There are other nice touches: an engaged/vacant barrel lock on the loo which switches on an extractor fan when slid home, parallelogram-shaped drawers under the forward bunks following the line of the vee-berths and, throughout, the sort of carefully considered stowage that you would expect in a boat built for all weathers. Every locker door has a teak grating made with mathematical precision a total of 26 throughout the boat which has prevented any build-up of moisture inside. Aware that they were working on the boss’s own motor cruiser, the Tylers staff who fitted Blue Slipper out had done a superlative job. Inside the boat, fortunately, there was less to be done. V-drive gearboxes were in reasonably good condition, requiring only replacement seals, but the alignment of the port shaft turned out to be a quarter of an inch out of true.
Alternators and starter motors were replaced, and a new cylinder head fitted to one engine. Both manifolds and heat exchangers were removed and replaced with Bowman combined manifold/HE units. The engines, a pair of naturally aspirated 110hp Thornycroft diesels, needed a lot of work. Two layers of heavy woven glass cloth were applied on top of the existing laminate, and finished off with five coats of anti-osmosis epoxy. The integral tanks were repaired with epoxy and glass inside and out.Īlthough Nelsons have always been heavily laid up, David decided that it would be a good idea, while the gelcoat was off, to beef up the hull further. At the end of six weeks there were still a few patches of osmosis, which were removed with infra-red treatment. She was lifted out, the gel-coat was removed and she was left to dry out, with a steam clean at the end of each week. The Morgans bought Starlet in June 1996 and immediately began work. The props had suffered most, with holes right through their blades. One anode had fallen off, and the other was uncoupled so there was no internal bonding. The cathodic protection was almost non-existent. The cast iron manifolds had lost all their carbon and turned into a filigree that could be cut with a knife. There was no cover for the cockpit, so water had pooled on the cockpit seats, rotting them and dripping through on to the engines underneath. “It was the worst survey I have ever had on a boat.” She was suffering from electrolytic corrosion and osmosis (“off the scale”) below the waterline, and the integral GRP fuel tanks were leaking diesel through the hull. They weren’t even put off by a damning survey. He points to the cushions, which have a picture of a sailing ship called Charles W. “We instantly fell in love with her,” said David. He brought her back to the UK, intending to restore her, but soon thought better of the idea and put her up for sale.ĭavid and Judy Morgan found the now-renamed Starlet at Berthons, in Lymington, in 1996. In 1975 Blue Slipper went out to Italy, where she remained for nearly 20 years in the hands of five successive owners until a British enthusiast found her rotting away in Portofino. Starlet was built in 1967 as Blue Slipper for one of the Tyler family and fitted out in-house.
In the 1960s and early 1970s most Nelson 34s were laid up by Tyler Mouldings in Kent and fitted out by one of a variety of yards. Motor cruiser versions of the 34 are rare, but Starlet is even more so. Designed by the late Peter Thornycroft, the originator of the Nelson Range, it is the archetypal police boat in the same way as her big sister, the Nelson 40, is the archetypal pilot boat. The Nelson 34 is a familiar sight to thousands of boaters. But, as Starlet confirms, the tried and tested hull can play as well. For a boat with working-class roots, the Nelson 34 attracts more than its share of admiring glances.
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