HEIDI OF BEMBRIDGE 336406

History of a classic British motor yacht

Tinker and Mrs "Marge" Jay at Bembridge on launch day CHRIS WADE

A sailing pal said that Tinker Jay “loved boats and women more than his patrimony”.

The story of the design, construction and naming of Heidi of Bembridge supports that canny remark.

Ordering a 40ft twin screw wooden motor yacht in 1967, to be built in teak and mahogany on American rock elm frames in an old Isle of Wight boatyard, in the gathering dusk of wooden boatbuilding, certainly looked like an act of love. It was also likely to diminish any wealth inherited from parents.

But J.F.H. Jay of Hove, known at Shoreham as "Tinker" Jay, was not an old fogey. He owned a chrome plating firm in Sussex and had inherited from his father a majority of shares in a lucrative West End theatre, The Ambassadors', where Agatha Christie's record-breaking play The Mousetrap had been running non-stop since 1952.

Tinker had noticed the revolutionary underwater profile of the new fibreglass Nelson 34 launches designed by Commander Peter Thornycroft at TT Designs in Bembridge. The Royal Navy had been buying Nelson 34s since 1962 and two Nelson 34s had been hoisted aboard Her Majesty's Yacht Britannia.

The Nelson Boat Owners Club say

For a soft ride in head seas Thornycroft designed slack bilges forward, with a deep and sharp entry, and bilges that turn very tight towards the wide stern.

The hollow buttocks give a very flat run, providing lift for full planing speeds if desired. A long waterline, moderate beam, high bows and round bilges ensure excellent handling throughout the speed range. Designed for fuel efficiency and a soft ride at semi-planing speeds, Nelsons can better maintain speed in heavy weather and are vastly more comfortable on passage than chine planing powercraft.
The larger Nelson 40, designed by Thornycroft's naval architect John Askham for all-weather service, would soon be liberating the Trinity House pilots from long hours at sea in bad weather waiting for traffic aboard their 120-foot pilot cutters.

Tinker Jay asked John Askham to design a Nelson-profile hull for a 40-foot wooden motor yacht to be built by Ernest Wade at Bembridge Boatyard in the Isle of Wight. John Askham recalls

Tinker regularly visited Bembridge in a smaller boat, but he wanted something larger, with more live-aboard space. He came to see Peter Thornycroft, who just wanted to sell him a standard Nelson, built by Keith Nelson & Co Ltd in Bembridge. That was not what Tinker wanted, so he went to Ernest Wade at his yard in Bembridge and approached me as designer. We were all based in Bembridge, a small but busy boatbuilding community where everyone knew everyone else.

Heidi is one of my earlier designs, a forerunner to the Bullet range that I designed. I like the recent pictures. She doesn't seem to have changed much over the years.

Ernest Wade wasn't just a boatbuilder. He was the Bembridge harbour pilot and handled the hazardous task of ferrying Trinity House pilots out to meet oceangoing ships in all weathers off the Solent.


Pictures by courtesy of John Askham

Arthur Mursell of TT Designs in Bembridge remembers watching Ern Wade and his son Chris at work on the Heidi project:
Two brothers Eddie and Nicky Wade, no doubt members of that large family, were apprentices at Alan Coombes's yard next door to Ern's and they went to help out in the evening. That was common around the harbour when one builder was a bit pushed. The trouble was that Ern only wanted them to paint linseed oil in the plank seams. They did not think too much of that. Ern was old school and soaked everything in linseed. Heidi still being afloat today tells us something.

It seems likely that during the months of construction at Bembridge, Ern Wade learned of two women in Tinker's private life. One lived in London. The other lived in the Isle of Wight. Both were called Heidi.

Both were told that the yacht taking shape in Wade's shed in the winter of 1967 was going to be named Heidi.

At the eleventh hour, according to Tinker, "The lady who lived on the island became suspicious. She therefore insisted Heidi was registered at Lloyds as Heidi of Bembridge."

There was no other Heidi in Lloyds Register of Yachts at the time, so Tinker’s racy tale might well be true, although a 1957 wooden Folkboat on the Beaulieu River awkwardly named Heidi had rather conveniently just dropped off the register and the only lady on the Bembridge slipway on launch day was Tinker’s wife, "Marge".

John Askham's February 1967 drawings specify two 110-hp Rootes Lister TS3A marine diesel engines with direct drive Borg Warner gearboxes and American-style reversed drivetrains through V-drive units imported from the Walter Machine Company in Jersey City.

But when Heidi of Bembridge performed for sea trials off Spithead on April 7, 1969, the unusual six-piston, three-cylinder, two-stroke TS3 engines, known to British lorry drivers for their very loud purr as "Commer knockers", were nowhere to be seen.

General Motors engineers from Wellingborough had supervised the installation of two Bedford 466 145-hp diesels "with a reduction of 2.04 to 1 in the V-drives".

Over a measured 1.5 statute miles, in a Force 3 wind, Heidi averaged 13.65 knots at 2500 rpm and 11.4 knots on a run at 2100 rpm.

Cruising from Shoreham Harbour, Tinker and Heidi were often seen in the Channel ports. In 1985-6 he cruised through the French canals to the Mediterranean and back. Heidi appeared on the standard Bembridge picture postcard.

Tinker Jay’s widow sold Heidi in 1992 to a regular member of Tinker’s crew, the wartime bomber pilot Eric Bartholomew DFC, who lived at Esher and berthed Heidi at Chiswick Quay on the River Thames.

On EU VAT qualification night in the winter of 1992 Heidi was berthed on Sussex Yacht Club moorings at Shoreham.

Captain John Bass, a serving Royal Navy officer, bought her at Chiswick in 1996 in preparation for his adventurous retirement. In a 1997 shakedown cruise with his wife Ann, Capt Bass took Heidi down river to Nieuwpoort in Belgium and late that year entered retirement with Heidi berthed at Hythe Marina Village on Southampton Water. Their cruising years were outstanding.


HEIDI at the Port de l’Arsenal in Paris, May 1999

1998 Hythe - Lézardrieux - North Brittany - Hythe
1999 Hythe - Epernay - Paris - Hythe
2000 Hythe - La Roche-Bernard - Brest [Fête internationale de la Mer] - Hythe
2001 Hythe - River Seine - Paris - Hythe
2002 Hythe - Paris - Lyon [via the Bourbonnais route]- Barcelona [Port Vell]
2003 Barcelona - Lyon - Paris - Hythe


A crane lift, with Ann Bass aboard, at Meaux on the River Marne in 1999, reveals the Nelson profile perfected at Bembridge by Thornycroft, Askham and Arthur Mursell of TT Designs

2004 Hythe to Normandy for D-Day anniversary but engine cooling problem at Ouistreham forced return to Isle of Wight
2005 New Vetus Deutz diesels and new V-drives fitted by Richardsons at Island Harbour, IOW, before cruise to Barcelona for winter at Port Vell.
2006 Barcelona - Camargue - Canal du Midi - Toulouse - Bordeaux - winter at Saint-Martin-de-Ré
2007 Overhaul at La Rochelle - Saint-Goustan on the River Auray - Hythe
2008 Hythe - Brest [Fête internationale de la Mer] - Hythe
2009 Hythe - Paris - Briare in the Loire Valley - Hythe
2010 English Channel ports

Capt Bass sold Heidi in 2011 to her fourth and present owner whose home port was Castletown, Isle of Man.

After a major winter refit in Liverpool, where she acquired a nameplate rescued from a bank counter at the former headquarters of the National Bank of Liverpool, Heidi appeared in Castletown Harbour flying the white ensign of the Royal Yacht Squadron.

Her fourth owner embarked on six years of adventurous cruising in Northern Europe, voyaging via the Caledonian Canal to the Stockholm Archipelago, Estonia, North Germany and France and returning via Anglesey to Castletown, where long distance cruising plans were suspended by the 2019 COVID-19 pandemic.

A new Permateek deck was laid by shipwrights during an extensive indoor refit at Whitehaven in the winter of 2021.



In June 2024, due her owner’s ill health, his Manx marine engineer motored Heidi from Castletown into the Brunswick Lock at Liverpool Marina for a sale by brokers instructed to find a fifth serious owner for perhaps the finest sixties classic sea-going wooden motor yacht currently available in North West England or North Wales.

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GBP 96,000.00

Part I British registered, VAT-free, brokerage sale afloat at Liverpool L3 4BP

Coburg Yacht Brokers,
Douglas Boatyard, Becconsall Lane, Hesketh Bank, Preston, Lancashire. PR4 6RR
Tel: 01254 705225
Email: ros@poptel.org
International: +44 7860 642328

 Internet address: http//www.coburgbrokers.com

e-mail address: ros@poptel.org

 1078992 England     VAT Reg: GB 147 2903 64

Please note: in this case we are acting as brokers only. The vendor is not selling in the course of a business. Whilst every care has been taken in their preparation, the correctness of these particulars is not guaranteed. Particulars do not constitute a term of any contract. A prospective buyer is strongly advised to check the particulars and, where appropriate, at his own expense employ a qualified marine surveyor to undertake a survey and, if necessary, to undertake an engine test. Offered for sale subject to being unsold.