Working Sail

Luke Powell has almost single-handedly pioneered a revival in the building of traditional pilot cutters in Great Britain; he also has a flair for storytelling, both when looking back over a rich if unconventional life lived to the full, and when describing the long struggle to win acceptance for the wooden boats on which he established his reputation. Luke’s interest in boats began when clambering over the rotten hulks then mudbound in the backwater creeks of his Suffolk boyhood. Aged nine, he set sail with his family for the Greek islands. From then on the sea was his school. After an apprenticeship as a shipwright restoring Thames barges, he returned to the Mediterranean and the nomadic life of a journeyman boatbuilder. In due course he acquired a French girlfriend – the first of many long-suffering partners in his adventures – and Charmian, a 75-year-old cutter. In 1990, with a baby son on board, he sailed Charmian up the Helford River in Cornwall, little realising that seven