Design
The Boat Show
By KENNETH J. ROBINSON
IF you know nothing of the joys of a sloop in the deep and are quite capable of cruelly misjudging the girl who needs a pram dinghy, you can still enjoy the Boat Show at Earls Court. Even a sea-fearing man like me can get a kick from a wheel (if it's well designed) and a song from a well-cut windcheater. Not that windcheaters are `in' at the moment. Judging from the fashion shows given four times a day against a hideous pantomime backcloth of Dartmouth, the top clothes of the year are 'Ambisextrous' smocks and over-trousers. As the name suggests, this garb makes it difficult to distinguish between a lubber and his lass. But I prefer it to the usual attempts to make harbours bizarre, and after looking at some of the fifty or so 'trim trends' in nylon deckwear I began to wish that yachting people were more like their craft, with a generous amount concealed beneath the plimsoll.
Strangely enough, in spite of the continually changing fashions on the human and car bodies that go down to the sea, very little happens to the appearance of ships. Even after eight years of hard salesmanship at Daily Express boat shows it is still apparently enough of a status symbol to own a boat, without having gimmicks all over it. Or is it simply that boatbuilders are leisurely, philosophical men who prefer to sit contemplat- ing their naval traditions, instead of calling in public relations experts and design stylists to give their products sales appeal? Whatever the reason, most of the boats at the Show still look like boats.
The worst that happens to the outside of some of them is a speed symbol, a crude clash of colours or a row of streamlined windows slopping forwards and reminding us, as they hurtle by at ten knots per hour, that we live in a Space Age. Inside most cabins the ddcor is less fussy than the interior of the average caravan. This is odd when you consider the large variety of modern furnishings used. There is, it is true, a fair amount of chintz curtaining, but at least the curtains are real—not the pinned-back imitations to be found in caravans. And there is a surprisingly small number of suburban knick- knacks. Amid such luxuries as plastic quilted hull linings, I did come across one cocktail cabinet with a fishy motif on it which seemed to contradict the good old Norfolk saying that men think only of women when they're at sea and only of fish when they're at home.
That, now I come to think of it, is a fisherman's slogan—and as one of the show brochures points out, today's cabin cruisers are not just for fishing parties but for honeymooners. But even these romantic customers, I am told, take kindly t.) the fishing boats made in Scotland by James Miller. You don't have to fish from them : it's just that they are made by a well-established firm of fishing-boat builders who decided, when the business slumped five years ago, to use the same sturdy designs for seagoing pleasure craft. `People like the feeling of something stable and safe beneath them,' I was told as I went on board, passing—as I did so—the appropriate notice, `No stiletto-type heels, please.' And down below everything was made with that old-fashioned technique known as good craftsmanship, with- out a hint of glossy living. Nevertheless, 'the honeymooner might, I suppose, prefer Vosper's 46 ft. cruiser with its chic-shape interior—an almost forgivable piece of over-dressing because it is done, literally, in a brassy way. Somehow brass can never look altogether wrong on a boat.
So much for interiors. What of the new de- signs of boats themselves? The most popular exhibit is, of course, the experimental 'Cushion- craft' which floats on air. A more conventional- looking craft, the Saro `Searider,' is designed to do almost the same thing purely for the pleasure of its occupants, who get a steady ride which leaves no wash. It is one of the ugliest exhibits in the Show, because it looks like neither a proper boat nor a fugitive from science fiction. A runner-up for ugliness is the 26 ft. cruising catamaran—the sort of boat that looks wrong in the large economy size, though it certainly seems to provide more living space than an ordinary cruiser of the same length. And the most interesting new structure is a `Seacrete' hull, developed by Windboats Ltd. of Wroxham from recent concrete research and an investigation of methods used for concrete boat building during and after the First World War. The hull, which is now in production and available to other builders, costs only 55 per cent, of the price of a timber hull of the same size and is said to give a good performance. Three will be hired out as guinea-pigs on the Broads this year. (A brochure says it is not indestructible, 'but cracking that results from impact is so diffuse as to limit leak- age to a slight amount which can easily be con- trolled.') The builder has been asked by the Ministry of Transport to construct `Seacrete' lifeboats; they would neither burn in oily water nor cook their occupants as glass-fibre hulls can.
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