Bourne End Week - The Queen’s Cup for Thames ‘A’ Raters

by Lisa Mylchreest on 25 May 2009
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.

Bourne End Week is an inland Sailing Regatta for dinghies, 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. This year from the 23 to 27 May, and has been running for over 100 years. This is an open event and all visitors are welcomed, class racing is also held for the club classes plus visitors such as Moths and Albacores.

Traditionally fleet racing for single-handed and two handed boats as well as handicap boats, this week offers the elegant Thames ‘A’ Raters an opportunity to sail their national championships at Bourne End for their historic silver trophies.

The Queen’s Cup, donated to the club by Queen Victoria when her son the Duke of Connaught was President of the Club is the final race of the week and the final trophy for which only the ‘A’ Raters sail.

These elegant dinghies with three crew, designed for the particular conditions of the Upper Thames. They are over 25 feet long and with up to 40 foot masts 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. The tall masts collect the wind above the trees and glide along the river providing a special spectacle

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.

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.

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'.