How it all started........

Having bored my facebook friends mercilessly over winter 12/13 with updates on the work we'd been doing on our boat I have decided to create a blog to

• record what we are doing this winter to share with anyone who is interested
• create a little bit of history / reference for retention for the future
• return to a 'normal' facebook life devoid of updates for my friends who aren't interested!

We had owned a Hawk 20 dayboat for a number of years but decided to look for something with a cabin that we could overnight on but was still around 20ft (to keep our mooring costs affordable) and as quick as our Hawk.  I am new to sailing so the Hawk was a brilliant boat to introduce me to it.

Having missed out on a Beneteau 21.7 locally we started to look for other possibilities in our price range on the internet. The Heard Tosher came up in one search and so, having arranged a viewing out of curiosity suddenly found ourselves careering down a completely different path than we thought we would be on when we had started to look.

From a dayboat with 2 sails that was easy to maintain and sail we found ourselves buying a boat with 5 sails, lots of bits of rope to work out, woodwork to maintain and no idea how to sail it!

'Charm' was in reasonable condition, but had been out of the water for 3 years, had an inboard engine (but it wasn't fitted and was reconditioned so hadn't been used since it was purchased) and had had some work done by the previous owner so was essentially an 'unfinished' project.

So, what is a Mevagissey Tosher?  Well, it's essentially a smaller version of a Falmouth Working Boat to look at (gaff rigged with topsail). Ours was originally built in 1990 as an open boat by Martin Heard in Mylor Village Boatyard and was called 'Black and White' at that time (we worked that out from older pictures we'd seen and the B&W on the sailcover we'd inherited with the purchase!).  The hull is GRP (with an encapsulated iron keel) using a mold made from a older wooden hulled boat, but everything else being wood.  The cabin was added in 1995 by an employee of Heard's at the time who owned the boat and did it up over a couple of years in his breaks.

At some point, 'Black and White' was renamed as 'Sixpence' (we know that from the radio licenses that were still displayed in the cabin) then changed again to 'Charm' before we purchased her. We've decided enough is enough and have kept 'Charm' as her name - we know there is an element of superstition involved in changing names but luckily we actually like it!.

I hope you enjoy this blog as much as I enjoy recording what we're doing.