Island Life Magazine Ltd August/September 2017 | Page 36

Interview
Looking at the magnificent
sight of the restored 1922
Seaview Mermaid, Cynthia
- taking her place in all her
gleaming scarlet glory among
other classic boats at Cowes
Classics Week in July - it would
have been hard to believe that,
but for a certain serendipitous
meeting, this historic vessel
might have ended up as
firewood.
The unlikely series of events began in
the summer of 2008, when Sea View
Yacht Club received an intriguing call
from someone in West Sussex, with an
alternative kind of ‘fisherman’s tale’.
A roundsman who had been delivering
fish to a house in the village of West
Kirdford noticed what looked like “an
upturned whale” sitting in the orchard,
covered in leaves.
He asked the owner of the house about
it and was told that when she picked
up the keys to the place three years
previously, and asked about the ‘thing’ in
the orchard, she was told: “It’s a mermaid,
you can burn it”. Fortunately she hadn’t
acted on that advice!
Continuing on his round, the fish seller
mentioned the odd sighting to another of
his customers – a man who had worked in
the marine industry, and so was happy to
go and have a look.
Having lifted up the tarpaulin, he quickly
realised he was looking at much more than
a pile of kindling, and with the knowledge
of what ‘mermaid’ meant, the man knew
exactly who to call: Sea View Yacht Club,
home of the famous Mermaid fleet.
Enclosing a series of photographs, he
reported that the Mermaid was little more
than a hull – no deck or rig – but might be
restorable.
Initially, the photos were passed to Bob
Somers, who has always had a passion for
the history of the class – and he was in
no doubt that it was genuinely a Seaview
Mermaid.
John scraping away at old paint & varnish in the barn
Bob standing by the hull, prepared for lifting
Fearless four
The club put up a notice in case anyone
was interested in taking on the mammoth
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Work starts - Bob peeling off the old layers of epoxy glass sheathing