35 ft West Solent One Design 1930/1995

MISCHIEF is one of the fortunate survivors of the beautiful West Solent One Design Class included in a 1990s wave of restoration and revival. The West Solent was the sports boat of its day; probably the first in the UK to be series built. Perhaps the most successful and elegant inshore waters racer/ cruiser ever to grace UK waters, they look equally as good at rest as at play. Around 30 were built by Berthon Boat Company between 1923 and 1933, with fleets developing at Lymington, Torbay, and on the east coast. MISCHIEF has sailed there, and much further afield including cruising Europe's western seaboard to the Mediterranean in the 1980s. She has undoubtedly benefited from having just one loving owner since 1991; very well set up for short handed cruising and occasional racing. There is something very romantic about a boat that looks like this and a long ownership; he sails her often, and normally on his own.

MISCHIEF was the first of the West Solents to receive the Peter Brookes treatment at Maldon on her return to England in 1991 with work ongoing through 1995. Since then MISCHIEF has remained in the same careful ownership: regularly used and aired.
- Hull stripped, splined and epoxy sealed in and out
- Lead ballast keel removed re-bedded; re-fastened
- New laminated frames and hanging knees in way of mast
- New wood floors
- New bronze chainplates
- New teak deck on plywood substrate

BERTHON YARD No. 360

WEST SOLENT CLASS SAIL No. W29

MISCHIEF’s joint first owners were intriguing New Forest neighbours: semi-retired real railways administrator Sir Francis H. Dent, C.V.O., and retired Birmingham brewer Captain Jack Holder, a dedicated and rather well funded miniature railway enthusiast. Both had moved south during the 1920s.

Holyhead-born Dent had followed his retired Admiral father (Admiral Charles B.C. Dent, Marine Superintendent of the London & North Western Railway after distinguished naval service) into a career running railways: General Manager of the South Eastern & Chatham Railway 1911-1920; First World War service in organising railways at home and abroad, for which he was knighted; subsequently a director of the Southern Railway and governor of London School of Economics.

Until his second marriage in 1923 to Bournemouth-born Winifred Freemantle, despite presumably spending much of his working life in the south of England, Dent’s yachting base seems to have remained his home waters of the Menai Strait and the Mersey for racing in local classes and cruising a Crossfields of Arnside ‘Nobby’. His first known south coastal address from the late 1920s was Dock House, Buckler’s Hard, on the Beaulieu River, Hampshire, where, as you did, he satisfied his small boat desires by, in partnership with Holder, commissioning MISCHIEF from the nearby Berthon yard at Lymington.

Jack Holder had comfortably retired in his 40s after the sale of the family brewing business. A very competent engineer, pioneer motorist (his beautiful 1903 De Dion Bouton is part of the Beaulieu National Motor Museum collection), and a balloonist, when he moved south he brought his vast miniature railway with him, creating a layout around his house, ‘Keeping’, Beaulieu. Miniature is relative: one of the steam locomotives weighed 1.5 tons, about a 3rd of MISCHIEF’s weight.

1930-1932
Dent and Holder

1933-1934
Just Dent

1935-1938
Harold Cecil Christopherson (1889-1959), a London Stock Exchange broker of Brockenhurst and Chelsea, London. In c1937 Christopherson became the 4th owner of the beautiful 46 ft bermudan cutter ETAIN, Laurent Giles design no. 2, built by R.A. Newman of Poole in 1930.

1938-1947
Owner(s) not known

1947-1950
H.F. Barge
Hamble, Hampshire

1951-1953
Jack Holman (brother of yacht designer Kim Holman): owner of the J.W. & A. Upham Boatyard, Brixham, Devon; later founder of Darthaven Marina.

1953-1957
L. Woollcott
Salcombe, Devon

1957-1960
New name: FIDE
H.M. Blewitt
Plymouth, Devon, later Portsmouth, Hampshire

1960-c1963
George C. Dear
Wellington, Shropshire
Home Port: Lymington

c1963-1966
J.D. Dennis & R.J. Strong
London/ Gloucestershire/ Bedfordshire

1967-1972
R.J. Strong, A.D. Hignett & The Hon. Lawson-Johnston (Bovril Ltd)
Bedfordshire/ Leicestershire/ Befordshire

1972-c1974
Charles D. Pledger
Heybridge Basin, Essex

c1974-
C.R.H. & Dr. N.O.T. Temple
Harwich/ Cowes

c1979-19??
Paul Denk (US Citizen)
Based Yarmouth Isle of Wight, then cruised in nicely slow stages to the Algarve, Portugal.

Name returned to MISCHIEF

19?? - 1991
Claude Schmidtt & Claude Niek
Yacht brokers, Cannes, France

1991 - Present
Present ownership
Purchased in Cannes, France
Trucked to Calais then sailed to the Blackwater Estuary with WSOD friends.

©2024 Iain McAllister/ Sandeman Yacht Company Ltd.

- Pine planking
- Splined and epoxy sealed inside and out
- Sawn oak and laminated iroko frames
- Canadian rock elm timbers
- Wood floors at frames
- Long, substantial iroko mast step
- Bilge stringers
- Lead ballast keel
- Bronze plate internal chainplates
- Substantial wood hanging knees in way of mast
- Teak laid deck on plywood substrate

SUMMARY
- Teak laid deck
- Varnished teak toerails, coamings, and superstructures
- All bronze hardware

FROM AFT

AFT DECK
- Mooring fairleads port & starboard
- Associated central wood mooring cleat
- Mainsheet horse
- Bronze mainsheet tackle blocks
- Mainsail cam cleats port and starboard inside aft coaming
- Bronze rudderhead
- Wood tiller
- Running backstay tackle fittings and jammers port & starboard
- Spinnaker sheet sheaves port & starboard

COCKPIT
- Teak grating sole
- Hatch access to lazarette
- Fore and aft teak slatted benches port and starboard
- Open stowage bins under
- Teak coamings faired to Companionway hatch
- 'Toothed' hinge down tilled rack at aft coaming
- 4 x Bronze Lewmar self tailing sheet/ line winches
- Companionway hatch forward

SIDE DECKS
- Bronze headsail tracks and cars at toerails
- Line clutches port & starboard

MID DECK
- Companionway hatch and saloon skylight elegantly combined

MAST POSITION
- Halyards and lines led to clutches fwd of fwd cockpit winches

FOREDECK
- Raised forehatch with bronze portlight
- Chocks port and starboard for spinnaker pole
- Padeye for spinnaker pole downhaul
- Oak samson post
- Chain pipe
- Mooring fairleads port and starboard
- Bow roller fitting to starboard of stemhead

GROUND TACKLE
- 35 lb / 16 kg CQR Bower anchor
- 72 ft / 22 m 3/8 in / 9 mm galvanised chain
- Fortress kedge anchor

STEP DOWN FROM COCKPIT SOLE
- Step is also battery box (charged ashore)

Galley to port
- Scrubbed pine sole
- 2 x Burner gimballed spirit hob
- Stowage under and outboard
- Bulkhead light
- Lockers and bench to Starboard

Saloon area
- Scrubbed pine sole
- Butterfly skylight in deckhead
- Staggered settee berths
- Gimballed oil lamp starboard aft
- Table over foot end of port settee/ berth
- Slatted hull sides at settee berths
- Teak lining boards bulkhead forward
- Reading light
- Deckhead light
- Clock

Passage forward to starboard of mast

Forepeak
- Berth to port
- Stowage to starboard

RIG
- Spruce mast
- 2 x Spreaders, 1 x Jumpers
- Spruce boom
- Winches and line clutches port and starboard
- Spruce spinnaker pole

SAILS
- Mainsail with slab reefing
- Jib
- Spinnaker

CANVASWORK
- Skylight cover
- Forehatch cover
- Mainsail boom cover
- Settee/ berth cushions
- Cockpit cushions

- Lifebuoy
- Whale Gusher 30 double action manual bilge pump; two way valve
- Fire extinguisher
- Fire blanket

- Warps
- Fenders