ROYAL CORINTHIAN ONE DESIGN All the RCOD boats have names beginnig Cor... this is Cormorant; below, showing her modern configuration
surviving yachts, John has owned three of the fleet at different stages of his life. And although the 96-year-old Club Admiral Bobby Melville was the class legend who raced and won in his RCOD Corinna into his 95th year, John is the class saviour, who made it his mission to bring back these good looking mahogany on oak classics from its low point of two, to the present double figures. The fund-raising for restorations helps to add cement to an already friendly class. A restoration can cost up to £30,000, but the purchase price can be a fraction of that to an owner who is prepared to act as guardian – in the same way as heirs to stately piles – to love, race, and keep in good order, where suitability rather than money pile is more important. So let’s start at the beginning, and set the scene for the birth of the enduring RCODs. To set that scene, Burnham-on-Crouch by the 1930s is well established as the Cowes of the East Coast, with Burnham Week the last big regatta of the season before laying up. The Royal Corinthian Yacht Club has moved its HQ from the Medway to Burnham, and the club is racing a number of
Charles Melville waits for wind on Corinna, which his father raced until he was 95
yacht classes. In 1931 its award-winning new club house was opened. Designed by Joseph Emberton, the building was considered a masterpiece and won a number of architecture awards including the architecture medal and represented Britain’s contribution to the International Exhibition of Modern Architecture held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City in 1932. Catching up with the other clubs at Burnham in having their own one design class, the Royal Corinthian’s legendary commodore ‘Tiny’ Mitch-
Barry Lewis, class captain, left, and, right, the ‘saviour’ of the Royal Corinthian One Designs John Heathfield
ell gave the impetus to the creation of a smaller and cheaper to maintain class than the GU Laws designed 30ft East Coast One Design (ECOD). This was in 1934, and the fallout from the Wall Street Crash was still hitting the economy hard. The fact that the building of the fleet would give jobs to hard-pressed boatbuilders and the town was a big plus point for many of the new owners. The designer Harry Smith also ran the Burnham Yacht Building Company, and built the majority of the fleet, with other RCODs being built by King and Sons on the south bank of the Crouch opposite Burnham, and a couple more by Oliver Stone, the barge builder in Brightlingsea up the Essex coast. At the Burnham Yacht Building Company everything was done on site in the making of these elegant little day boats. To cast the keels a hole was dug in the ground, and lined with timber to hold the mould. Then to melt the lead an old copper was propped up on bricks and a bonfire was lit underneath. When it was all hot and runny the tap was turned and the hot lead was let run into the mould. Meanwhile the hulls were CLASSIC SAILOR
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