Racing the Rater - Bourne End Week on the Thames

Bourne End Week on the Thames SW

Raters on the Thames © SW

Not long after the idea of leisure sailing came to be accepted as a fine thing for English gentlemen to indulge in, the Thames Sailing Club came into being in 1870, and the Thames Rater was born.

This is a three handed dinghy (called a 'yacht'in the rules) designed for the particular conditions of the Upper Thames. It has a very tall rig, supported by standing rigging and two runners. The hull is extremely fast, planes easily, and the boat is quite a challenge to sail in anything more than moderate wind conditions.

These days the boats are mostly owned and sailed by syndicates (it is usually sailed by three crew), but in the early days it was a 'gentleman's' sport, with the crew doing all the hefty lifting, crewing and cleaning.

After the Thames Sailing Club, several other clubs were spawned, ensuring ongoing competition between the boats. The most famous meeting of all is that which occurs in 'Bourne End Week'. This was instituted in 1887 for the celebration of Queen Victoria's first jubilee and still occurs every year around the last weekend in May, making a splendid sight and experience for watchers.

Today the class, which has undergone significant changes through the years, still offers an unusual combination of traditional classic craftsmanship blended with cutting edge technology, but was given a new birth with the introduction of GRP raters.

Ulva the star - her hull has been used for the modern hulls © SW

The oldest currently active boat was built in 1898, and the newest was built in 2001. Hull materials range from lovingly restored wood, to fibreglass and even carbon fibre, and the rigs, which are an astronomical 44 feet high and would not look out of place on a 30 foot keelboat, are competitively maintained from carbon or alloy.

One of the most famous of these boats, and the oldest boat still in existence, is Ulva, originally built by Alfred Burgoine in 1898 for Mr Foster Knowles of the Thames Valley Sailing Club. Ulva's hull has ben used to create the moulds for the modern fibreglass boats, as when first sailed she was simply unbeatable, and marked a plateau in rater design. Until then design innovations meant raters only lasted a few years before being outdated, but in Ulva various trends reached their natural conclusion. Linton Hope said Ulva was 'one of the best boats ever seen on these waters'.