Looe Lugger Regatta 2009

The Looe Cornish Lugger Regatta week in 2009 was a great success and the organisers would like to thank everyone who participated or turned up to watch. We hope you'll come back next time.

The dates for the next Lugger Festival are to be decided. We will post them on this website asap.

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Cornish Luggers

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Beer Luggers

Hoping to swell the Class B numbers will be a dozen or more of the East Devon Luggers from Beer, including the Brenda Jane (owned by Justin Adkin), Butterfly (R Webber), Mayflower (Rodney Pool, Seaton), Nuddy, Scrumpy (Greg Lockyer), Sea Witch (Oliver Bagwell), Shadow (Mike Saunders, Axmouth) and White Spirit (Bernie Webber, Colyton). 

George Dart has arranged for up to a fleet of these trailable 20-footers to visit the regatta. 

No longer fishing – they were employed in drift-netting, long-lining and crabbing. 

The traditional clinker-built, chunky, beach boats now amuse themselves with weekend races. 

Always popular and welcome visitors to the regatta, the Beer contingent is likely to number around 40 people for the weekend. 

George. himself, will be skippering a 22-ft Tosher named after her builder, Percy Mitchell, and, no doubt, will be as keen as ever to lead his rivals over the finishing line. 

Sam Bouquet of Exeter is among other Devonians hoping to bring their Cornish-built 20-ft Toshers to the regatta.

In addition, Robbie Driver, of the Puffin, has a new Beer Lugger and students on the Lyme Regis International School of Boatbuilding have launched Eleanor in 2003, based on a 100-year-old Beer Lugger design.

Said school director Tim Gedge: ‘The last Beer Lugger in Lyme is believed to have broken up in the 1940s.’

MARET

R 519

Maret, a 41-ft trawler owned by Lionel Bowdler and now operated by his son, Brian Bowdler and Des Tucker, is once again the Regatta Committee boat.

Originally built in Germany in 1963, she formerly worked out of Pelworm until coming to England in the mid-1970s.

Barry Gowing fished her out of Looe until he sold her on to the Bowdlers in the late 1970s.