It’s hardly surprising Richard Gregson owns a Nordic Folkboat, there was only ever one sort of boat he could reasonably buy the owner of the Wooden Ships brokerage firm in Dartmouth. He was duty-bound to buy a wooden boat. As he puts it: ‘I can’t preach to people to buy a wooden boat if I don’t have one myself.’

That said, wooden boats come in all shapes and sizes, and Richard was perfectly placed to choose from any number of boats that pass through his business. Instead, he did a remarkable thing. He went to Sweden and bought not one but three Folkboats, and had them shipped back to the UK.

This was pre-Brexit, and there were lots of wooden boats for sale in Sweden with very little local demand. So Richard bought the boats cheap and sold two of them on at a profit. The third he kept for himself.

So, why did Britain’s leading expert on wooden boats choose a Folkboat? ‘For its versatility,’ says Richard. ‘The beauty of this boat is that I can go out round the river of an evening and sail it like a dinghy on my own, or I can race it competitively and have some fun, or I can go with the family and potter up the river and go camping.

‘It’s also trailable. She came with a big road trailer and I have friend with a farm, so she goes inside in winter and it costs me peanuts. She’s just so versatile – and dead pretty to look at.’

The Folkboat background

The Folkboat design is that rarest of things: a successful design-by-committee.

Back in 1941, while the rest of Europe was at war, neutral Sweden was still happily messing around on boats. The Royal Swedish Sailing Association (RSSA) launched a design competition for an affordable, easy-to-sail cruising/racing boat. They received an astonishing 58 entries and, while no single design clinched the prize, they commended six designs.

Up-and-coming yacht designer Tord Sundén was asked to combine the best features of the six winning designs, and came up with a boat that somehow managed to be fast yet seaworthy, elegant yet functional, traditional yet timeless.

The first Folkboat was built at the Arendal yard in Gothenberg and launched in April 1942. Although it took a little while for the design to take off, the boat’s remarkable seaworthiness combined with a good turn of speed soon won sailors over – not just in Sweden but, eventually, the world over.

But, while there’s no question that Sundén drew the lines for the Folkboat, from the outset the RSSA claimed ownership of the design. Despite repeated attempts to prove his ownership, Sundén could only sit back and watch as thousands of boats were built to his design, without him getting a penny in royalties.

So what makes the Folkboat special? There’s that sweeping sheer, dipping down to as little as 1ft 10in (0.56m) amidships, and the sharp overhanging bow which deflects the waves so effectively. She has a firm tuck in the bilge, which cuts into the boat’s accommodation but gives her an extra turn of speed and improved windward performance.

The sternpost is dramatically raked, with a huge, deep rudder with tiller steering, which makes her exceptionally comfortable to steer. The tall, fractional Bermudan rig looks modest, but is ample for such an easily driven hull.

All in all, it’s a well-judged design with great all-round performance. And the boat soon acquired a devoted following. By the late 1960s, wood was falling out of favour, and in 1969 the Marieholm Bruk yard in Sweden commissioned Sundén to design a fibreglass version, which became known as the International Folkboat, or the Marieholm IF.

And it was this version that took off in countries such as the USA, where an active fleet of International Folkboats sprang up on San Francisco Bay, numbering 110 by the mid-1990s. That fleet is still going strong.

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There have been many exceptional voyages undertaken on Folkboats. Two Nordic Folkboats competed in the first OSTAR in 1960: Blondie Hasler on Jester, which was fully decked over and fitted with a junk rig, and Val Howells on his conventional Folkboat Eira.

Hasler finished second, eight days behind Francis Chichester in Gipsy Moth III, and Folkboats have been a regular feature of transatlantic races ever since – not least the Jester Challenge series for smaller boats, which have been run since 2006.

Perhaps the longest voyage undertaken on a Folkboat was Australian sailor Ann Gash’s solo circumnavigation of the world. Gash was 55 years old and a grandmother when she set off on Ilimo in 1975, returning two years later in 1977.

Richard’s Nordic Folkboat

It goes without saying that Richard’s Folkboat isn’t just any Folkboat but one with special pedigree. Built in Sweden in 1954, Wilma was raced in the highly-competitive Swedish fleet, finishing as the highest-placed wooden boat in the World Championship in Sweden in 2018.

Stepping on board, the first thing I noticed was the large, deep cockpit. It’s slightly unnerving, as I can’t help thinking about the potential for being swamped by a wave and the boat filling up with water, especially with such a low freeboard.

But it turns out that most Folkboats don’t have self-draining cockpits and never have: the waterline is so high that the cockpit floor would also have to be uncomfortably high to be self draining. And yet the boats race very competitively without any trouble. Certainly, it gives the cockpit a wonderfully spacious feel for such a small boat.

And, because most Nordic Folkboats are fitted with outboards rather than inboard diesels, there’s very little difference between the level of the cockpit floor and the cabin sole. That makes getting in and out of the cabin very easy – something Richard, who has two children aged two and four, has found very useful.

‘If they’re down below, they want to be in the cockpit; if they’re in the cockpit, they want to be down below. If they can’t do that themselves, you’re constantly carrying them up and down, but like this they can just potter around to their hearts’ content. That works really well.’

Below decks, Wilma is simplicity itself. Whereas most Folkboats have a small saloon with a forward bulkhead leading to an even smaller foc’s’le, Richard deliberately chose a boat with an open plan layout.

There’s a wet locker on the port side, right next to the companionway, so wet gear can be stowed before you go in. Then there’s a small chart table next to the locker, which opens up to reveal the galley, that is to say, an Origo 3000 spirit stove, with the open lid doubling up as a worktop.

The rest is simply settee/bunks, with space enough for two adults lying head to toe on the starboard side, and an adult and a child on the port side (or, in Richard’s case, an adult and a child on each side). And the heads? You guessed it: it’s a bucket and chuck it. ‘No blockages!’ says Richard.

A family-friendly approach

Like most Nordic Folkboats built in Scandinavia, Wilma was built of pine planking on steamed oak frames, all copper fastened, and an oak centreline. She has an iron ballast keel.

Although Richard knew the boat needed some work doing when he bought her, he ended up doing more than he expected – which just goes to show that even a wooden boat expert can sometimes be over-optimistic.

In the end, he removed the canvas covering from the deck, refastened the tongue-and-groove planking and resurfaced the whole lot with fibreglass and epoxy, adding a varnished king plank fore and aft for visual effect.

In the process, he removed the leaky foredeck hatch and decked it over completely, thereby getting rid of a potential source of leaks. Although this reduced the light below decks and accessibility to the foc’s’le, the open-plan interior means this isn’t really noticeable.

A common problem with Nordic Folkboats is cracked ribs, which might need to be replaced or doubled up. Wilma’s broken ribs had already been repaired by the previous owner, but some of her planking was rotten in way of the chainplates, where someone had fitted steel bolts, so that had to be cut out and repaired.

In fact, by the time Richard had finished fixing the planking with graving pieces, there was such a mix of different coloured wood that he decided to paint the hull, rather than varnish it as before. The side benefit of this is that it will require less maintenance in the long term.

Sailing with a young family means that Richard often has to sail the boat on his own, rather than the three crew usually employed to race a Folkboat. To this end, he’s fitted a pair of winches and jammer cleats on the cockpit coamings, so the jib sheets can be managed easily from the helm rather than reaching forward to the coachroof where the original winches are still located.

Another family-friendly alteration Richard has made is adding a downhaul on the hanked-on jib. Both the halyard and downhaul lead back to the cockpit, which means the sail can be quickly doused without going forward. With the downhaul and the sheet both pulled in tight, the sail is pinned to the foredeck and can be left alone until it’s convenient to go on deck.

As Richard points out, it’s cheaper than fitting roller furling. In practice, many Nordic Folkboats do have roller furling jibs, although the class rules state that: ‘Furling of the jib is prohibited while racing.’

Richard likewise tamed the mainsail. Although the boat came with a smart, crisp racing mainsail courtesy of North Sails, he bought a ‘soft’ second-hand main which he uses for normal sailing and fitted lazyjacks, so the sail can be dumped when needed without smothering the crew.

He also had a single, huge reef put in the mainsail, which reduces the sail area by about 45%. This would be seen as sacrilege by serious racing folk, as most Folkboats don’t have reefs. Instead, the mainsail sheet is fitted on a track and, when the wind pipes up, the mainsheet is simply moved to leeward to spill the wind and everyone just carries on as usual, non-draining cockpit notwithstanding. But Richard has other priorities. ‘It’s cautious sailing with the family,’ he says.

Low-tech

As you might expect, Wilma has minimal electronic gadgetry. The fanciest bit of kit on board is the tiller autopilot, which allows Richard to singlehand the boat, effectively freeing him up to do what’s needed on deck – or to make a cup of tea.

He also has a handheld VHF with integral DSC and GPS for safety, which sits in a custom-made wooden bracket in the cockpit. His only chartplotter is the Navionics app on his phone. He does have an electronic log, but no depth sounder, preferring to use a lead line instead.

Like most Nordic Folkboats, Wilma is fitted with an outboard instead of an inboard. This simplifies the mechanical chores – ‘Every winter I just take it off, flush it out with fresh water to winterise it, shove it in my garage, and forget about it’ – but it does mean Richard has to sit at the back of the boat when manoeuvring into harbour in order to change gear.

As with most Nordic Folkboats, the outboard is fitted with an ingenious sliding track, which lifts the engine out of harm’s way. Richard has improved this by fitting a block and tackle to haul the outboard up, rather than having to reach over and pull it up at a tricky angle.

Sailing the Folkboat

Like the original design, Wilma has a keel-stepped mast, which means her rigging is extremely simple too: a single shroud each side, a fixed forestay and an adjustable backstay. Jumper struts support the top of the mast in place of a masthead forestay. Yet even this minimal rig provides enough scope to making sailing interesting – as generations of sailors have learned.

And it doesn’t have to be boring. Richard recently clocked up 6.5 knots sailing across Start Bay – slightly faster than the boat’s theoretical hull speed of 5.9 knots. Wilma’s standard rig is mainsail, jib and spinnaker, but Richard has simplified things further by replacing the spinnaker with an asymmetric made by Cormorant Sails in Dartmouth.

With no troublesome spinnaker pole to worry about, the new sail has proven to be a valuable asset. ‘It’s really easy: there’s just one sheet, one halyard, and away you go,’ he says. ‘Off the wind, it gives you so much drive; everything forward of the mast is pulling you along, and she tracks beautifully. When you want to get rid of it, you just drop it and bag it.’

Nordic Folkboat specifications

DESIGNER: Tord Sundén / Royal Swedish Sailing Association
YEARS BUILT: 1942 onwards
LOA: 25ft 2in / 7.68m
LWL: 19ft 8in / 6.00m
BEAM: 7ft 2in / 2.20m
DRAFT: 3ft 11in / 1.19m
DISPLACEMENT: 4,255 lbs / 1,930kg (minimum)
BALLAST: 2,206 lbs / 1,000kg
SAIL AREA: 258sq ft / 24m2
PRICE: £6,500 – £22,000

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