What do you do when the world is locked down, and the largest body of water you have to sail boats in is a small yellow paddling pool? Make boats to fit the paddling pool of course!

Soon after the schools closed, I found myself with a good supply of wood and some very old hand tools, and I set about building my younger brother a small, simple pond yacht. It has a solid pine hull, recycled cotton offcut sails and a bowsprit made from a bit of a sushi mat we have never used. The keel is the handle of a wooden chip fork with a 1p glued to each side, hence its name – ‘Tuppence’.

I was very pleased with how it had worked out, and promptly made another, this time a single sail (Bermuda?) rig using a 3 inch bit of thin wood, an offcut of copper for the keel, and more sushi mat as a mast. It sailed remarkably well for its size, and I made the decision to downsize further.

The fourth yacht I made is by far the smallest: a 2 inch sloop with a bright red hollow hull (a first for one of my boats) and a keel made from a bit of baked beans can, with blue tack as ballast. I don’t know, but I suspect it may be the smallest working pond yacht ever built. It sails just as well as its larger counterpart, with the added bonus of having two sails and therefore more control. The only thing I am not happy with is the stupidly oversized eyelet; the consequence of temporarily losing the wire I was using to make my own.

My most recent yacht is the ‘Dolphin’, a 4 inch yawl, with adjustable main and mizzen sails. It is surprisingly complicated and fiddly, and requires a pin or pair of pliers to slide the bowsies along the ropes (cotton thread)!

To conclude, here is a picture of all the yachts together. I’m sorry it’s upside down; I can’t get it the right way up so you will just have to deal with it for now. I am by no means finished with making tiny pond yachts (as you can see there are two unfinished ones in the photo, I have a nasty habit of starting a project before I have finished the last one) and hopefully I will have run out of sushi mat sticks before I fill up the house entirely with very small boats!

P.S. I have now made all new booms and stuff for my great grandad’s yacht and I am now working out how to rig it.

Edited By Zephyr Yachts on 18/04/2020 17:50:44