Yes – the Nancy Blackett is eighty years old this year!
Born in 1931 at Hillyards boatyard in Littlehampton, Sussex, she was first registered as a British Ship, under her original name Spindrift, on 30th March. Her actual launch date is lost in the mists of time and Hillyard’s notoriously non-existent record-keeping. After a short spell as Electron, she became Nancy Blackett when Arthur Ransome bought her in 1935 and has retained the name ever since.
Additionally, this year is 75 years since Ransome made his own voyage across the North Sea to Holland in Nancy, as research for the voyage of the Goblin in "We Didn’t Mean to Go Sea." So it is very appropriate that we will be taking Nancy across to Flushing the summer – our fourth such passage since taking on her ownership.
And one more anniversary: it is also 15 years since the Nancy Blackett Appeal was launched to raise the funds to buy her – it succeeded within about a year, and became the Nancy Blackett Trust.
Happy birthday from one old lady to another. hope we all have many more years sailing. x
Happy Birthday Nancy.x
…. 80 years old and not an inch broader in the beam than she was when she was young. Wish I could say the same!
splicing the mainbrace to celebrate? Does that make you an Aged P??
I would be thrilled to look half as good . . .
mum’s age! happy big 80th birthday! x
Andy, thanks. Peter had it though Jibbooms and Bobstays was the one I was thinking of
happy birthday
Like it! Maybe you were thinking of Jibbooms and Bobstays! Or the appropriate Three Million Cheers!
Barbeque’d Billygoats? Doesn’t seem like 5 years since she was 75!
I can’t remember the Nancy exclamation, so I’ll substitute “Baggywrinkle and binnacles”
Happy birthday!