17
for Sale
“Sweet Promise”
Built: 1931
16 tonnes
Length: 36ft (44ft w bowsprit)
Beam: 13ft
Gaff ketch with 4 berths
3.8lt 56hp rebuilt BMC Diesel
Engine (built 1962) 1 gallon per
hour, 10,000 miles since rebuld,
ultra reliable.
New Prop shaft
Bow Thruster
Interested parties should, in
the first instance contact:
Traditional Boat Supplies
31 Ravensmere
Beccles
Suffolk
NR34 9DX
Tel / Fax: 01502 712311
Email: [email protected]
Built 1931 16 ton Scottish Fifie “SWEET PROMISE LH 60 current owner for
Owner for some 20 years, spent a complete fortune in first of all maintaining and
a 3 1/2 year rebuild from Dec 06 to 2010 when she was relaunched at a cost of
£165 K A complete photo copy has been kept of all the work carried out.
For comprehensive information about this wonderful historic boat please visit;
http://www.tradboats.com/sweetpromise.htm
Built Weatherheads of Cockenzie (near Edinburgh) launched March 1931 as a standard Fifie but not rigged
for sail. She had a 26hp Kelvin which was changed in 1936 for a 38 hp Kelvin. Fished out of Port Seton and
never for 30 some years out of sight of land in the Firth of Forth. Helped rescue German airman shot down
at the start of World War 2. After the war she worked out of the Clyde and then Stonehaven. Was sold to Lt
Cdr “Buster” Crabb in the early 1950s. There is then a gap in the history. In the 1970’s she was impounded for
smuggling Swiss watches by Dover Customs and later bought by one of the Custom officers who kept her at
Folkestone. Then sold to two students who were at Newcastle University who used her as a house, moored
on the Tyne. She was totally neglected by them. When the current owner bought her he had never had a
double ender but those old Scots lads knew how to build a boat that when the weather got bad you did not run
for harbour but hove to. The Fifie is a highly sea worthy and stable design, drawn for handling the big seas of
the North Sea and North Atlantic. The owner, a gentleman of some 50 years experience of the sea says that
she “is the most wonderful sea boat I have ever had. Sweet Promise is one hell of a boat. Turns heads where
ever I go, she is wonderful in a seaway, force 4/5 no reefing in fact I have only once reefed this boat in all my
years and that was in Bay of Biscay in 40 knots of wind. On rebuild the surveyor clearly states that she was
done “proper” “. The current owner is also owner of Traditional Boat Supplies the “Sweet Promise” has never
wanted for anything since he became her owner and custodian.