Fair Breeze

Traditional Norfolk Broads sailing cruiser

Fair Breeze under sail in Malthouse Broad
Under sail in Malthouse Broad

Fair Breeze is a little bit of history, a 1950s wooden sailing cruiser that has survived the ravages of time and (as far as we know) is still very much afloat.

For much of her history she’s been in the hire fleets, and that was where we first encountered her – we hired her for a holiday in 1993. When we investigated taking her out again in 2001 we found she had just been put up for sale by the yard. It was too good an opportunity to miss.

We owned her for a while, sailed her a little (using a very broad definition of ‘sail’ that mostly required an engine), enjoyed living on board rather more often, and frequently found ourselves terrified beyond measure by the things that might go wrong – even if they never did.

Eventually, we bowed to the inevitable and sold her back to the yard.

Properly, during our time with her the boat was owned by my Beloved Other Half, just as technically the [intlink id=”the-triumph-spitfire-disaster-section” type=”page”]Spitfire[/intlink] is wholly my property (but who’s keeping count?). She was the expert on Fair Breeze’s construction and history – I just specialised in [intlink id=”gravity-sucks” type=”post”]falling off stylishly[/intlink]…