The Marsh Pirates of Essex

Looking for the "Old Centaur" has been a weird experience. With the exception of a day spent poking around boat yards around Chichester harbour it has all been done on the web.

The idea first came to me back in November when my family suddently decided that they wanted to sail to Orkney and maybe Shetland. It seemed imposssible - clearly Katie L is too small for four adults and a labrador. I was walking the dog and started thinking about old boats.

I am an inveterate watcher of boat adverts and have seen several old Centaurs come and go - most of them with jiggered engines. Every yard you go in has a moldering old Centaur at the back - untouched and seemingly unloved.

I thought about the design of them and that deep deep cockpit well. I had a look on the web at some profiles and thought that it looked possible to put an outboard in a well at the back of that cockpit.

I did some more measurements, asked a few people, such as Roger Ball who knows more about Centaur anatomy than any living person.

David Pugh at PBO said it seemed an interesting idea and offered me four pages on the job, Wessex Resins said they would be up for helping and Honda said they would also loan me a power unit.

At the time I thought that buying the old boat would be easy. I thought I would find four or five, track down the owners who would be keen to see the boats going to good home rather than end up with a final meeting with a JCB and a skip. I thought it would be a peice of cake.

Well it has not really panned out like that. Sure enough the old boats are there, sitting moldering and doing nothing. Each week I hear of two or three prospects. The word has gone out and the boats have started coming to me.

The boats are there, uncared for and cluttering up boatyards. The blokes who own them have given up sailing but have not admitted it to themselves yet.

I remember back at the very start of KTL when the slug was in the boatyard at Bembridge over in the corner was a line of old boats - among them an old wooden caprice - full of water and all but dead.

I asked the boatyard owner why the boats are there

"Because people are paying for the space"

but they will never sail again, why do they pay?

"Because it keeps the dream alive" he said.

So these Old Centaurs are dreams in physical form and no-one wants to let go of a dream. Neither do I.

It does not bother me when a Centaur appears priced at £6,000. I can no more justify spending 6K on a second boat than I could on a second wife.

Some boats have been sad such Ana Sira sitting on the dock at Port Dinorwic full of water, her bulkheads rotting and waiting for the scrap metal merchant to buy her and bung her in a skip.

Then there was the Dutch one - a good boat for 2,600 Euros but way too far from home.

Prospects have come and gone as the weeks have passed

On Tuesday I got a mobile phone call out of the blue from a bloke calling himself Stan. He told me about this old Centaur in Tollesbury in Essex. He said that Doug in the Christian boatyard had told him about my quest and he was letting me know the boat existed.

I asked him to email me some pictures. The man said that he does not do email - he only uses the web for porn. Well that knocked me a bit.

I asked how much did he want for the boat and he said 3.5K.

"Will you come down in price at all?"

"There would be nothing in it for me if it went that cheap", he said

So he was trying to sell me a boat he did not own. So I asked him what the boat was called and where it was. He would not tell me. He was hiding things from me.

That evening I called the bloke back and took notes of what he said. He said that his name was Bert Stanhope, but later on his name changed to Stan and then to Reg. He told me some things as fact that I knew to be untrue. I hated every second I was on the phone to the man.

I knew that it was a Centaur, that it was in Tollesbury that it had bent stanchions on the port side and that it had radar. it should be easy enough to track down.

I got on the web, made a few phone calls, put a post on the YBW forum and asked a local to take some snaps of the boat. My friend Ian said he would slip down on Saturday and have a look and take some pictures.

In the meantime I called a local boat yard owner who said that the boat was not in his yard where Stan/Bert said it was and told me about a local man called Reginald Albert who bought cheap and sold boats on fast for a few hundred more

I got a contact from a YBW forumite who had sold a boat in Tollesbury to a rather strange old bloke who seemed to change names at every meeting. The name on the bill of sale was for a completely different person. He is a local wheeler dealer who buys boats, does nothing to them and then sells them on again at a profit. He basically inserts himself between the owner and the bloke who wants to buy the boat. He is a middle man who raises the price of old boats.

Not the end of the trail... but not a good thing to hear.

In the meantime some images arrived in my inbox of the yacht. They were taken by a YBW forumite who goes by the name of Uncle Albert.

lives in Tollesbury. He was walking his dog in the area and had a poke around and found the boat - he sent me the snaps and there they are.

He also told me that the boat had just been bought that morning by a man called Julian Redgwell.

As agreed my friend Ian contacted  Reg/Bert/Stan or (Julian now possibl) whatever his name is and organised to see the boat on Saturday.

All well and good. Last night I got a call from Reg or Julian or Bert and he told me that he wanted 3.5K for the boat because it has new sails, new spray hood, good engine worth £1000, Radar that is worth £2,000 and a life-raft worth £1,000.

I said that was far too much for me and I do not want the radar, engine or life raft. By now I could not trust a word the man was saying.

I suggested that he sold the engine, radar and life-raft and then sold me the immobile boat for £1500 anmd he could turn  a handsome profit.  He told me that the engine was only worth £800 - a bit weird because a few seconds ago the engine was worth over £1000.

"1500 - you are having a laugh aincha mate".

and so there it ended.

I hope Reg/Julian/Bert/Stan finds a buyer for Weekend for the sake of the boat. I am sure he will but he is not going to turn the quick buck he had hoped from me. I feel sorry for the bloke who owned the boat - it would be great to know how much the local broker sold it to Reg/Bert/Julian/Stan.

The old Essex sailors used to make a lot of money from stripping the good bits from boats that went aground on the sandbanks and saltmarshes of Essex.

I assume their descendents are alive and walking around the saltmarshes today.

The web is wonderful though.... at least I did not have to drive for three hours from home to Tollesbury to meet an  Essex wheeler dealer  and I could find out about this bloke by contacting people who have already dealt with him.

never mind - Centaurs are like no 14 buses - there will be another one along soon. I wish the man who deals with reg/Bert/Julian/Stan the very best of luck.

And  should anyone buy the boat for the bits on it and you wish to remove the engine, tiller pilot, cooker, radar and life-raft from Weekend and then sell the remains to me  then I have £1500 in cash for you - no questions asked - know what I mean guv.