Golden Otter is a Burnham Scow built by Stebbings in the 1950’s – probably around 1954. She is still sailing, and is based at West Wittering, Chichester, having been owned by the Western family for some 55 years.
Golden Otter is understood to have been bought originally by the Chalk family, and then owned by the Ambrose family – both of whom lived in the West Wittering area. Then in 1959, she was purchased by Caption Guy Western RN and has been used ever since to introduce successive generations of Western’s to the joys of sailing.
We do know that the last owner kept her on the south coast for a number of years, first at Itchenor , and then on the Fal estuary, Cornwall . She was restored by John Claridge of Lymington and is now settled at Knysna Yacht Club in South Africa.
If anyone knows any more about Clemency, please get in touch.
More information (and pictures of Clemency in Knysna) can be found on Gavin Atkin’s intheboatshed.com
And that was all I knew until I discovered Gavin Atkin’s excellent weblog, intheboatshed.net . Here you can read Clea Rawinsky’s account of finding a rather second-hand looking Seamew in the corner of a boat shed near her home, and of the boat’s restoration by boatbuilder Bob Hinks. I’ll say no more, the full story, beautifully written, is best read at intheboatshed.net.
Leftmost photo by Terence Wilson and Partners. Centre and right photos by Clea Rawinsky, reproduced here by kind permission.
My understanding is that the scows built in Burnham-on-Crouch were derived from the West Wight Scow. Work undertaken by Alan Buchanan, who moved to Burnham around 1952, redrew the lines somewhat to produce the Royal Burnham Yacht Club’s own scow class. This became known as the Burnham Scow or East Coast Scow.
BEEJAY was launched on July 10th 1956 and was the boat in which Brenda and Jean learnt to sail before moving on to race a Cadet, also built by their dad, and larger boats.
The colour photo on the left shows BEEJAY and Harry and Rene Stebbings in the garden of the family home on Chapel Road. The boat was built in the family’s garden shed, which had to be enlarged for the job!
The photo in the centre shows (l-r) Jean, Frances Burgess (now Eaton) and Brenda. Rene is looking on and the man perched on a bench is Ted Deacon, who worked at Petticrows and did BEEJAY’s rigging. Mum recollects that Ted was a nice man and also a bell ringer, as was Harry.
Stebbings Archive 