Start of Season Party 2023 by
Jack & Sally Fraser - Boat Building Story
On the Sunday after the Start of Season Party we were asked “I wonder if Jack and Sally would do a write-
Ask and ye shall receive but be wary of a Scotsman bearing gifts.
Having arrived somewhat early I resorted to the bar (manned by Peter & Mike) which, to be fair, did give me an opportunity to discuss that day’s rugby with various people without divulging the score in England’s ongoing match with Ireland (one of the gifts referred to above). It also gave me the opportunity to admire the contactless card machine which seemed to be living up to its name in a very literal sense.
Sally slightly misunderstood the invitation, and thought that the comment about John Heath coming to the club in 2000 meant that the talk was due to start at 20:00 helping to partially explain her somewhat tardy arrival.
The evening proper started with John’s illustrated talk on “Building Ships for the Movies” given to a fairly full house:
John is a naval architect (almost retired) who sails at Hampton S.C. and has a yacht in the Caribbean. He is the son of the late Peter Heath who ran a boat building business in 
Hampton.
He has designed boats for various films including the Grand Turk, based on the centuries old design for H.M.S. Blandford, which he and Mike Turk designed.
The boat passed to the National trust but was sold and is now renamed.
The films & TV series he worked on, include:
• Hornblower, 1998–2003
• Anna & the King, 1999 (including the building of an elephant cart)
• Longitude, 2000
• Monsieur N., 2003
• Troy, 2004
• To the Ends of the Earth, 2005
• Crusoe, 2008
• Michiel de Ruyter, 2015
• La Fortuna, 2021
• Napoleon, 2023
Unfortunately nowadays, with the advent of CGI, only sections of a boat are required so an art form is presumably being gradually lost.
There were quite a few questions from the audience about some of the architectural detail and technical expressions used, which John managed to answer to such a degree that I almost understood some of them and considering Sally and I had not sailed/crewed before 2022 that says a lot. The only downside to the presentation was the slide show slides being somewhat out of sequence, explained by the fact that they were last used in 2000!
The talk was followed by a cold buffet prepared by Diana & Jean which included chicken drumsticks, pie with apricots, scampi, garlic mushrooms, coleslaw, potato salad and bread followed by tiramisu, pear tart and a pink desert (!).
Sally and I have attended a few evening events at Aquarius and are putting on weight due to the always impressive catering!
I have not really given any credit to the committee and others who set everything up and who no doubt returned everything to where it belonged after the party, so thank you one and all.