If you happen to be sailing across Start Bay during the summer, you might well come across a particularly distinctive little gaffer – the Oysterman 16.

Like many of the beautifully-kept and keenly-sailed traditional boats that frequent these parts, she’s a real head-turner.

In a gentle breeze, there’s a good chance you will see her flying all her upwind sails including the topsail, presenting an impressive spread of canvas that towers over her black-painted hull and the long, white-tipped bowsprit with its elegant downward curve.

If you’re lucky enough to see this Oysterman 16 with a following wind in light airs you might count up to seven sails in total: mainsail, jib, staysail, topsail, two asymmetric spinnakers – one either side – and perhaps even a water-sail below the boom.

Whatever sort of boat tickles your fancy, you can’t help but stop and stare when Marie Louise enters your field of vision.

But what will really throw you is the size of the Oysterman 16.

From a distance, you might think she’s a 25- or 30-footer. Then, drawing closer and if you’re at the right angle, you’ll see that there’s no cabin: she’s three quarter-decked.

You will also see the head and upper body of a helmsman and crew – unless they’re racing energetically and sitting on the gunwale – and realise that what you thought was a medium-size boat a little way off is, in fact, a very small boat not very far away at all.

Closer study will reveal that the Oysterman 16 is absolutely tiny.

Despite her perfect proportions, 6ft (1.8m) bowsprit, lofty rig, acres of sail and the grace, poise and self-confidence that’s usually the preserve of a well-bred 40-footer, Marie Louise is just 16ft (4.87m) long on deck.

Marie Louise is the first of the Oysterman 16 class, designed by Paul Gartside in Falmouth in 1978.

Built by Paul from three layers of 3mm mahogany veneer laid over frames, she was the plug for the mould from which a total of 24 Oystermen were subsequently built by various yards in Cornwall up until 1992 when the then-builder, Bryan Gibson of Mayfly Classic Boats, modified her to create the Oystercatcher.

Oystermen come in both three quarter-decked and cabin versions and are easily distinguished from the later Oystercatcher with her reduced rig, shorter bowsprit and lighter ballast.

The Oysterman 16 is a true traditional-style gaffer in miniature.

Weighing 13⁄4 tons (1,778kg), of which 1 ton (1,016kg) is ballast, she has a full-length keel and, equipped with all the strings and fittings even the keenest gaffer enthusiast could wish for, she provides endless scope for those who enjoy experimenting, improving and making things.

With a traditionally-built wooden boat, it also helps if you enjoy the maintenance.

The owner of Marie Louise, Mike Lucus does. ‘I love it. I can’t wait to bring the boat home and get started at the end of the season. I have six months of getting her straight, then I launch in May.’

As a result of Mike’s unstinting devotion, Marie Louise is undoubtedly one of the most impeccably-maintained gaffers you’re likely to see, though he has now got her to a state in which routine maintenance is enough to keep her in tip-top condition: the topsides are painted every three or four years and the spars treated with three coats of Epifanes varnish. The rest of the varnish-work gets two coats.

When he bought her in 1981, she wasn’t quite the picture she is now.

Mike had moved to Falmouth to buy a small business that ‘swallowed up’ the 10m (33ft) Gladiateur he owned at the time.

The little gaffer had been sitting in a field since the death of the owner to whom Paul Gartside had sold her.

Mike was looking for something small and inexpensive and liked the look of her.

“She had gone off a lot: the engine had seized and the mast had begun to go black, but she looked good to me and I’ve been working on her ever since,” he said.

During his time in Poole with Sadlers, Mike sailed Marie Louise and got her back into shape but had little time to explore her full sailing potential.

It was only following his move back west that he really started “tweaking and experimenting to see what works and what doesn’t.”

“There are some hot gaffers down here, and when I started racing against them I found we were going too slowly,’ he said. ‘We’d go round a mark and the top three boats would be pointing 15° higher, so something had to be done.”

Being experienced in performance boats – he has owned four National 12s, two J/24s and two Formula 1s as well as a Contessa 26 and 32, a Centurion and a Gladiateur – Mike wasn’t prepared to sit back and watch other gaffers disappearing over the horizon, so he embarked upon a mission that has been continuing ever since: to get Marie Louise sailing as well as possible.

And although he does race keenly, Mike maintains that his principal motive is simply to get the best out of the boat, to sail her to best advantage and not to waste power or energy.

Few stones have been left unturned in his quest. The biggest ‘stone’ was the concrete ballast, which was reacting with the glues in the hull, so he removed it and turned the boat over to dry her out and epoxy the bottom.

Then, in conjunction with yacht designer Ed Burnett, he replaced it with lead. Because of the lead’s lower centre of gravity, he was able to reduce the weight by about 300lb (136kg) and to concentrate it in the middle of the boat.

He also moved the weight slightly forward to lift the stern by a couple of inches.

Other projects involved replacing the mast, originally in 31⁄2in (9cm) diameter Douglas fir of a section that had been known to break on Oystermen.

When the inevitable happened, Mike commissioned a 41⁄4in (11cm)-diameter replacement hollow spar from Noble Masts in Bristol, made from Columbian pine.

To increase the mainsail’s area he later made a longer gaff himself, under the guidance of local shipwright Julian Burn of Sail and Oar in Totnes.

This was also in Columbian pine and hollowed out.

“It took ages, because Julian was a perfectionist and we spent the first hour sharpening tools every day.”

The bowsprit is the original but Mike cut it down the middle, hollowed it and put it back with 13cm (5in) of downward bend.

He explains that all Falmouth gaffers have bowsprits shaped like this: they increase the length of the jib’s luff and give a better angle for the purchase on the bobstay for greater luff tension. The downward curve looks good, too.

A new boom, made in the same way as the mast, was another project but in some ways the hardest spar to get right was the topsail’s yard.

“I steadily whittled away at it because the topsail has to be flat for windward work,” explained Mike. “I have a flexible yard and a topsail with some luff round, so as the breeze increases the yard bends to flatten the sail meaning it can be carried for longer. It has taken me about five years to get right – the topsail is a complicated piece of kit!”

Surprisingly perhaps on a boat of this nature, Mike maintains that rig tension and spar stiffness (except in the topsail yard) are vital.

He has no reservations about using modern equipment where it makes sense and doesn’t look out of place, hence the Spinlock PX clutches for jib and staysail sheets and the running backstays. Standing rigging is Dyneema, as are the jib and peak halyards.

Mike makes his own sheaves and fairleads on the boom, as well as replacement dead-eyes using the dense, fine-grained wood lignum vitae.

It’s not until you go for a sail in a boat like Marie Louise that you appreciate just how much is involved in getting the best from her.

The basics are simple enough in that any reasonably competent sailor could set sail and get from A to B, but what makes these boats so absorbing is the endless scope to tweak, improve and learn.

Whatever the weather there is absolutely no excuse to be bored.

The first thing you notice when stepping aboard is that the Oysterman 16 feels so much bigger than her 16ft (4.87m).

Despite her modest beam and a foredeck extending back to the mast she’s remarkably roomy. That’s due to a combination of factors including her stiffness, the depth of her hull and the presence of the bowsprit.

At the helm, you have the mainsheet, jib and staysail sheets and the running backstays all to hand.

The runners aren’t critical for upwind work but help increase headsail luff tension – and they need to be handled with precision during heavy-weather gybes.

The mainsail has a 2:1 outhaul along the boom and, at the foot of the mast, are the throat and peak halyards (the latter adjusted constantly to control twist), the luff downhaul and the topsail’s sheet and halyard.

Next to them are the topsail’s downhaul – known in Cornwall as a timinoggy – the two spinnaker halyards, the furling line for the jib’s Wykeham Martin gear, the headsail halyards and the topping lift.

When you have got to grips with which line controls what it all works remarkably well, even in weather when you wouldn’t expect a 16-footer to be racing at sea.

During the Dartmouth Regatta in 2004, Mike was out in what he describes as ‘some blustery conditions’.

He continued, “There’s almost nothing that stops us racing apart from the amount of water we take on board – which is why I have now fitted a second bilge pump. We had 25 knots of wind against the tide, with stronger gusts, and she was hard work with one reef plus jib and staysail. If I hadn’t been racing I would have put in another reef and she’d have been very comfortable.”

He has clocked over 7 knots downwind and normally reckons to average 4 knots upwind in flat water, tacking through little over 80°.

When I went for a sail with Mike, on a glorious September afternoon, we had a gentle 8-12 knots of wind that allowed us to set the topsail and Marie Louise to show just why she has enchanted her owner for nearly 30 years.

As for the maintenance, the costs and the time, he points out that, as the object of his passion is only 16ft long, ‘she’s the sort of boat you can afford to indulge.’

There’s no doubting that this is a labour of love, but when you see the pleasure this stunning little ship gives in return it’s easy to understand why Mike wouldn’t have it any other way.