THE ULTIMATE ANGLING BUCKET LIST

I actually owned one of the later short
cuddied versions, which I had at the same
time as the larger mackay viking, and as
such I am well placed to make an
objective comparison of the two
concepts.
The good old bad old days
The traditional displacement design it
was argued had better sea keeping
capabilities. But had it. Unlike the full
cathedral which slammed and banged, it
rode a good sea well on to the bow, then
rolled like a pig at anchor in a beam on
swell, and was a nightmare in terms of
balance when two of you needed to be at
the same side together to deal with a
good fish.
In the CJR, you could walk around anywhere on its flat deck and it stayed as steady as a rock. But the
noise at anchor and the battering while under-way bow on into a sea was something else, the latter being
particularly worrying in light of the flimsy way many of these boats were put together at that time.
In construction terms, most of today's boats are about as good as it gets. Their layup is what it needs to
be where it needs to be, with heavy duty woven roving matting sandwiched between the lighter chopped
strand matting layers, plus additional strengtheners for added support.
Back then, everyone was jumping on the band wagon, either through ill-informed home build from
scratch, which many of us at some point or other did, or from equally ill-informed boat building
companies popping up here, there, and everywhere, throwing together wafer thin poor quality hulls
which were a very real danger to be out in.
I remember going out fourteen miles to fish a wreck from Ainsdale aboard a supposedly top of the range
eighteen foot boat owned by a friend of mine Pete Sharples, the make of which I won't name and shame,
as the company still I think trades today.
Conditions were such that we shouldn't
have sailed, but we did, luckily as it
would happen in the company of a
smaller second boat. And we took an
absolute battering. So much so, though
we didn't know it at the time, that the
cuddy bulkhead which went below the
floor level but wasn't bonded to the hull,
had been hitting the wafer thin hull as it
flexed in the rough sea and had
punctured it.
Rusting, rotting trailers
The first we knew about it was when the
under floor cavity had filled and water
began oozing into the fishing well
though the bolt holes holding the
pedestal seats in place.
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