Tarmin - Mother of the Trident

Eric White's YW 5-tonner Tarmin was built at William King's yard at Burnham-on Crouch in 1948 alongside another famous boat: Eric Hiscock's Wanderer III which features in Hiscock's classic book, Cruising Under Sail.

In order to finance the mouldings for the Trident, Eric White eventually had to sell Tarmin. She was bought by Hal Kitchener, a nephew of Lord Kitchener whose famous moustachioed face adorned the Great War "Your Country Needs You" posters. Hal then farmed Jersey cows in Mallorca and Eric delivered the boat there himself. He was still working as a lorry driver so he sailed down the Canal du Midi in his fortnight's holiday, leaving it on the designated mooring and flying home again without ever meeting the purchaser.

Tarmin was later sold again for $3,000 to a young American, John Sowden. He found her in a sorry state on the beach in Palma in 1966 and bought her to mess around in. But he ended up sailing her round the world three times and into the record books.

Sowden, who was the first to sail three times round the world alone in the same vessel, wrote: "I had no intention of sailing Tarmin around the world when I bought her. She was very rundown and I purchased her with the view only of fixing her up as a winter project and then using her as a day-sailer the following summer in Mallorca."

But after a short shakedown cruise to Gibraltar, he just kept going. He ended up circumnavigating three times between 1966 and 1986. All of which says something about Robert Clark's design - and Eric White's eye for a seaworthy boat.

From the Guinness Book of Records: Marine Circumnavigation Records

Alone on the Sea - an account of John Sowden's
circumnavigations, compiled from his logs by his sister
Joan Sowden Deily.

Eric White - builder of the Trident 24, former owner of Tarmin.

Photographs © Joan Sowden Deily