Rusty is a Roberts 434D designed by Bruce Roberts-Goodson, an Australian yacht designer. He specialises in yachts to be built by amateurs - he merely supplies plans and suggestions. He encourages the builders to modify the non-essential parts as much as they wish.
Rusty under construction.
When we found Rusty in 1993, she had been part built in a barn on Orchard Farm (belonging to Mr and Mrs Taylor) in Huntingdonshire. At that stage her hull and keel had been welded (but only on the outside). There was no transom, deck or bulkheads.
We got her for an extremely good price, because the initial builder had run out of money in a big way. He had also been made redundant, his house repossessed, and his wife was pregnant with their third child. Not optimum financial conditions for boat building. So when we arrived bearing real cash, he almost bit our arms off.
She was picked up and transported to Southwold, in Suffolk, by Quintos Crane Hire (never again!), Desborough Transport (Roger Desborough was a friend of ours at Southwold) and Waveney Crane Hire (very good).
Rusty's launch!
There she was placed on the hard standing administered by the local boatyard Harbour Marine Services (HMS). John Buckley, who runs the boatyard, gave us helpful advice and support.
The plan was that we should finish the construction ourselves, first completing the steel shell, then fitting her out. To this end Nick spent many evenings at the local college, learning to weld, and finishing up with various certificates to prove it. However once he started work on her it became apparent that until he was more experienced, the welding was going to take for ever. So in the end, we sent him back out to work and paid an experienced welder to complete her to our specifications. To this end Pip took on the role of foreperson, a responsibility that she carried successfully right through to the completion of the project. We continued with this policy of employing people to work on the boat, initially welders, then carpenters, engineers and painters, together with various dogsbodies, and lots of help from friends and family.
Going to sea!
After much thought we decided that we would modify the Roberts 434D design by adding a full size wheelhouse (pilothouse) over the original centre cockpit. We based it on the wheelhouse of the Roberts 53, with the engine room under the wheelhouse floor, and an interior steering position. We use it as our main sitting room, with superb views all around. In addition we changed the rig to that of a Chinese junk, there being all sorts of advantages to that, especially for ageing non-macho sailors like us.
On Jak's Jetty in IJmuiden.
We spent a lot of time and effort developing a complete 3D computer model of Rusty as she would be. This has proved absolutely invaluable as the work has progressed, allowing us to easily check dimensions that are difficult to measure in real life, and enabling us to do virtual mock ups of almost all parts.
John Buckley finally launched her for us on 17th September 2005. A momentous day. Lots of people came to cheer us on, it was all enormously gratifying.
We motored out of Southwold harbour on 10th October 2006. Only as far as Lowestoft, but it was very symbolic. We stayed at the Lowestoft Cruising Club, made welcome by our many friends there, especially Penny, Stuart and Megan on Meltemi and Robin and Sue on Apache Warrior.
Much to everyones surprise we left Lowestoft on 6th November 2006 heading for The Netherlands. There we were welcomed to Jak's Jetty in IJmuiden at 5am the next day by Jan and Rina on Alderia.
The construction is still a work in progress and probably will be forever. However she is now a boat that we can live in with reasonable comfort and space, and travel around a bit as well. At this stage (2007) she does not yet have her sails, so we are limited to motoring around, but that is not really a problem in the Dutch canals.
