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| Punts racing off the Stour Sailing Club 2003 Regatta |
Ben Lucas is 22.
It's easy to assume that a young man of that age will have spent most
of his childhood indoors hunched in front of a screen blasting aliens
or engaged in virtual high-speed car chases. It wasn't like that for
Ben. He was born in Harwich, although the family soon moved to
Bradfield, where he grew up, as well as in Manningtreee – all
beside the beautiful River Stour. Ben is part of the Lucas family who
have been winning the unique sailing punt races at Manningtree
regatta for the last hundred years. Sailing punts had been in the
area for centuries before that. They have big sprit sails but no
rudder or centreboard and were originally used for punt-gunning and eel-fishing
in the shallow waters of the Stour.
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Ben working on one of the floors
for the Trinity House tender |
Ben did not take
up punt-sailing but spent many hours of his childhood standing in the
river, usually on Bradfield beach, sometimes up to mischief with his
friends, sometimes looking out for evidence of young bass at low
water. “As soon as the gulls began to dive, you'd rush over there
and chuck in your line. You'd maybe get three or four and then the
bass would move and the gulls would follow and you'd follow them.”
His father had a
16' dory, and a friend had a caravan and a barbecue, so every day
could be spent on the beach in the school holidays. He was so deeply
suntanned he looked like Mowgli, he said. He remembers an especially
good birthday present of a knife with a serrated edge and a gadget to
undo shackles. As Ben grew up he helped his father with the
game-keeping on the local estate. He learned to shoot and was invited
on friends and family pheasant shooting days as well as wild-fowling
and clay-pigeon shooting. There was a moment of disruption in this
happy rural childhood when his parents split up but Ben was
determined to stay local to Manningtree. Even when home was directly
opposite the Harwich School he made the trip to Manningtree every day
to continue attending school there.
Ben liked school.
He wasn't especially academic but was happy in the environment and
knew he would miss it when he left. He did labouring jobs in the
summer and got his 5 GCSEs at A* - C. At 16 he moved to attend Otley
College to do what he had thought was a game-keeping course but
turned out to be more agriculture and conservation. He made good
friends during his year at Otley, then moved to Suffolk New College
to study motor cycle mechanics. Ever since he'd been a child Ben had
loved taking things to pieces to see how they worked. Now he was
learning to put them back together again. A parking job (he's good at
backing trailers) at Suffolk Yacht Harbour at Levington led Ben to
realise that outboard motors were not so very different from
motorcycle engines laid on their sides so he began working in a marine workshop there.
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| A section of planking completed by Ben |
Ben was 18-19.
This was his first adult job. The work was busy and varied. It could
be dirty, when replacing wheel-bearings in a seized up trailer for
instance. Ben's very tall (it's a family characteristic) and, while
that was a help in making it possible for him to do quite a number of
heavy jobs unaided, it could be quite a squash getting into cuddies
and cramped engine rooms. Ben recalled the delight of being able to
get out on the water and test an engine in whatever power-boat he'd
just finished servicing.
Ben, through no
fault of his own, left this first job in quite difficult
circumstances and had very little to show for a year's hard work –
except invaluable experience. A bleak period followed. Ben's father
had moved to Portsmouth so he worked a while there, subcontracting.
That was time-limited and anyway Ben's life still centred on the
Manningtree area, so he came home and existed as best he could on
casual work and the dole. He remains angry about the number of
employers who don't even bother to acknowledge a CV or a job
application when someone is struggling and doing their utmost to find
work.
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Discussing a problem with
Harker's Yard shipwright, Mick |
The Job Centre
put him in contact with the Prince's Trust who, at that time were
running regular taster courses in partnership with Pioneer. “Loads
of us came for the trial sessions,” Ben recalls, “But when we
were told we had to stay two nights on the boat, most of them dropped
like flies.” Ben worked for about six weeks in the yard and working
on joinery. He had never done any carpentry before and particularly
remembers the impression made on him by Jim, Pioneer's skipper, with
his extreme carefulness and attention to detail. That's a quality Ben
recognises in himself and it was a very good moment when Felicity
called him into the office and said “We'd like you to stay.”
Now Ben is
nearing the end of his time as an apprentice at Harker's Yard. He
still sees himself as likely to be working in something like
mechanics or agriculture or anything connected with his beloved sport
of shooting but he has learning some important things that he knows
will help in the future, whatever he does. He has discovered that he
likes learning – of all the apprentices he is the first to compile
his NVQ folder and he's proud of that. He knows he likes working with
other people, being part of a project, and earning respect. He
doesn't like blame culture; he likes finding a problem and suggesting
a way to fix it. He likes the sense of community at Harker's Yard
“There are no strangers here.” While he's ready to “flee the
nest” he knows he'll miss Pioneer – and he hopes that the others
will miss him too. “I tell them, they'll never find anything once
I'm gone. I'm organised. I know where things are kept.”
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Transferable skills - Ben has been making a new stock for a family heirloom shotgun.
Here he explains different sizes. |
Hi my name is Frazer and I've been working
as an apprentice at the Pioneer Sailing Trust for just over three years now.
Before the pandemic I had been working alongside other apprentices in the
construction of a new 24ft rowing gig.
During the half term of the New Year, Gemma
and I had the pleasure to go and see what goes on behind the scenes and take
part at
the Pioneer Sailing Trust. During the last week of October Gemma and I had
an immense experience aboard the Pioneer herself. 
The next day on Thursday, we started to
sand down some other oars and clean them in white spirit. After we did that a few times we took them
into another room to start varnishing
them (this was a Zen moment). 
