This is what we said on starting the Site in 2014

“The desire to take on the challenge of developing this website stems from a long personal involvement with Vertue yachts. It is a modest connection, more intellectual than adventurous, and started with my father’s acquisition of Hoitak, V 116, the first of the Cheoy Lee built boats to be shipped into London from Hong Kong during the early 1960’s. The cover of the sales brochure had a beautiful Beken photograph of an Elkins built boat called Raumati, beating bravely down the Solent in a fresh breeze, and I pinned a copy up on my bedroom wall!

Hoitak appeared at the January Boat Show, then we joined her in Birdham before Easter to sail her up to Whitby, her new home port. A few years later we sailed her down to Salcombe from where she continued to cruise within the confines of the English Channel and we lovingly re-varnished her gleaming teak topsides every year. Every spring her galvanised standing rigging was recoated with boiled linseed oil, the 8 hp Stuart Turner petrol motor was overhauled and she was taken out to her mooring in The Bag, above Salcombe town, awaiting more gentle cruising. A trip into the middle of rural France via the River Seine and those wonderfully tranquil canals was the only ‘voyage’ of note. She is now based in the Solent I believe, and I would love to get in touch with her current owners.

Many years later we owned Kandy V 39, which we also based in Salcombe. She was quite a different boat to Hoitak in many ways, but sailed equally well and had the same immaculate manners.

When Mike Woodhouse offered to hand over the reins of the website to my son George and me a year ago, neither he nor we expected this amount of time to pass before anything appeared! Many thanks, Mike, for your patience and for the amazing amount of work you have put in to the Vertue Owners Association over more than the last decade.

It is hoped that the worldwide communications and support for the site that we have experienced will continue and we are looking forward to building a worthwhile successor to all the VOA work that has been done in the past.”

Roger Robinson

speedwelltwo@gmail.com


This is what we wrote when we first set up the website in 2014. We are now undergoing a new phase of the site development.

“Although it has taken far too long to get this website launched since Mike Woodhouse passed it on to us, we have not been idle. Indeed we would like to thank the many Vertue owners and others who have been in touch with information and yarns, all of whom have encouraged us to give it a go.

V 163 Vertue of Kent in Whangarei
V 163 Vertue of Kent in Whangarei

We have heard from Mike Mckean with a wonderfully colourful account of his tragic loss of Austral Vertue in the South Pacific. We have heard from Bill Rogers about his rebuild of Davalan in Massachusetts, and from the owners of Aries II in San Francisco. A visit to New Zealand over our winter revealed the results of an outstanding nine-year ‘deep’ refit of Vertue of Kent up the river near Whangarei. I even discovered a ‘racing’ Vertue in a barn near Keri Keri: Antonio Pasquale’s Vivaldi took a bit of finding as she was ten miles inland, but the hunt was worth it!

Michael Vaughan sailing Island Vertue in Hobart complete with Vertue T-shirt
Michael Vaughan sailing Island Vertue in Hobart complete with Vertue T-shirt

Across the Tasman Sea in Hobart Michael Vaughan kindly took us for a gentle sail aboard his immaculate Island Vertue. Watch out for the link to next year’s Vertue World Championships which he is organising as part of the famous Australian Wooden Boat Festival! Nearby Bruce and Thelma Morley’s breathtakingly beautiful ‘Ocean’ Vertue, Tui of Opua, lent tone to an otherwise patchy collection of craft in the marina.

Thelma Morley aboard Tui of Opua
Thelma Morley aboard Tui of Opua

We are aiming to bring you pictures and words about all these fine boats before too long……. Meanwhile, please see The Boats section with information on how to tell us about your Vertue: if you’re lucky enough to own one!”