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In 1936 Gordon Selfridge junior approached John Nicholson, having decided that private flying was becoming too fast (and also, perhaps, because his father had been spending too much money on the Dolly Sisters, a music hall act!). He wanted a yacht for ‘single handed’ racing (i.e. only one paid hand) ‘round the cans’ in the Solent, the result was a yacht named So What. Tar Baby has the same lines, but a different rig and interior and was originally commissioned by Mr and Mrs Addinsell, who required a yacht capable of being handled easily by a middle-aged couple, on their own, for week-end sailing in the Solent and cruising in the summer. She was launched on 6th June 1939 and is a very seakindly ship and still - despite her size and weight and the much more crowded conditions in the Solent now - well able to fulfil that original design requirement. She is built of teak throughout, (including the engine bearers, Mr Addinsell sent a curt note to John Nicholson to the effect that the arrangement was that she was to be built of teak throughout and that the engine bearers fitted seemed to be of mahogany!) The cost in 1939 of building entirely of teak was an additional £150, (bringing her cost up to £2000). After World War II she was re-commissioned with So What’s mast, which she still has, (her mast and So What’s hull having been destroyed in the bombing of Gosport). The doghouse, with its ingenious sliding floor was added in 1953 by John Nicholson, her designer, who owned her, after his father, from 1950 to 1960. He also returned her to her original name (from the Uncle Remus ‘Brer Rabbit’ story, - the only relevance of tar to the story being that it is sticky, not that it is black). She has also been called Sheba and, when owned by Charles Nicholson, Cinder, (he also had Flame and Spark at the same time).
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The present owners bought her in 1984, and after considerable work was done to refasten her (5000 new bronze screws were used), she has been regularly sailed in the Solent and West Country, usually by the owners and their daughter accompanied by their two dogs, with occasional trips across the Channel. Her permanent mooring is on the Beaulieu River. She is one of the best known “classics” of her size on the South Coast, having been chosen to represent her decade in the Yachting Monthly Birthday Rally in 1986 and has attended most of the classic rallies in the Solent, including Portsmouth International Festivals of the Sea 1998 and 2000 and 2005 and rallies at Dartmouth, Plymouth, Fowey and Falmouth. Articles about her have appeared in Yachting Monthly, Country Life and Classic Boat. She was also chosen by Adlard Coles as one of the Small Cruising Yachts in the second edition of his book of that name. John Nicholson clearly had a soft spot for her and refers to her as ‘a husky little 10 tonner’ in his autobiography ‘Great Years in Yachting’, written when he gave up sailing in 1960. She has been extensively cruised to the Netherlands
and France and raced by most of her owners, competing in many
Round the Island races and RORC races, as well as innumerable
‘fun’ and classic races in her present ownership.
In the late 1970s, with two others, she apparently represented
England against Holland in a race on the Isseljmeer which followed
the Harwich – Ostend race, as yet it has not been possible
to discover how she fared in that competition.
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