The story has been told so many times, but since it happened over 20  years ago, it is perhaps worth telling again. It was on all the television channels and centre spread in the then “Sunday Times colour supplement”. The best version appeared in the American magazine “Wooden Boat” (issue no.72 of October 1986) where it was voted by its readers their most popular article ever.

Dale and Aruna were guided to Westley farm by the moon (so they said). The farm has always been a magnet for larger than life characters. They were perhaps the largest in terms of ego, talent and charisma.

“We want to go to Oregon to buy quarter horses for stunt riding” they told us. We cannot afford the air fare and need to build a boat to cross the Atlantic. Their model sat on our kitchen table and they explained how they needed a plentiful supply of ash trees to build the projected 36 foot catamaran.

The next day a level site was chosen, close by four stout ash trees, where they planned to erect a tree house. In a week the house was complete. A ladder led up through a hole in a level platform. A well insulated canvas bender with a generous window at one end made a cosy home for two. The home-made wood burning stove ensured that warmth would not be a problem.

Their extra ordinary talent for DIY, meant that everything was home made. Clothes started with a sheep or the hide of a cow. Their style of clothing was often borrowed from Eskimo dress. One could not help being fascinated by everything they did. Word quickly spread around the locality of these two extraordinary individuals and their extraordinary lifestyle. People began to congregate and gaup to such a degree that they needed to erect an electric fence to keep the public at a distance.

To build a boat they first needed a warehouse. There was a factory in Newent where they made long wooden ladders. Occasionally the ladder poles had an unwanted twist so they had to be disposed of, as rejects. Two reject ladder poles lashed together at the ends made one of the twenty odd 50 ft spars which when bent and up-lifted made a secure structure over which builders polythene could be stretched. Its aerodynamic shape made it proof against even the most violent of winter gales.

They had never made a boat before and the model had to be tested on the South Cerney lakes. The structure was to be based on the Irish curragh, canvas stretched over a wooden frame. The frame was to have an elm keel and cleft ash ribs. We all went to the Forest of Dean to learn from the old boys who made cleft chestnut paling. We learned how to construct a cleaving brake and how to use a frow and how to tease the split in green wood up or down to make the paling uniform in thickness.

The ash trees below their campsite were selected, felled and hauled up the bank. They were then cut into eight foot lengths and split radially into eight sections (using their new cleaving brake). Each rib so made was trimmed with a drawknife to a section roughly one inch by four. Two oil drums were then welded together to make a steamer. The barrels were propped, on end, over a bonfire. When the water was boiling the ribs were dropped into it for an hour, removed when they were sufficiently pliable and forced into a crude jig to give them an appropriate curved shape. The massive keel was of elm, some 3 inches by 6 required a block and tackle to bend into the correct curve for the prow.

Slowly, slowly the extraordinary craft began to take shape under the “Turtle”, the name they gave to their warehouse / hangar. The Irish curragh has canvas stretched over it. That would be too flimsy for a large catamaran. They began experimenting using layers of canvas, tar and brown paper. They made a 2ft x 3ft experimental panel and I dragged it round the farm behind the tractor loaded with stone. They discovered that adding asbestos fibre to the tar made a huge difference to the strength. The brass fittings and embellishments were, of course, cast in their own mini forge. What they were making had to be a combination of function and beauty. The boat’s most innovative feature was perhaps the masts and sail. The mast was I think octagonal or perhaps 12 sided, made up of triangular section spruce, glued together so that the centre was hollow to allow the control ropes to pass through the middle. The sails were double sided with a true aerofoil section like an airplane wing. The difference was that the profile changed as the sail swung from one side of the boat to the other.

They kept a wooden chest full of diaries, notes and scientific calculations all beautifully illustrated. They filmed every detail of every stage of progress. They had created an extraordinary enclave of energy and concentration, which they shared with their gods of beauty and creativity. The outside world had meaning only in terms of what it could offer to their project. My first wife and I were invited to dine in their treehouse. This was of course a special honour. When we got there we were sensitive enough to realise something was amiss. Yes, there was a problem. I had not shaved that day and had offended their standard of beauty and perfection. It was soon sorted when they offered me their razor. Now you expect to be thrown out of a gentleman’s London club if you turn up in jeans, but who else has ever been thrown out of a tree house for not shaving?

Dale and Aruna were not their birth names. They had a belief that your personality was influenced by your name. Dale decided to become Wayland Combewright. The name of my first wife (now Popsy Lamb) caused them great distress. How could anyone possibly function with a name like “Popsy”? If they did not like your name they would invent a new one for you. I became “Popcorn”, more suitable, I thought, for an arable rather than livestock farmer.

Apart from the two thousand pounds of savings they brought with them every item they needed was begged or scrounged from their growing band of adoring fans. They acquired, for free an inboard engine, canvas for their sails, numerous barrels of tar. If they were short of cash they would have an open day for the press or the public and made sure everyone paid. They produced a special brochure about their project and sold it for a pound. They put on film shows of the project.

Their whole life was built round the project. Perhaps genius demands self absorbtion. I began to resent this high energy parasitic enclave in which I and all those who came into contact with them, were valued only to the degree in which we could further their goals. Originally I had offered them a six months stay. No contribution was asked from them. After a year I decided to ask Dale to do half a day’s work on the farm per week in lieu of rent. At the end of a month I challenged him as to why he had only managed one afternoon’s work. “My days are worth four of anyone else's” came the reply.

After 18 months the strain in our relationship was relieved by their decision to launch their boat on the river Severn. We were away that Sunday and were unable to help carry the hulls 400 yards from the turtle to the low loader parked in our yard. Help was of course on hand with forty firemen from the Nailsworth brigade. The photograph shows them passing Hornstone and was the one used in the Sunday Times article.

Thus ended a period of my life with the mixed emotion of having been a facilitator to genius and the realization that genius comes at a price.

The story I have told is just a snapshot of an era. There is so much more to tell. Of the past they told us little. Were their birth names really  “Jackie and Harry”?  They first lived together in a squat in Finchley station, north London. They developed a talent for cooking exotic foods and hawking it round London on a barrow. Next came the horse and cart. Then stunt riding leading to the need to seek out better horses.

Their dreams ran to building a bigger boat in America to bring the horses back to Europe. Perhaps they would buy an island in the Irish river Shannon where they would set up a training school for stunt riding and sail round the world earning a living from stunt performances.

But what actually happened? The first report of their successful transatlantic crossing came about thus: My aunt Pam on one of her regular visits to the farm had been to one of Dale’s open days. A year later while on holiday on the Caribbean island of St Vincent she was amazed on looking out of her hotel window overlooking the harbour to see the same boat that she had last seen at Westley Farm. She went down and introduced herself and gleaned a few tit-bits about their lives. They now had a small child.

From St Vincent they made their way through the Panama canal to Costa Rica and then up to Mexico. Two years ago Aruna unexpectedly knocked on our front door and told us more. They were living in Mexico and had set up a factory printing designs, bought from the local native Indians, on to T-shirts and selling them to the tourists. Taulua, for that was the boat’s name had been hauled on to the beach where she sat for two years before being torched by local vandals. All we have left is memories.

Copyright © 2001, Westley Farm