The sailor and marine artist who conceived Meander, built her in North Devon and, with Jean, made her a home and ocean-going life.
Robert G. “Bob” Grimson combined practical boatbuilding, offshore sailing and marine art. After Bob and Jean married in 1987, Meander was conceived not as a production leisure yacht but as their home, cruising vessel and Bob's painting studio. The name was explained in Bob's biographical material as “Me and Her”.
Bob designed and built the boat himself around Ilfracombe between 1990 and 1992. She was launched at Watermouth Harbour in 1992. Her hull form drew on the character of traditional north-eastern American working craft, while her rig developed into a distinctly traditional British gaff ketch.
Bob's 2003 Classic Boat account put the material cost of building Meander at about £23,000, including a new suit of sails.
The original accommodation was principally for two people, with occasional guests able to use the saloon settees. Bob described a double-berth cabin forward, hanging locker and storage, a fixed saloon table seating six, bookshelves, a solid-fuel stove, a U-shaped galley and a heads compartment with basin and Baby Blake WC.
Larch and mahogany featured in the interior, together with pitch pine recovered from Ilfracombe pier. Later photographs of the interior must be read with care because Chris Phillips substantially altered parts of the accommodation in 2009–10.
Meander's now-familiar sail plan evolved after launch. Bob's original mizzen was fully battened and Bermudan, supplemented by a yard topsail. During winter 1995 he converted the mizzen to gaff rig. A main topmast and jib-headed topsail were added later.
The resulting reddish-brown/tan sail plan became one of Meander's strongest visual signatures and was particularly remembered during her Bahamas years.
Meander crossed the Atlantic in 1993. Bob's biographical material records cruising as far south as Venezuela and as far north as Nova Scotia, with the Bahamas becoming an especially familiar cruising ground.
By 2003 Bob wrote that Meander had covered nearly 50,000 miles in ten years. Independent evidence later places the British-flagged gaff ketch at Rock Sound, Eleuthera, on 8 April 2008 and records an earlier encounter at Long Island.
Bob's own four-page article is one of the most important surviving sources for Meander. It records the design, accommodation, rig changes, construction choices, cruising mileage and practical experience of living aboard after a decade at sea.
The original article is now preserved in this archive as a downloadable PDF. Its words are credited to Bob Grimson and its photographs to Joe McCarthy; copyright remains with the respective rights holders.
Bob and Jean lived and cruised aboard for roughly eighteen years. In 2009 Meander passed into the Chris Phillips era, beginning with another Atlantic passage and followed by a decade centred increasingly on Scotland.
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