Fairey Duckling

Hugh Coryn wrote to say that he had recently acquired a Fairey Duckling, built 1962 still varnished complete with her original suit of Williams sails.

Although still usable Hughs intention is make whatever restoration is necessary to bring her back to as near original as possible.

In the post war years Fairey produced sailing dinghies utilising techniques that had been employed in the construction of wartime aircraft. Fairey Marine output included the Firefly, Albacore, Falcon, Swordfish, Jollyboat, Flying Fifteen, 505 and International 14s along with the much smaller Dinky and of course the Duckling which was designed by Uffa Fox.

The hot moulding process was an adaptation to post war boat building of the method originally developed by de Havillands in the 1930?s for “stressed skin” wooden aircraft production, using layers of agba sandwiched together with glue over a male mould and “cooked” in a large oven called an “autoclave” By using true mass-production techniques, Fairey Marine were able to turn out vast numbers of identical boats at an unprecedented quality and price.

As you can see Hughs boat is a Hamble native.

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