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.