This is the Second in a series of articles in which SWS collaborates with
NANNI AUSTRALIA to showcase a commitment to wooden boats.

The archetypal wooden boat owner is an older man. Caucasian. Bearded. Cable knit jumper. Seemingly unapproachable. It’s a quaint trope that no doubt has authentic origins, but it’s an image we must move on from, for the longevity and growth of the wooden boat world.

So, when we come across people like Holly and Jordy, actively challenging stereotypes, we feel it’s important to tell their story, loud and clear.

I first heard from them in May last year. This was their initial email:

Good Morning,

My name is Holly (22 years old) and my husband Jordy (23 years old) and I are the very proud owners of CLARE. She is a Maurice Griffiths, 40 foot ketch planked in 1 1/2 Jarrah, built and launched in 1951 in WA.

She is currently out of the water in Hastings VIC and we are currently completing a full restoration.

Jordy and I met sailing aboard tall ships. We have both grownup heavily involved in the maritime industry, with myself completing my Master 5 and Jordy completing his MED 3. Jordy is currently going into his 3rd year of his shipwright apprenticeship so CLARE is in good hands.

We would love to be able to share some of CLARE’s story and our progress in whatever way may be suitable.

I have attached some photos and we would love to hear from you soon

Thanks, Holly & Jordy

Since receiving this email I’ve been to Hastings to Visit Holly and Jordy three times. The first was in May 2023.

THE HISTORY AND THE HULL

SWS: So tell me how you came across this beautiful boat?

JORDY: I was just scrolling Facebook one day, and we had been in the market for a timber boat for a little while. And occasionally I would send Holly ridiculous things from boats online or on Facebook. I'd come across this Maurice Griffiths boat, and I sent it to Holly. They were asking 800 bucks . And I was like, Oh, you must be dreaming. So I sent it to Holly, and she was like, Oh, you got to get it now. You got to purchase it now. So I got in contact with the owner, and he said “I don't want any money for the boat. I just want you to pay the hardstand fees for a month, and it's all yours.”

SWS: So, are you both working full time?

JORDY: Yes, both full time in Williamstown. Holly works in the Chandlery and I’m a third year apprentice with Brendan Harvey. So we come down here every weekend and get stuck in.

SWS: Have you got an idea of your timeframe on CLARE?

JORDY: We want to get the underwater hull sorted out, sort of as quickly as possible. So we want to sort of get her in the water by summer this year. So because she planked in, Jarrah we want her to taken up as well as possible. So she'll probably go in looking pretty scrappy. The deck in the superstructure will probably go in looking pretty sad. But we just want to start getting her to take up. And then while that's taking up we can work on the superstructure and other stuff that doesn't need to be done out of the water.

SWS: And what do you actually know about our history? All I can remeber is that Maurice Griffiths was the editor of Yachting Monthly Magazine in the UK for something like 40 years?

JORDY: Yes, he designed a whole so a lot of smaller stuff. I think the biggest, the biggest was a 38ft yacht called a good hope. I think you primarily designed shoal draft boats for the east coast of the UK. But with CLARE people are more of the opinion that she was loosely based, on Morris Griffiths plans rather than being one of his specific designs. Somebody in Western Australia, must have modified them because you've got a real deep draft, which I don't think is typical of Morris Griffith's design. She draws 1.8m.

HOLLY: But we're fortunate that a previous owner has written a book about her.
That's helped us alot.

SWS: I alway think that if you can, get a bit of the history, it helps carry you through the hard times of a restoration, because you understand the whole lineage, and you understand that the boat’s had a tough history, and it deserves to be looked after. If you don't know any of that, it almost makes it too easy to give up when it's hard.

JORDY: She was launched in 1951 in Western Australia, built for the Danish Consul back in the day. And apparently he went and handpicked all the Jarrah trees for the planking and all sort of stuff. .

Originally everything was Jarrah, the ribs, the stringers , but we're replacing the ribs with Merbu. We made them from 5mm layers until they are about 40mm thick so we could just slide them in up without taking the stringers out. And then we rove and rivet.

HOLLY: People going past every day… They don't see any change, but we're inside working… we know the progress.

SWS: And what's the long term plan? it a bit of a Pacific Cruise?

JORDY: It will be a live aboard for us. It'll probably be the family home one day, kids on board and whatever. We’ll just take it up and down the East Coast, or wherever it takes us!

A NANNI ENGINE

When Holly and Jordy inherited CLARE she came with an 80 HP Ford Sabre. They were hoping that this engine would still be good, but it wasn’t to be. After having the old engine assessed they decided it was time to get a new one.

JORDY: We did a fair bit of research. Obviously, there's, a wide choice… Nanni, or Yanmar or John Deere or stuff like that. But we just found Nanni's are super reliable, with their relationship with Kubota and parts are easy to find. There’s ninety five worldwide dealers for parts. So anywhere we end up being in the world, we'll be able to get parts forward and servicing. It’s a Nanni N480, 4 cylinder, 80 horsepower. Peter (Collins) helped us out with spares and installation, but its was fairly straightforward, and would be, even for non-boaties. It's all single side servicing. So the fuel filter, oil filter, dip sticks, impeller all down the starboard side of the motor, which makes it all super simple to service yourself. And, yeah, they're just a great little unit. And installation was just plug and play. Even the wiring loom, you just plug it all in…just give it fuel and give it power. And the way she went.

THE LAUNCH

In December last year I received an email from Holly saying that launch day was imminent and I was invited to come down at watch. It didn’t go according to plan.

JORDY: So yeah, It was meant to be the big day. We got everyone to come down. We had Holly’s family up from Tassie. We put CLARE in the water, and she was just unstable. She just wanted to roll over in the slings. And so we had had to pull her straight back out back out, and stand her back on the hard.

SWS: It must have been pretty stressful having everybody there for the first launch. I felt sorry for you.

HOLLY: And then we bought another ton of lead, put ingots in the bilge, and then went back in on 12th of January this year, about a month after the first launch. We bought the lead as an old keel, and we used an electric chainsaw, to chop it up, and then we carried it up the stairs we had set up to get on board. So we carried every piece by hand, up inside, stacked it in here.

SWS: So what do you think had happened? Had the previous owners taken some of the ballast out?

JORDY: Previously, before we got her the bilge was full of concrete. The previous owner, had taken it all out, and we had put in 350 kilos of lead to replace it. And that obviously wasn't enough, ven though that’s what the surveyor recommended. Also there was not much water weight on board in the planking, so we just had to put another ton of lead in her. Some of that may come out when we do the fit out, so she sits nicely on her lines. But for the minute, she's happy and upright, which is the main thing!

HOLLY: We did a very small launch the second time! We didn’t invite anyone.. we just sent everyone the photo of her in the pen that afternoon!

THE CURRENT WORK PLAN

SWS: So now the boat is safely in the water what are the priorities?

JORDY: The next major item is the decks.

HOLLY: But first we replaced the cabin sides.They're all brand new, glassed and painted. Still have to put the portholes back in tho’.

JORDY: So then we started opening up the deck. We pulled up all the Jarrah of strakes because she had a Jarrah of laid deck on top and that leaked really badly so they had covered them in some sort of water proof paint. So we pulled up all the old strikes back to the old sub deck which was some sort of tongue in groove, Oregon. We're going Everdure all that and then lay 12mm ply on top, and then fiberglass that up the sides of the cabins around the sheer a little bit just to make it all super water tight. Then finally we’ll lay a rose wood straight leg deck on top of that. So in the end, it'll be back to being about 2 inches thick. The ply should stop any flex and lock it in like tie rods all the way around, stiffening it.

SWS: What about the fit out?

HOLLY: She was very old school when we got her. A split galley with stove on one side, sink on the other. And a square settee in the saloon. We’ll start again, and redsign the space in a more modern way with a U shaped sitting area and plenty of storage.

THE FUTURE and DUNALLEY

In between my second and third visit to CLARE, Holly told me about an exciting development that will be of interest to all wooden boat owners who are lucky enough to sail in Tasmania. They have recently aquired the lease on the slipways in Dunalley at the north eastern end of the Dennison Canal.

So the push is now on to move back to Tasmania and start a business servicing the wooden boat, fishing and pleasure fleets in South East Tasmania.

JORDY: We'll probably try and finish up our jobs here in Melbourne a couple of months early, and see if we can put at least a month or maybe even two solidly here, before we take CLARE south around Christmas. It will be a dream for us, to put in solid time rather than coming down Friday night, go home early Monday to work.

SWS: So when you get to Dunalley where are you going to live?

HOLLY: On CLARE hopefully, alongside the jetty. Just a short walk to work! There’s a plan to put a marina in at Dunalley, between the jetty and the canal. We spoke to the developer and it looks like its only a couple of years away from going in.

JORDY: There’ll be 80 wet berths and a wave attenuator.

HOLLY: It’s all happened a bit sooner than we had planned but the opportunity fell into our lap much the same way that CLARE did. We negotiated a brand new twenty year lease…It’s an opportunity thats too good to be true!