Anyone who buys a Vertue is buying a boat with a towering reputation. Ever since the prototype was launched in 1936, this modest little cruising yacht, with its well-judged sheer, cheeky spoon bow and deceptively slippery underwater shape, has travelled further and harder than anyone ever expected.

Over 200 Vertues worldwide have been built to date, many by the Elkins yard in Christchurch but also by Cheoy Lee in Hong Kong, and even a few in glassfibre. But, whatever their pedigree, they are much sought-after and quickly snapped up when they come on the market. To many classic boat aficionados, they are quite simply the ultimate cruising yacht.

A towering reputation

It all started with the prototype Andrillot, built for Dick Kinnersly, who wanted a boat that had a fine entry, would ‘spin on a sixpence’, and was capable of being sailed comfortably by a couple or singlehanded if necessary.

The design Laurent Giles came up with soon inspired improbable adventures. Humphrey Barton kicked things off by chartering Andrillot from her owner and sailing her from Lymington to Concarneau and back, a distance of 855 miles, in 23 days – a remarkable voyage in such a small boat at that time – earning himself the RCC Founder’s Cup.

But it was Barton’s 1950 transatlantic crossing, and the resulting book, that really established the Vertue legend. The idea was to ‘combine business with pleasure’ by delivering Vertue No35 to a client in the US.

It was not the first east to west crossing on a small boat, but the manner in which the 25ft boat coped with such extreme conditions – including a knockdown – opened many people’s eyes to the potential of long-distance sailing on small craft.

In his subsequent book, entitled simply Vertue XXXV, Barton (who was Laurent Giles’s business partner and therefore not unbiased) wrote: ‘During the past 30 years I have sailed in numerous small yachts and have examined a great many more and I am of the opinion that Vertue XXXV is the most perfect small ocean-going yacht that has ever been designed and built.’

One man who knows more than most about wooden boats is Peter Gregson. Back in the 1970s, when everyone else was ditching their old wooden boats and buying new-fangled fibreglass ones, Peter went to the other extreme and bought himself a 97ft three-masted schooner, the Pascual Flores, which he sailed from Ibiza to Dartmouth. She was followed by another historic boat, a Le Havre pilot cutter, and in 1979 Peter set up a brokerage specialising in the type.

Since then, Wooden Ships has gone from strength to strength, and Peter has examined countless boats – many of them multiple times.

For his own use, Peter switched to small keelboats while his two sons were growing up and later shared a 43ft Camper & Nicholsons ex-Admiral’s Cup yacht with his oldest son Richard. Once the grandchildren started appearing, however, he realised it was time to downsize.

‘I wanted something I could go out on of an afternoon, go for a spin around the bay, come back in, tack into the harbour, and yet still have accommodation,’ he says.

One of those boats that kept coming back to him to be sold was a Vertue called Caupona. Peter first saw her in Emsworth in the 1980s and admired her greatly, but the time wasn’t quite right then. He sold her another two times, but still the time wasn’t right, until in 2012 her Dutch owner made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.

Peter’s boat

There’s no doubt that Caupona is a special boat. She’s Vertue No8, built at Woodnutts in 1939, one of the 10 ‘original’ Vertues – before the class even had a name. That means she has the original short cabin trunk, aft of the keel-stepped mast, with a slightly lower freeboard and slightly more jaunty sheer. What this means in real life is less space below decks, something which won’t appeal to everyone but is worth it in spades for a wooden boat devotee such as Peter.

‘The ones with the small coachroof are regarded as the prettiest,’ he says. ‘The big drawback is the smaller accommodation, and the fact that you have to go on your hands and knees to get into the fo’c’sle.

‘But that doesn’t worry me – I’ve got full standing headroom. I like the look of her. The later ones increased in size but look just a little bit lumpy by comparison.’

For full disclosure, it should be noted that, despite his towering professional reputation, Peter is only 5ft 6in tall, leading his son to quip that he could write ‘full standing headroom’ on every boat spec he wrote!

It also means he is one of the few people who can genuinely claim to have standing headroom on a Mk I Vertue, which boasts a mere 5ft 8in under the sliding hatch and a couple of inches less under the coachroof.

As Peter suggests, the design went through several variations, mostly aimed at improving the accommodation. The first changes came straight after the war, when a doghouse was added to give standing headroom aft, and the mast was stepped on the coachroof to give better access to the fo’c’sle.

The design also acquired a class name, with Laurent Giles naming his long-legged cruiser after the Vertue Cup, an annual literary prize awarded by the Little Ship Club, which in 1940 was won by Vertue No5 Epeneta for a 745-mile cruise along the coast of Biscay and back.

Further tweaks followed. The sheer was raised by a plank and the sheer slightly flattened, to give more sitting headroom below, and the mainsail boom shortened to get rid of the bumkin. Finally, in 1976, the design was completely redrawn – with 8in more beam and 5in greater length – to be built in fibreglass. Around 30 GRP Vertues were built by various yards, including Westerly and, finally, Bossoms in Oxford.

The boats continued to undertake voyages beyond reasonable expectation and have a habit of popping up at key moments in yachting history. The first OSTAR in 1960 was one such occasion, when Cardinal Vertue sailed by David Lewis finished in third place, behind Francis Chichester and Blondie Hasler.

The boat’s next owner sailed her around the world, and for a time Cardinal Vertue had the distinction of being the smallest yacht to round Cape Horn as well as holding the average speed record for a singlehanded boat (122 miles per day over 53 days).

The Vertue II proved equally adventuresome. Hull No5, Sparrow, was shipped to America, where she was fitted out by father-and-son team David and Daniel Hays, who then sailed the boat around South America via Cape Horn in the mid-1980s. Their subsequent book about the voyage, My Old Man and the Sea, became an instant best-seller.

Despite all these improvements, it comes as no surprise to me that Britain’s leading authority on wooden boats would choose one of the first generation Vertues, of which only 10 were built. It truly is a connoisseur’s choice.

No frills

Caupona was built of larch on oak, with 2x3in sawn oak frames spaced 24in apart and two steamed oak ribs fitted between each pair of frames – a classic construction method which combines the strength of sawn frames with the lightness of steamed timbers.

Staying true to her era, Caupona is a no-frills kind of gal – the kind of old lady who has never worn make-up or high heels in her entire life and sees no reason to start now. Thus, there’s no electronic log, as Peter prefers to use a Walker trailing log (‘You do have to give crab pots a wide berth but it does not need electricity nor does it have seawater-sensitive instruments’); there is a Seafarer echo sounder but it doesn’t work, Peter preferring to use a trusty 15m lead line (‘accurate and failsafe’).

There was once a plumbed-in heads (attested by the blocked-off holes in the hull) which had been replaced by a chemical toilet by the time Peter bought the boat. He got rid of that and uses a bucket with its own slot in the fo’c’sle for increased comfort (‘hygienic and no holes in the hull!’).

There is no fixed VHF radio, though Peter has one in a box waiting to be fitted and in the meantime takes his son’s hand-held VHF on long passages. There is no chartplotter or any other electronic devices on board, Peter choosing to navigate using paper charts, with a Navionics app on his phone as back-up. Motive power comes from a 10hp single cylinder Bukh diesel engine of ‘unknown vintage’ which produces a steady 5 knots.

Peter carries three anchors: a 25lb CQR, a fisherman and a Danforth, the latter being the one he uses most. He has three anchor rodes: 22m of chain spliced to 12m of braided warp for regular use; 5m of chain spliced to 20m of braided line for a kedge, and 28m of chain stowed under the cabin sole amidships for emergency use.

Yet, despite carrying 55m of anchor chain, Caupona doesn’t have a windlass. Peter prefers to haul the anchor up manually (aka ‘handyhaul’) and to stow the anchors below deck, to keep the foredeck clear.

When I visited Caupona, a second-hand roller furling lay on the jetty, waiting to be fitted. This is one of Peter’s few concessions to old age, as he acknowledges scrambling on the foredeck to change sails aged 76 is perhaps not ideal. Despite this, he still refuses to fit guardrails, which he feels ‘give a false sense of security’ and can damage the boat, although he has added a number of hand-holds, both inside and out. Likewise, he thinks safety lines fitted along the deck are ‘useless’ and instead fits his to the coachroof, with a Dyneema extension running from the mast to the stemhead.

Below decks, Peter has rebuilt the (non-original) chart table and the galley, but his biggest change was to re-angle the settee backs from inclined to vertical, widening the bunks from 20in to 22in.

A boom tent over the cockpit improves ‘creature comforts’ and means wet gear can be left out to dry. Cooking is on a single burner Origo spirit cooker and, as there is no fridge, milk and wine are kept cool in the bilge, next to the mast. Peter confesses that, when he is sailing, food is ‘simply fuel’ – apart from the obligatory cups of tea.

The only structural work that Peter has done on the boat was to replace the keel bolts – not because there were any issues but for his own peace of mind.

He was worrying unnecessarily – the bolts were perfectly sound and only required replacing because they were irreparably damaged during removal.

Peter has sailed the boat extensively on both sides of the English Channel, ranging from Teignmouth to the Scilly Isles, and over to Paimpol and the Channel Islands. He sails mostly singlehanded, apart from the Channel crossings when he takes a crew for safety – although I can’t help feeling he does that mainly to keep his son happy.

Sailing

Like most traditional, long-keel boats, there’s no point in trying to pinch a Vertue. She’ll sail better and faster with sheets eased and pointing slightly lower than her highest point of sail. Although designed to ‘turn on a sixpence’, she’s slow to come about by today’s standards and has to be sailed through the tack.

Once under way, Peter finds Caupona has just enough weather helm to come into the wind if left unattended, while a lanyard on the tiller keeps her on course ‘long enough to put the kettle on’. He has an Autohelm in a box somewhere but, like the VHF, hasn’t got around to fitting it yet.

On board, Caupona has the feel of a much bigger boat, and it’s hard to believe my Victoria 26 was actually a foot longer. It was a gusty day when we went out, but with her full main and medium jib, Caupona never felt overwhelmed.

Far from it, she seemed to relish these conditions, and suddenly I understood why Barton and so many Vertue owners since felt able to undertake such adventuresome voyages: the boat inspires a feeling of confidence.

For the shoot, I had a double date with Peter on Caupona and Richard on his Folkboat Wilma, and I was interested to see how the two boats performed side by side. Heading out with the southwesterly breeze on the nose, the Folkboat clearly had the advantage, her slender hull cutting efficiently to windward. But on the return leg, a broach reach back to Dartmouth, Caupona’s fuller hull shape and bigger sail area came into its own, and she edged ahead. Later, when I looked at the photos, I noticed that, while the Folkboat seemed to deflect the waves with a spectacular display of spray, the Vertue pushed through the waves and therefore took a bit more water on deck.

‘Every boat is a compromise and Caupona is no different, but she suits my limited needs perfectly,’ says Peter. ‘I am very happy to trade headroom, a bucket and sandpaper-worn fingers for the pleasures of owning and sailing one of the most perfect small yachts.’

Virtue specifications

MAKE/MODEL: Vertue
DESIGNER: Laurent Giles
YEARS BUILT: 1936-
LOA: 25ft / 7.62m
LWL: 21ft 6in / 6.55m
BEAM: 7ft 2in / 2.18m
DRAUGHT: 4ft 4in / 1.35m
DISPLACEMENT: 9,590 lb / 4,350kg
BALLAST: 4,500 lb / 2,041kg
SAIL AREA: 395 sq ft / 36.7m²
PRICE: £12,000-£25,000

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