History of a classic British motor yacht
Tinker and Mrs "Marge" Jay at Bembridge on launch day CHRIS WADE
The story of the design, construction and naming of Heidi of Bembridge supports that canny remark.
Ordering a 40ft twin screw wooden motor yacht in 1967, to be built in teak and mahogany on American rock elm frames in an old Isle of Wight boatyard, in the gathering dusk of wooden boatbuilding, certainly looked like an act of love. It was also likely to diminish any wealth inherited from parents.
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Tinker had noticed the revolutionary underwater profile of the new fibreglass Nelson 34 launches designed by Commander Peter Thornycroft at TT Designs in Bembridge. The Royal Navy had been buying Nelson 34s since 1962 and two Nelson 34s had been hoisted aboard Her Majesty's Yacht Britannia. The Nelson Boat Owners Club say For a soft ride in head seas Thornycroft designed slack bilges forward, with a deep and sharp entry, and bilges that turn very tight towards the wide stern.The larger Nelson 40, designed by Thornycroft's naval architect John Askham for all-weather service, would soon be liberating the Trinity House pilots from long hours at sea in bad weather waiting for traffic aboard their 120-foot pilot cutters. Tinker Jay asked John Askham to design a Nelson-profile hull for a 40-foot wooden motor yacht to be built by Ernest Wade at Bembridge Boatyard in the Isle of Wight. John Askham recalls Tinker regularly visited Bembridge in a smaller boat, but he wanted something larger, with more live-aboard space. He came to see Peter Thornycroft, who just wanted to sell him a standard Nelson, built by Keith Nelson & Co Ltd in Bembridge. That was not what Tinker wanted, so he went to Ernest Wade at his yard in Bembridge and approached me as designer. We were all based in Bembridge, a small but busy boatbuilding community where everyone knew everyone else.
Ernest Wade wasn't just a boatbuilder. He was the Bembridge harbour pilot and handled the hazardous task of ferrying Trinity House pilots out to meet oceangoing ships in all weathers off the Solent.
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Two brothers Eddie and Nicky Wade, no doubt members of that large family, were apprentices at Alan Coombes's yard next door to Ern's and they went to help out in the evening. That was common around the harbour when one builder was a bit pushed. The trouble was that Ern only wanted them to paint linseed oil in the plank seams. They did not think too much of that. Ern was old school and soaked everything in linseed. Heidi still being afloat today tells us something. It seems likely that during the months of construction at Bembridge, Ern Wade learned of two women in Tinker's private life. One lived in London. The other lived in the Isle of Wight. Both were called Heidi. Both were told that the yacht taking shape in Wade's shed in the winter of 1967 was going to be named Heidi. At the eleventh hour, according to Tinker, "The lady who lived on the island became suspicious. She therefore insisted Heidi was registered at Lloyds as Heidi of Bembridge." There was no other Heidi in Lloyds Register of Yachts at the time, so Tinker’s racy tale might well be true, although a 1957 wooden Folkboat on the Beaulieu River awkwardly named Heidi had rather conveniently just dropped off the register and the only lady on the Bembridge slipway on launch day was Tinker’s wife, "Marge".
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But when Heidi of Bembridge performed for sea trials off Spithead on April 7, 1969, the unusual six-piston, three-cylinder, two-stroke TS3 engines, known to British lorry drivers for their very loud purr as "Commer knockers", were nowhere to be seen. General Motors engineers from Wellingborough had supervised the installation of two Bedford 466 145-hp diesels "with a reduction of 2.04 to 1 in the V-drives".Over a measured 1.5 statute miles, in a Force 3 wind, Heidi averaged 13.65 knots at 2500 rpm and 11.4 knots on a run at 2100 rpm.
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Tinker Jay’s widow sold Heidi in 1992 to a regular member of Tinker’s crew, the wartime bomber pilot Eric Bartholomew DFC, who lived at Esher and berthed Heidi at Chiswick Quay on the River Thames. On EU VAT qualification night in the winter of 1992 Heidi was berthed on Sussex Yacht Club moorings at Shoreham.
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![]() HEIDI at the Port de l’Arsenal in Paris, May 1999
1999 Hythe - Epernay - Paris - Hythe 2000 Hythe - La Roche-Bernard - Brest [Fête internationale de la Mer] - Hythe 2001 Hythe - River Seine - Paris - Hythe 2002 Hythe - Paris - Lyon [via the Bourbonnais route]- Barcelona [Port Vell] 2003 Barcelona - Lyon - Paris - Hythe
![]() A crane lift, with Ann Bass aboard, at Meaux on the River Marne in 1999, reveals the Nelson profile perfected at Bembridge by Thornycroft, Askham and Arthur Mursell of TT Designs
2005 New Vetus Deutz diesels and new V-drives fitted by Richardsons at Island Harbour, IOW, before cruise to Barcelona for winter at Port Vell. 2006 Barcelona - Camargue - Canal du Midi - Toulouse - Bordeaux - winter at Saint-Martin-de-Ré 2007 Overhaul at La Rochelle - Saint-Goustan on the River Auray - Hythe 2008 Hythe - Brest [Fête internationale de la Mer] - Hythe 2009 Hythe - Paris - Briare in the Loire Valley - Hythe 2010 English Channel ports Capt Bass sold Heidi in 2011 to her fourth and present owner whose home port was Castletown, Isle of Man.
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![]() A new Permateek deck was laid by shipwrights during an extensive indoor refit at Whitehaven in the winter of 2021.
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GBP 120,000.00 |