Sailing with Shrimpers part 1

Over forty years ago an enthusiastic yacht designer called Roger Dongray put pen to paper and came up with a classic. As a result in around 1979 the first boats were built, in wood. Then, being impressed by the clever design, someone decided to fabricate moulds so the boat could be manufactured in GRP, what we now know as fibreglass. Since then the same boat has been made over 1,100 times and the subsequent ones would be indistinguishable from the first. In yachting circles this is known as a 'One Design', often created to enable competitive racing or else, as with this particular boat, the Cornish Shrimper, because the designer got it right from the start, so why bother to change it. Once built each vessel was given a number which means that modern ones - and yes, they are still made, in Cornwall - carry four numbers on their mainsail.

The 181st one to roll off the production line is called Eun na Mara ('Bird of the Sea' in Gaelic) and she now has a berth in Tarbert Harbour where she sits patiently waiting for her owners to take her out onto the sea after which she is named. One recent outing was in what we humans might describe as indifferent weather, cool and overcast, but what is more important for a sailing boat is the wind, and this was fresh, gusty, tending towards strong at times. In short, exciting.

The body of water beside which Tarbert sits, Loch Fyne, is sandwiched between two areas of higher ground and this tends to steer the wind along the loch, northwards or southwards, or alternatively gives rise to meaty blasts of wind coming off the hills. None of this prevented Eun na Mara sailing at great speed towards a small island known as Sgat Mor (skate island), around this despite putting herself at great peril from all the rocks surrounding it, then around another island, Eilean Buidhe (gold island) before tracking back to the west side of the loch once again. This whole passage is recorded on a very clever piece of technology called a smartphone, so that it is captured forever as a line on a chart, a process which Roger Dongray would no doubt have been horrified to know about when he was drawing curved lines on paper back in the 1970s.

The next little outing for our grand vessel is a couple of weeks sailing from Largs, a port some 20 miles to the east, as part of a very important reunion with around 30 more of her kind. This is the International Shrimper Week, ISW for short, and it has been an annual event for Shrimper owners for many years. The location is different each year - in 2021 we trailered Eun na Mara all the way to Suffolk in order to participate - and this will not be the first time the ISW has been held in the Clyde. It is clearly a favourite sailing location amongst Shrimper skippers, probably in part because the sailing can be challenging and to many sailors this is more important than the unpredictable and variable weather that might go with it. Just prior to the start of the event the south of the UK was suffering something of a heatwave so those driving northwards towards Scotland will have experienced a noticeable chilling of the air and a freshening of the breeze even before crossing the border. But on they came, nevertheless. Shrimper sailors are drawn together by an unseen force, a kind of magnetism perhaps, until they reach some sort of critical mass that can be described as a 'flotilla', or possibly a 'grandiloquence'.

Our passage from Tarbert to join the other Shrimpers in Largs delivered a bit of everything, a little too much. Initially cold and rather too windy, plus added rain, then suddenly about half way through our little boat was left bouncing around in no wind at all, plus more rain. Then slowly, somewhere north of the Isle of Arran, the rain eased off and then a reluctant sun made an appearance. We had started the engine to continue our progress eastwards so then, of course, the wind returned from the precise direction we were trying to go. But there was a bonus, and bonuses are always good. 

This is a Fifer, one of several generations of sailing boats built on the Clyde by the William Fife family business since the 18th century and our passage has coincided with a race ending close to Largs. The break in the weather occurs just as they overtake us, clouds of rain replaced by clouds of sail, which brings smiles to our faces and somehow makes the day worthwhile.