The announcement of the Cruising Club of America's award of its Blue Water Medal to voyager Pete Hill trips many memory wires, perhaps too many to deal with at once. When I first met him, it was in Glengarriff
In 1979, and the Golden Jubilee celebrations of the Irish Cruising Club were reaching their climax.
In those days, it was Pete'n'Annie Hill, and they were cruising together on Suilven, the totally eccentric 27ft LOA International 6 Metre built for mega-rich American Paul Hammond as a gaff sloop to a Starling
Burgess (crazy name, crazy guy) design in 1921. But by the time she came to England for the Seawanahka Cup series the following year, her rig had been drastically altered to an ultra-tall bermudan setup with the mast curved in the Scandinavian square metre style.
ROUND IRELAND CRUISE
Despite being only 27ft LOA and minimal accommodation under a flushed deck, Iain Rutherford cruised her to places like St Kilda, Norway and round Ireland, all recounted in his charming book "At The Tiller", a
collector's item which Annie Hill very kindly gifted me after my own copy had been liberated. Subsequent owners of Sheila/Suilven put a coachroof on her as seen above with the Hills, but now an English owner
has removed it and restored to original gaff rig, which seems plain daft to me. But then, how on earth do you neatly reef a mainsail with an inbuilt curve in the luff?
There is no limit to the lengths that people will go for classic yacht authenticity. This is Sheila/Suilven today, kitted out as Paul Hammond first sailed her in 1921.
Pete and Annie are no longer together, she's in New Zealand while he's in England, but they've continued cruising in ways which are surely a reaction to the hugely demanding Suilven, as both have developed easily handled boats setting very manageable variations of the Chinese rig.
