Does anyone know what happened to the two Albacores which used to be owned by the Barge Sailing Club at Cobnor Point, West Sussex, - in the mid- to late-1960's? The first that the WSCC Youth service bought for us was a new Weathermark boat, with - I think - the Sail No 1725. A lovely build - with horizontal veneers on the outside of the hull - we left her varnished. The second was a previously unregistered Mk I Fairey Marine MkI, with a very low hull # stamped in the usual place, which we bought with Club funds from a local Boat Auction. So the second Albacore we had - though much older than the Weathermark Boat and unregistered until the Club bought it and registered it, - was officially assigned a later Sail No in the 1800 range IIRC. She was painted Blue when we got her, and we left her Blue all the time I was running the Club, and doing a large part of the Boat Mainenance. The Club Members voted to name both boats after two of the most famous of the race-winning Thames Barges - "Sirdar" and "Giralda". When I left the Club Leadership to return to jersey because of family reasons, - the Club Members were still using both the Albacores intensively, and were lavishing care on them.
The successor Sailing Centre has no record of either boat - mind you, they have little in the way of the History of the ancestor BgSC, either. I suspect that whomever inherited the leadership of the BgSC after I left possibly found the mainenance of the wooden hull too time- and resources- consuming, and possibly sold them on locally, to replace them with GRP-hulled 420's - of which the WSCC Sailing Centre already had a trio before I returned to Jersey.
Oh, and I forgot to mention that my first experience of sailing an Albacore was in the 1950's from the Thorpe Bay Yacht Club, at Southend on Sea - where a Mr. Davies had bought Sail No 49 - and allowed me to borrow her when he was too busy with work, to race the boat in the Club Series. Even though I couldn't afford one I fell in love with the Class - great day-sailers, great design to race competitively in the Thames Estuary waters; and so light to haul out - compared to the traditional 14ft "Jewels" which were the TBYC's main Club Dinghy Class at that date [two teenagers could get the Albacore up the beach-ramp and across the road into the dinghy park - compared with the 4 or 5 young people it took to do the same thing with a Jewel].
