Saving Falanda
My name is Katie, but I prefer to be called Sade (pronounced Sayd). I am 13 years old and over the winter and spring, through the pandemic, I have been restoring a 1950s Morgan Giles-built West Channel One Design sloop.
I have spent my whole life on boats. In 2000, my parents bought an old fishing trawler, Ros Ailither (see panel, below) which they spent five years converting into a motor-sailer. They lifted the whole deck, fitted it out below, installed an engine and two masts and set off across the Atlantic. This is the boat I grew up on. I sailed back across the Atlantic with them at the age of 14 months, learning to walk on the way. We still live aboard today on the River Exe, Devon.
As a family, we have taken two individual years off on sailing trips. The first we spent cruising down to Morocco and around the Canary Islands, and the second sailing around Spain and Portugal (my brother Reuben and I joined a Spanish school for four months). Although I sometimes felt seasick, I loved the sailing and helped out a lot with hoisting sails and keeping watch.
About four years ago, after our first trip away, I decided that I wanted my own wooden sailing boat so I started saving up money by doing odd jobs for people locally in Topsham and selling painted shells and hair wraps on a stall at the Quay.
My dad and I would walk round boatyards, him
