____________________ FROM PIGLET TO SEABIRD ____________________

This is the highly popular and successful 'Scamp' designed by New Zealander John Welsford. I have always loved this little boat except for one aspect - its rather porcine looks. The photo above is a rather flattering photograph of this little boat. From this angle she looks ok, in a pram dinghyish kind of way. But alas from other angles she looks, well, not to put too much of a snout on it - rather pig like.

Now don't get me wrong. I like pigs, they are good honest, intelligent animals and in saying so I feel it is a bit churlish to add that I like bacon and eggs with a couple of pieces of toast and a very hot cup of tea for breakfast from time to time - but good looking? pigs are not, really; unless of course you are an pig, with a pigs world view.

My brother agrees. Last week he sent away for a set of plans. If he builds a 'Scamp' he intends to call her 'Miss Piggy'. Fair enough I say, a more honestly descriptive name would be hard to imagine and far more honest than say 'Beautiful Swan', Cleopatra, or such like fantasies ..... and so as I contemplated my brothers possible build (Would I perhaps combine forces with him in this venture and build two together?) ............

............... and whilst flicking through on-line photos of various incarnations of 'Scamp' I came across these images below and in a split second the aesthetic ground fell away, Neptune's trumpet sounded across the boundless main and with a wind of certainty blowing a force 8 gale I watched a pig jump off a cliff top, sprout wings and fly with a plenitude of satisfaction into the maritime air scribing a great arc of seabird symmetry.

This is what I would call an 'Aesthetic fix' for 'Scamps' truncated appearance. It comes via the boat designing and building company Chesapeake Light Craft. It is a fix that can be purchased from the said company and affixed to the bow of any current 'Scamp' and in my opinion hugely improves the boats appearance. She transforms from Piglet to Seabird before you can say "Where did that awful flat bit go to". The more I look at the "After" version the more the "Before" version looks like a bit of vandalism to an excellent design.

Now a new build doesn't require an 'after market' fix. The new bow can easily be incorporated into a new build. If you are capable of building a 'Scamp' then you are capable of extending the bow a foot or so - such cosmetic surgery would not be rocket science.

I am aware that current 'Scamp' builders and owners may be inclined to throw smelly old sacks of rotten fish into my boats cockpit and shout "Judas Iscariot" across my bows but all I can say is that beauty is sometimes not in the eye of the beholder, nay it is an ever fixed mark in the aesthetic bones of the nautical cosmos and this "After" version of 'Scamp' is a fine example of said philosophy.

I would very much like to build myself one of these little beauties ..... and while I am doing so it would be an act of artistic conservation if current 'Scamp' owners purchased an 'after market' fix and made their boats presentable (no offense intended : > ) .......  even Cinderella got dressed up (glass slippers even) to go to the ball - and what a ball sailing 'Scamp' must be!