The incomparable Patna

After restoring the 59ft Chas Nicholson Victorian yacht Marigold (and a few other projects) in the 1990s, Greg Powlesland acquired and restored Patna – an exquisite C&N yacht from 1920. This video is from 2015 at the Puig Classics in Barcelona.

 

[/fusion_youtube]https://youtu.be/hzHMwimnJck

 

Greg’s status as a restorer of fine vintage yachts has made him famous within the classic boat community largely because his attention to detail is unparalleled. Marigold was restored to sail with cotton sails – she set standards of authenticity that are hard to beat; she looks like a colour version of the sort of yacht you find framed in the dusty corners of yacht clubs, or as a Beken poster, and Patna, though a very different kind of yacht has the same authentic feel.

Greg has worked as a sculptor and furniture maker as well as being a boat restorer. He taught at Plymouth Art School and was a design tutor at the Makepeace School of Craftsmen in Wood – to David Linley among others.

His approach is to restore original wood rather than replace, unless absolutely necessary. So on Patna you descend her curved staircase companion and realise that it is original – removed for the restoration and renovated before being put back. The process is lengthy – longer than building a new yacht, because in preserving the yacht she has to be dismantled carefully… so Patna took around six years to restore. She had been altered over the years, so research was needed to find out how she was originally. Greg restored her to gaff rig – apparently she was the last gaffer that Nicholson designed, and she had changed to marconi cutter and bermudan in the intervening decades.

When Greg and partner Katie Fontana found her in 2005 she was looking very tired in Heybridge Basin on the Blackwater in Essex. The couple wanted to take her to Gweek Quay for restoration in the Helford where Greg lives. And they sailed her round the coast to get there, despite having a leak around the sternpost “like a gushing tap” which luckily the beefy bilge pump could handle.

The exquisite carpenty aboard is testament to what a skilled craftsman can achieve when faced with restoring the knocked about and worn out work of another. In Patna’s case it is solid again but has the patina ingrained into it by former owners and sailors which bears witness to the sea-miles under her keel. So like many great restorations, you know you’re on a really old boat… but it feels like you’re sailing a new one. Patna is Katie and Greg’s cruising yacht; the main photo shows her in Douarnenez at the festival in 2012 and she has spent several seasons in the Mediterranean.

Patna
Designer: Charles Nicholson
Builders: Camper & Nicholson,
Gosport       1920
LOA 55ft (16.8m)
LWL 38ft (11.6m)
Beam 11ft 9in (3.6m)
Draught 7ft 9in (2.4m)

Patna’s airey saloon. Thoto Tom Benn

The conpanion is original

Seen here at Douarnenez 2012 shortly after her restoration