Author: Leo Seccia

If you have been down to the club recently, you will have seen our Commodore, Ben Ewing, keeping everything shipshape on deck. But below the waterline, in the engine room of administration, Russ Leith and his band of archiving volunteers are quietly undertaking a task of rather boggling proportions.

They are gathering together the ingredients for a funding bid. It sounds like a dull bit of homework, but do not be fooled. There are multiple strands to this process, which need to be thoroughly researched and meticulously recorded. It is actually a race against time to save our grand old lady, involving dusty books, large sums of money, and a great deal of detective work.

With so many aspects to fundraising, Russ is struggling to keep a handle on it all. There are dozens of components to manage individually and countless strands of information to collate and make sense of before a coherent, readable story can be created… this is going to take a lot of people a long time.

How long is a piece of string?

When asked how much funding we might get, or when we might see it, Russ asks us to consider the length of a piece of string. The truth is, we simply do not know.

Applying for the National Lottery Heritage Fund is a notoriously tricky business. It typically takes two full-time professionals up to two years to do the research, prepare a bid, and fill in the forms. Russ, in a moment of marvellous madness, has calculated that on his own, it might take five years to gather the information. We would very much like to do it faster than that.

The Eye-Watering Sum

We have been peering over the fence at our sister ship, the LV50. They managed to secure around £800,000, which sounds like an enormous pile of cash. However, it turned out to be only about half of what they actually needed to finish the restoration.

Since our beloved John Sebastian is a similar vessel of a similar vintage, Russ estimates our bid needs to exceed £1.2 million. To get anywhere near that sort of treasure, we must demonstrate that LV55 is worth saving because of her historical significance.

Here is the peculiar thing: the funders are not terribly interested in saving a yacht club. In fact, being a private club might actually put them off. They want to save the vessel. We have to answer very specific questions about her bones: Why was she built with so much teak? Why did they use composite construction? And exactly how does that iron framework help her survive the storms?

A Labyrinth of Paper

To answer these questions, we need to visit at least 11 different institutions, from the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich to the archives at the Woolwich Arsenal.

The research required is enough to make one slightly dizzy. A volunteer at the LV50 found that it took two people five days just to gather ten years of history. As LV55 served for 70 years, we are looking at needing roughly 70 days of volunteer time just to read the minute books, which need to be photographed, typed up, and published.

To make matters stickier, the archives are often organised by year, not by ship. This means one must read through an entire year of Trinity House records just to find a single mention of our girl. It is a needle in a very large haystack.

Wanted: A Heritage Hero

Russ is making splendid progress, but he cannot spin all the plates at once. He has specifically asked for someone to step forward and take on the Heritage Harbours project.

We need a volunteer to lead a group that links the John Sebastian with the rest of the Floating Harbour, including the SS Great Britain, the Matthew, the M Shed, and even the Thekla. The vision is to create a self-guided route where tourists can scan QR codes to learn about Bristol’s treasures. This would show the world that the Cabot Cruising Club is a vital hub for the community.

Demonstrating the Cabot Cruising Club’s commitment to Community Engagement is essential for a successful National Heritage Lottery Fund bid and something funding providers are keen to see in all applications. We need to build a library of stories, write leaflets, books, and perhaps even develop a museum experience onboard, with tours and talks.

To find out more about Heritage Harbours, head to About Heritage Harbours. All participating Harbours can be found in this Location Map.

A page for Bristol has already been set up on Bristol HH, however, no active group has been formed yet.

For further info, e-mail  to find local contacts.

How You Can Help

If the idea of rummaging through dusty archives or organising harbour tours does not appeal to you, fear not. There are other ways to keep the barnacles at bay.

For those who prefer a hammer to a history book, our maintenance crew volunteers meet every Monday night. There is plenty of work to do, both inside and out, as we must do everything possible to limit the deterioration of the ship’s fabric right now.

If manual labour is not your cup of tea either, you can simply dig deep at the bar. Buy more drinks, attend as many events as possible, and donate whatever you can to help LV55 survive for another 140 years.

If you fancy a bit of Monday night tinkering, doing a bit of detective work and information gathering, or want to champion the Heritage Harbours project, do let the committee know. It promises to be quite the adventure.