Pilot Cutter “Breeze”  Save Me Someone!!   

This Bristol Channel Pilot Cutter was Surveyed for a prospective purchaser at Porlock Weir in 1992 by Kathleen J Kilbey MRINA . The vessel was afloat and fully in commission at the time.

                     

When visiting Porlock in 2006 Kathleen realised that the almost dead hull on the slipway was in fact the smartly presented cutter she had surveyed afloat in the harbour 14 years previously.

The pictures above illustrate what can happen if you start a wooden boat project and then run out of time and/or money. Unfortunately this story is repeated time and time again in harbours and yards around the World.

In the last few years ”Breeze” has been removed and it is believed she is lurking locally still.  In 1992 this boat was one of the very earliest Pilot Cutters still afloat.

 Breeze is  one of the earlier 19th Century Cutters believed to have been built in 1887.  A relatively small ship built of Oak on grown and sawn Oak frames and fastened with “trenells”  (wood pegs) and Iron “dumps” the vessel survived  in remarkably  original contitional and was still sailing  until the beginning of the 1990′s.