Boats that are both modest in size and classic in style can look gorgeous. They can also sail beautifully, weather storms, cross oceans and give their owners years of pleasure wherever in the world they happen to be.

Just look at what people have done with the Folkboat, Vertue and Contessa 26, for example.

You don’t have to be young or adventurous to appreciate them, however: not everyone is a Tania Aebi, Sebastian Smith, Blondie Hasler, Mike Richey, Richard Clifford or Humphrey Barton.

Besides, not all of us have the urge to complete a single-handed circumnavigation, live aboard in the Med with our family, race around Britain or face hurricanes and knockdowns during a crossing of the north Atlantic.

For most cruising folk, time on the water is about enjoying sailing closer to home.

And if you happen to favour boats of classic appearance and modest size, the likes of the Folkboat, Contessa and Vertue might well be the perfect choice.

Perhaps their principal drawback – common to Folkboat-inspired designs and to slim-hulled classic yachts of an earlier era – is that they’re simply too small down below for many of today’s cruising sailors.

As Mike Hall, who owned an Endurance 40 for nearly 30 years, points out, ‘when you’re older and downsizing, possibly with a bad back, you really want standing headroom – and that’s not easy to find on an appreciably smaller yacht that looks good and still has most of the attributes that a proper yacht should have.’

Mike and his wife Clare were facing a dilemma familiar to owners who have decided the time has come to move to something smaller.

Their Endurance, Tristan da Cunha, served them well. Mike fitted her out himself in 1984/5 from the ferro-cement hull and deck, subsequently covering many miles from his base in the Bristol Channel.

Tristan’s log shows more than one hop across Biscay to northern Spain, together with extensive cruises around northern Europe.

I got to know her too, joining Mike and Clare on a number of filming missions: Tristan frequently doubled as a mobile base for the shooting of their broadcast-quality nautical films.

While the filming life continued, the time came to review the sailing. Tristan was too big, too heavy to handle and too labour-intensive to maintain.

The question was what to buy next.

When you have become accustomed to a 40ft (12m) concrete cruising yacht with a motion that makes Lundy Island feel lively; a boat you have built, loved, cherished, modified and maintained for more than 30 years and that has carried you safely across thousands of miles of sea, where do you go from there?

The choice is undoubtedly harder if, like Mike, you’re unashamedly an old-school sailor.

You don’t want slab sides, light displacement and acres of plastic.

At the same time, you want a good amount of space within an overall length of no more than about 26ft (8m).

Your boat needs to be something you can be proud to own and on which you can put your own stamp. Comfort, quality and character are paramount.

With several decades of sailing experience behind him, Mike had a few ideas.

For example, in the 1960s he had owned a Trident 24 and, having a lot of respect for Alan Hill’s designs, he thought he could do a lot worse than have another look at one.

‘It’s a very pretty, traditional-looking boat,’ he recalled, ‘but when we went below and sat down in the saloon we discovered there was no headroom under the side decks. I had no memory of this at all. It had seemed quite comfy when I had one.’

Even the heavier, fuller-bodied Vertue, which Mike regards as one of his all-time favourites, struck him as “very cramped, dark down below and somehow old fashioned’.

Enter the Frances 26

Finding a boat of classic appearance that offered an acceptable degree of comfort within a suitable length was proving difficult.

That was until Chuck Paine’s sweet-lined double-ender, the Frances 26, entered the equation and rose unchallenged to the top of the list.

Back in the 1970s, the then editor of Yachting World, Bernard Hayman, drew her to the attention of the British sailing public.

Mike took note. More recently he saw one out of the water on the East Coast and was struck by her hull lines.

So, when a Frances 26 came up for sale in Bangor, he had to have a look.

He went, he saw, he bought – and, in the autumn of 2012, Grayling moved to her new home near Bristol.

On arrival, she looked nothing like she does now. The external woodwork – all in teak – had been coated in a dark grey paint.

She was sound and clearly had potential, but needed an awful lot of work to make her a worthy successor to Tristan.

The grey was stripped off and the gleaming varnish-work restored.

Tristan’s green livery was replicated on Grayling.

Both above decks and below she has been turned into what must be one of the smartest Frances 26s afloat.

As a design, she’s a head-turner; no doubt about that.

The builders in the UK – Victoria Marine and their later incarnations – were known for building strong boats, fitting out the mouldings from
Northshore, so structural issues are unlikely.

Indeed, Mike describes her as ‘hugely well built’, pointing out features such as the way the bulkheads are properly laminated into the hull and the use of hardwoods even in out-of-the-way places down below.

‘I’ve been shocked when looking under the bunks of some boats that have a reputation for quality, and finding lots of softwood down there,’ he says. ‘Their builders take care over the bits you’re meant to see.’

We will take a closer look below decks on the Frances 26 a little later. First, how about the sailing?

To find out whether her manners match her appearance, I visited Grayling.

Every test you read describes the performance and handling qualities differently.

Most are broadly complimentary, including those that refer to the utterly implausible like upwind speeds of 6.5 knots.

When I put this to the designer, he replied, ‘I can’t imagine a Frances 26 making more than 6 knots, and that would be well off the wind hanging on for dear life.’

Frances 26: Measure for measure

The word I would use to sum up the handling of the Frances 26, under both power and sail, is ‘measured’.

She does things gently. Reversing out of a berth, she responds best if her bow is given a nudge in the right direction.

She can be encouraged to go where you want within limits, given enough space and no hindrances like an awkward wind.

If you’re used to a long-keeled 40ft heavyweight, she probably feels light and manoeuvrable.

In addition to the full-length keel, she has a small engine by today’s standards (various Yanmars and Volvos were fitted, Grayling having the 10hp Yanmar 1GM).

That’s not a lot of horses for a boat displacing nearly 7,000lb (over 3.1 tons, or 3,000kg if you think in metric).

As with many boats from this era, plenty of examples have been re-engined and you will find some with 15hp or more beneath the companionway.

Another factor to consider on a double-ender with a transom-hung rudder is that the tiller’s arc is more restricted than on boats with a transom stern.

Under power, she’s definitely a little ship.

Once we had motored from her berth around to the lock, I was reminded that this was the Bristol Channel.

Locking in or out at low tide, you find yourself staring up at a rectangle of sky framed by towering lock-sides.

There’s much whooshing of water – as they call it in these parts, or liquid mud to the rest of us – and then lots of froth appears.

It’s all in a day’s sail for Bristol Channel veterans like Mike and Clare, who reckon that most South Coast yachties don’t realise how easy they have it.

Even so, they would never dream of swapping. And, lest I risk conveying the wrong impression, it must be said the lock-keeping at Portishead is hard to fault.

Once clear of the lock on our first outing we had a reasonable breeze while I was taking the photos.

It disappeared the moment I hopped aboard Grayling, so the only answer was another trip to the coast of chocolate-coloured water, imposing locks and ferocious tides.

Thankfully this time the weather gods were more obliging.

It was all still relatively gentle, with 12-14 knots of breeze from the south-west, but enough for a half-decent sail.

Various rigs are seen on the Frances 26. The original was a fractional configuration with a small headsail, often a boomed self-tacker.

Then there was a Bermudan cutter sporting a short bowsprit, and a gaff cutter too, though you see many more of the former than of the latter.

In the middle is the straightforward masthead sloop as on Grayling.

The sails, while presentable by the standards of a typical cruising yacht, were far from new and the mainsail in particular needed some pulling into shape.

Once we had done what we could with it, we reached offshore, across the strong east-going tide, to create searoom for a decent beat.

Given the strength of the tide, a fouled-up log impeller and the lack of a sacrificial toothbrush, we gauged our speed from a cross-tide reading on the GPS.

Around 5.3 knots in these conditions seemed perfectly respectable.

Like most boats on a reach in any breeze, the Frances 26 developed a meaningful tug on the tiller at times.

Easing the mainsail made it manageable.

The effects of the weather helm were amplified by the unbalanced rudder, which Chuck Paine changed in favour of a fully- balanced alternative when he drew Frances II, a 37-year update of the original design, in 2011.

Hardening up on the wind, we estimated our speed at around 4.5 knots in a sea that was moderately flat with just a few popply patches to test the boat’s motion.

I had wondered whether she might exhibit some hobby-horsing tendency, but none was apparent.

More noticeable was her readiness to heel to 15 or 20° before stiffening up.

At that stage, even provoking her by bearing away with the sheets pinned in resulted in nothing more than the occasional dipping of the toerail.

In general, once the Frances 26 had dug her shoulder in and got into gear, she tramped along very happily.

She had an easy motion and showed little inclination to be brought up short by the waves, her high bow throwing the water aside to good effect.

As the designer put it more poetically, ’her sleek lines cut through resistance like a dreadnought. Point Frances toward a destination and she
was unstoppable.’

Paine was referring to his own boat because, in 1974, he designed her for himself, ‘to be capable of yearly cruises to and among the Caribbean islands, small enough to fit my limited budget, but large enough to survive a gale at sea’.

In this case, ’to… the Caribbean’ meant from Maine, though there are reports of Atlantic crossings, and a boat called La Luz – an original-style flush-decked Frances built in Maine by Morris Yachts – has recently sailed from Georgia to New Zealand.

Crossing oceans is not what she was designed for, however, and Paine admits that she lacks the draught to point well or carry her sail in a blow (it’s just 3ft 10in/1.17m).

That’s why, with Frances II, he made the keel both shorter and 5in (13cm) deeper as well as giving her slightly greater overall length and a taller rig.

Even so, the original Frances doesn’t do too badly: La Luz’s owner has faced some heavy windward work and been impressed by the way she handles.

Interesting though it is to see how a designer would change one of his own boats with four decades’ more experience to draw upon, you won’t find a Frances II. If you like the Frances, the original is what you’ll get – typically flush-decked in the USA, and with a short coachroof in the UK – unless you buy the plans and build a new one.

And the originals, like Grayling, are thoroughly likeable little boats.

She won’t point particularly high, around 100° between tacks being the best we could manage by the compass without losing speed and increasing leeway, but she’s no slouch.

She’s a comfortable boat to sail, too, with a helm that, upwind, is agreeably light. I put her through the ‘circuits and bumps’ routine (heaving to, spinning with the sheets pinned in, sailing under just the mainsail, and so on) and she performed most of them with no complaints.

One aspect that I would have to get used to is the helming position. It’s very much a sit-in cockpit – ideal for two, manageable with three – edged by vertical coamings in teak.

I found that the only way to see the telltales on the luff of the headsail was to use a length of line as a tiller extension and perch right on the forward end of the windward coaming.

It’s not desperately comfortable. You would probably get used to sitting in and sailing blind.

As you would expect, tacking is a deliberate process, largely because it takes a while for the clew of the genoa to negotiate the forward lowers.

Down below

In the early days, Victoria Yachts in the UK offered the Frances with a choice of layouts, mostly open-plan to make the best use of space.

The version that became the norm has a quarter berth to port and a separate heads compartment to starboard, forward of which is a small hanging locker.

Along the port side are the galley and a hinge-down chart table.

The short coachroof, with two ports in its forward end, gives nigh on 6ft (1.83m) of headroom.

Fit-out is bright and simple, with white-painted and laminate-faced plywood, varnished trim and, thankfully, no interior mouldings.

There’s no headlining either, making for easy access to the fastenings for the deck fittings.

Such brightness and simplicity could result in a rather spartan feel, but Mike and Clare have made Grayling’s interior particularly warm and welcoming.

Mike has crafted extra teak trim that matches the original so well that it’s hard to tell what’s new and what was there before.

He has also added photographs and assorted nautical artefacts from Tristan that make the interior something of a maritime history lesson if you study carefully.

Soft furnishings have been given careful thought too. For example, the duvets are rolled up along the hull sides on the forward berth so they double as cushions.

Modern touches added by Mike include LED bulbs and a six-outlet ring-main with brass fittings.

In terms of ergonomics, the compact heads is more useable than you might imagine from the outside.

Berths are long enough if you can stand up. The front of the engine can be reached with the companionway steps removed and it’s possible – as Mike has found – to remove sludge in the fuel tank through the access panel in the quarter berth.

Verdict on the Frances 26

In the words of Chuck Paine, the original Frances 26 is an imperfect, classic design. She’s comparable in many ways to an MG TD.

‘They spewed oil and weren’t very fast by today’s standards, but they were so cute and stylish that owners have enjoyed every minute of their use for decades’.

Perhaps the designer is being a little harsh on his first creation.

The Frances 26 was never conceived as an ocean greyhound. Nonetheless, she goes pretty well for a heavyish, shoal-draught 26-footer with a long keel.

She looks lovely, and really is one of few boats in this size range that combines appealing lines and an easy motion with respectable performance, standing headroom and a remarkable amount of space below decks.

With Grayling, her owners have come as close as is possible to imbuing a 26-footer with the elegance, character and feel of a 40ft offshore cruising yacht.

It’s a rare 26-footer that allows anyone to do that.