Roger Barnes, March 13, 2025 – Windermere Revisited
I return to the waters of my youth, to the very bay on Windermere where we used to stay on our holidays when I was very young, and where I learnt to sail. James Woolgrove from South Windermere Sailing Club takes me out in a club Wayfarer, and we sail across the lake to revisit my old flat, and the island of Blake Holme, which I as a child believed to be the real Wild Cat Island in Arthur Ransome’s Swallows and Amazons books.
AVEL DRO, my own boat.
Avel Dro is an Ilur designed by François Vivier, and built of clinker plywood by Les Charpentiers Reunis of Cancale in 1994. I bought her in France in 2003 to import her into the UK, and more recently returned her to France again. The design is based closely on the traditional inshore fishing boats of Brittany in the early years of the twentieth century – hence her simple boom-less lugsail rig and lack of a mainsheet horse, (sometimes controversial among my viewers). Although rare in Britain, Ilurs are relatively common in France. Modern Ilurs are slightly different from mine, as they have more built in buoyancy. The name Avel Dro is Breton, Avel = wind, Dro = to turn – so it means a whirlwind.
- Length 4.44 m
- Sail area 12.2 m²
- Beam 1.70 m
- Draught 0.25 / 0.86 m
INTERESTED IN DINGHY CRUISING?
- Read Roger’s books, The Dinghy Cruising Companion and Sailing The Shallows
- Join the Dinghy Cruising Association
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