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Oddly this all reminds me of days gone by when I was a student, drysuits had not been invented or were certainly out of the reach of pockets of poor students. We sailed on a reservoir on the top of the Pennines which in the winter months never seemed to get above freezing. One weekend we all piled into old clapped out cars that did not have any heating systems in them (that seemed to work) and drove to the club. We were met by a frozen lake, so sailing was off. Instead being hardly or more correctly stupid souls we decided that we would play Ice Hockey instead, easy we had the ice, paddles were used as hockey sticks and a small flat stone was used as a puck. Luckily nobody fell through the ice, but from memory the game lasted a mere five minutes before we retired to the warmth of the sailing club before trudging back home.

Tee hee

Well the answer to at least one of the questions will be 42, and another will be a red car!!

As well as the designs of boats I think that we should not forget the fly away jib stick. I know that whilst it is not a design it has given the 12s and a lot of other boats much better down wind performance and handling as well as allowing helms and crews to save an amount of finger nails as they do not have to move forward and therfore stop quite so many nose dives that as a young crew I certainly remember. Thanks should go to Professor Pat Pending (Elcombe) for all the work he did on this important piece of kit. 

Brother Peter still has N2753 (Candlelight) which was the second Cheshire Cat to be built. I owned Witchwhisper N2553 for a period after Robin's death, but she is no longer with me. Howard Steavenson is probably the best port of call for information on the rest of Robin's boats.

Gosh I remember seeing The Wedge at Whitstable many moons ago and pondering over the transom with its wardrobe door type fitting discolourations!!
Perhaps we also ought to consider either the original Paper Dart or Assassin as the sailing plug for the design from the point of view of looking at one of the first production boats certainly within the 12s along with March Hare without which there would be no Larks.

"Well that's this bailer up again, hopefully it won't leak any more!"

That will have been Storrar and Bax before they morphed into Pinnel and Bax and moved south.

Way back when Needlespar masts were vogue it was possible to purchase them as a kit. The Old Man of the Sea had one such mast and was not going to be held to ransom in the same way that you could be at the minute. Instead of placing the aluminium "bolt" or more correctly rivet into the mast itself he replaced this with a more standard bolt with nuts on either end. Onto this we placed a steel strip which was easy to remove and thus replace shrouds in case they broke. Whatever route you take to sort out your shrouds Jonathan I would suggest something like this onto which you attach the shrouds. It will make your life so much easier in the long run. I am sure that your local chandlery will be able to help you out with this.

Not perhaps the constructive reply that you wanted Paul; but on initially seeing the title I thought this was going to be some spoof on Olympic leagacy with 12s using the Olympic pool with wind being provided by giant fans!!

A sad loss Philip our thoughts are with you in this difficult time
S, G, E and J

There have been some interesting threads brought up in the whole of this discussion, but getting back to Paul's initial thought of how to get more Vintage boats to sail in BW we have to first take a look at ourselves. We have only fairly recently in the history of the class come up with the idea of Vintage boats. When I sailed in my very first Burton (full) Week (1971) as it was then I think that I could safely say there would have been next to no what we are now calling Vintage boats. Kevan I am sure will be able to correct me on this, but if anyone were sailing a boat of some 40 years of age she would have had to have been one of the first couple of hundred boats or so registered. I know that Lionel Wilkinson used to always turn up in Gypsy but he was far from being the norm. Let us look at this situation with the glass half full and say we have over the length of time we have all been sailing these wonderful boats that construction methods have allowed us to sail boats of this age.
I do think that as a class we are stronger as a whole rather than spinning off the Vintage Wing completely and allowing it to become a class in its own right, but also understand why owners would want not to sail on the lumpy stuff in their precious boats. We all want the best from our boats no matter how old they are, but as others have already repairs have had to be made to some of the old girls. Who would say that we should not repair them with carbon? I bet that the repairs have been made in as an aesthetically pleasing way as possible without plastering the carbon on view and in your face.
Although I do not own a Vintage 12, I have thought about trying to get hold of one, but garage space precludes this at the minute. If I did own one I would probably also want to sail her with like minded people and spend as much time boat stroking and chatting about the one that got away as anyone else over a pint in the dinghy park after the sailing.  Let us revel in the fact that we can still sail these old boats and just get out on the water with them and show other sailors where THEIR heritage has come from, as without the likes of the 12s, 14s and Merlins there would not be the proliferation of ideas and designs out there as there are now.
I realise that I have gone off thread with an amount of this, but I feel that I had to get it off my chest.

So you don't fancy another porject after finishing your double bottomed Uffa King then Tim?

I suppose it would depend on if you want to stay true to type with a vintage boat. I am sure that someone in the vintage wing will be able to lay their hands on a kicker winch if you wanted one. Way back when Dad made a wooden winch with a steel core for winding the kicker on to, easy if you have a jigsaw and some time. You can even make the drum diameter larger to increase the purchase if you need to, but beware of where you are going to put it if you do. Otherwise, do like Angus said and file it in the bin.

There was a piece on Last Word on Radio 4 about Jack which should still be accessible until the end of next week via the listen again function.