on the south – until the registration criteria were amended
in 1974 to exclude yachts with less than 350sq’ sail area and many small
vessels were pushed out of sight in the mass expansion of boat ownership. In
2013 Peter Willis, chairman of the Nancy Blackett Trust, happened across her in
Penryn, Cornwall, taken in by a yard in lieu of unpaid bills. He attempted to
encourage new ownership via Classic Boat: ‘Despite having been abandoned for a few
seasons, she looks pretty sound, though the interior would want some work to
make it cozy again.’ No one responded.
By 2016 she was a shell. Her engine, cockpit, furniture had
been taken out of her; she’d been sunk and was full of mud. In most people’s
eyes she would have seemed a wreck, fit only for the yard bonfire -- if she
could be dried out enough to burn.
But this was when Barney’s luck changed.
Robert Armstrong was in Cornwall looking for a workboat. He
wanted something that he could live on, that would take him around the coast
and islands, as he travelled from job to job, and would also be a pleasure to
sail in the summer months. He spotted Barnacle Goose, and although she had
effectively been gutted as well as sunk, he could see that she’d kept her shape,
and her planking was in relatively good order. ‘When I saw her beached at low tide, I knew I
could make what I needed out of her and as she was little more than a bare hull
and deck, I had a blank canvas to work from.’
Robert had grown up on a small family farm on Arran. He’d
learned to make do and mend and turn his hand to a variety of jobs. Even today
he goes home for lambing and haymaking, other livestock work and machinery
repair. When he was 13, he started building boats. ‘I was keen on fishing, and
it was the only way I could afford a boat. By the time I left home at 17 I'd
built about 5 boats, none of them very good but nobody died!’ He had been
taught to sail out of Lochranza, a small, former herring fishing village on a
sea loch, and had helped with wooden boat repairs and maintenance. He learned
much more than the techniques of boat-handling and maintenance; he developed an
understanding of the traditions of the islands, and the importance of self-reliance
and making practical use of what nature provides.
Robert had initially left home thinking of a career in Marine
Science as there didn't seem to be much future in farming or fishing but
quickly lost the will to continue with what would only lead to an office job. Instead,
he moved aboard a small fibreglass boat, and shortly afterwards upgraded to a
Hillyard 2.5 tonner, Storm Petrel, which he rigged as a gaffer -- in his
view the handiest rig for the solo sailor in changeable conditions. He started
working in marinas/boatyards during winter and spending summers farming and cruising.
As his skill as a craftsman became more widely known, he was increasingly asked
to repair and restore wooden boats.
From Cornwall Robert brought Barnacle Goose back by
road to Portavadie, Loch Fyne. When he relaunched
her after 3 months intense work, he gave her a new name for a fresh start. She
became Sula, the anglicised spelling of ‘Sulaire’, which means gannet in
Gaelic and Old Norse. Robert and Sula moved across Loch Fyne to
Tarbert, where he continued working on her interior. The following spring he
made all her spars. He didn’t cruise far in that first season as she didn’t
handle well before he added the mizzen. Now she is both fast and handy.
When Francis and I came to visit, Robert and Sula
were based in the Isle off Kerrera, opposite Oban. It took me a moment to be
sure that be certain that this was indeed Barnacle Goose. Her change of
rig, her dramatically shortened mast, the absence of her previous (rather ugly)
doghouse confused me. Yachting history has many examples of working boats
repurposed as yachts: here was that process in reverse. Many vessels of all
types end their days passively retired as liveaboards; here was a liveaboard that
was constantly active. Sula was in demand to ferry people and things
between the islands. I saw a photo of her being used to transport a piano. Almost everything is done under sail. Sitting
in her cabin, listening to Robert talk about the work he’s done on her and with
her, felt different from the cabin of a family yacht. Sula’s interior is
uncluttered and functional with an obviously effective diesel heater. Photos of
her sailing show her capable and very pretty.
The summer of 2024 has been hard on Sula. Robert describes it
as the worst season he can remember for weather and passage making. Her
staysail split from luff to leach on Loch Fyne in a gale in July. Then she was
battered by Storm Ashley, with damage to the aft deck, cleats, winches, cockpit
bulkheads, aft deck beams and a number of broken frames. That was a hard night on
Kerrera with 66kts sustained and a tide 1.5m over prediction, that submerged
all that normally shelters the marina. It was not the worst winds Sula had
weathered but by far the most destructive sea state. For the first time since
her restoration in 2016, Sula needed to come ashore for the 2024-25
winter. A succession of storms battered the west coast through 2025. Now Robert has decided that the all-year-round
life of a workboat is too hard for a lady in her mid-80s. He’s looking for a
new home for her, but it must be the right one.
Currently I’m writing Peter Duck’s story to celebrate
her 80th birthday. The brief glimpse of her predecessor’s life reminded
me that boats need luck, just as humans do. Yet with care and practical skill,
a small wooden yacht can outlive not just her people but her much grander
sisters. HMS Surprise who carried the Queen in 1953 was scrap by 1961. A
story adds interest, builds a sense of personality but the two things that
saved Sula were not words but deeds: first the solid goodness of her
initial construction, and secondly the practical determination of Robert
Armstrong (and others like him) not to abandon and move on, but problem-solve
and in modern terms to ‘up-cycle’. In the Woodbridge Boatyard there’s a covered
area known as the Tent of Dreams where a row of small wooden yachts, too good
for the yard bonfire, wait for their luck to change. A boatshelf of forgotten
stories…
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