Now those behind a new Norfolk craft called Windsong hope she might put the county back on the charts and put fresh wind in the sails of its traditional boat building industry, with a new workshop in the village where Nelson was born.
When photographer and sailor Harry Cory Wright came up with the idea of a new wooden sailing boat before Covid hit the coast, his friends at Burnham Overy Staithe soon got the picture.
John Owles, who runs a boat repair business in a 17th century granary beside the quay drew up the designs for the nimble 14ft craft, sketching out her sleek lines and the traditional sail rig which would be hoisted aloft.
Then his wife Maxine took on the task of building it – admitting to the odd cross word between the pair in the process of assembling the prototype.
Mr Cory Wright said while the harbour at Burnham Overy Staithe was full of wooden boats including lovingly-restored historic fishing vessels, he felt it was time for a new generation built locally to take to the waters of the Burn Estuary as it snakes out to sea through the marshes.
“They’re lovingly looked-after but they’re old and they’re not going to last forever,” he said.
“You have to have something new coming in, so we thought what about a building a new boat for Burnham Overy.”
The prototype Windsong sailed like a dream.
Its top speed so far of 13 knots (15mph) was notched up after Mr Cory Wright swapped his tripod for her tiller and let fly with fresh air in the North Sea breeze instead of sheet film during early trials.
She was fitted with a powerful sail rig copied from the so-called luggers – larger, heavier boats once commonly used for fishing off the coast and also relied upon by smuggling gangs to outrun customs patrols whilst transporting their booty to remote tidal creeks.
Speed was everything in those days, whether you were bringing crabs ashore or illicit gin.
Now Windsong looks set to bring a 21st century twist to our shores.
Her carbon fibre mast might be a nod to the modern day. But her ample canvas means she can turn and tack on a sixpence as she threads her way through winding, shallow harbour channels, while out on the open sea she leaps up on the plane as she hits her sweet spot.
“She really does go like stink when you’ve got the right conditions,” said Mr Cory Wright, who is better-known on dry land for the more leisurely pursuit of taking landscape pictures with the large wooden cameras which are his trademark.
Mrs Owles clocked up 500 hours on the first build, which was started during lockdown.
The prototype boat, now sitting on cradles through an entrance embellished with warning tape low enough to give a limbo dancer nightmares is currently being re-varnished.
“Best duck and then duck again,” said Mrs Owles as she flicked on the lights. “It’s lower and further than you think.”
The coast’s traditional boatbuilding methods bumped heads with modern-day tech along the way, as she mixed assembling red cedar and birch ply parts produced by computerised cutting with scratch building where needed.
“I’ve been building boats since I was in my 20s,” said Mrs Owles, who admitted the air sometimes turned blue during her latest project.
“Every boatbuilder swears at the designer but I know him so well I can see inside his brain.
“Maybe you’d best not put that, it does sound messy.”
Four young sailors are now taking two of the £20,000 craft on a promotional tour taking in Hickling Broad and Wroxham, before heading to the Solent to sail at Cowes Week followed by a stint at the Southampton Boat Show.
Charley White, 20, who is one of the team, said: “She’s like nothing I’ve ever sailed in, she’s so much fun.
“We were at Hickling Broad yesterday and people were coming up to us saying she’s just so beautiful.”
Poet Sally Festing, who lives in Burnham Overy, was inspired to pen a verse about the boat, which is now framed in the boathouse amid its coffee machine, fading pictures and yellowing, dog-eared sailing almanacs.
“Windsong was a channel, a challenge, a hymn full of solos, the song in her pattern and weave
converged in the builders’ hands,” she wrote. “She’s buoyant as mackerel, light like a tern.”
