Tally Ho is a Stradivarius, it's amazing the detail and determination for perfection.
I gulp every episode at the pure expense of everything, the bronze, the teak (!), the latest modernity of the systems, the traditional time-consuming methods (the spars, wow).
In addition to boatbuilding, the whole enterprise is a high-level demonstration of management, research, staffing, fund raising, documentary technique and most time-consuming of them all, near flawless video editing. The video alone requires 10s of thousands in gear, and more hours that anybody would believe in the editing bay.
We have all watched Leo grow, and maybe I mean age, with the project. His tone is more sober now. His grudging but still gleeful acceptance of homemade ads is touching. I sorta wish some overly rich sportsman would just quietly pick up the tab, and maybe they often do.
He clearly intends to continue his life on this boat, doing whatever such a boat can do, for all the right reasons. The guy at bottom is a romantic. Tally Ho will be dark and cramped and lovely in its old-fashioned way, but a far cry from a Lagoon 60 charter.
The story is that Leo sprang full blown from the sea, a shipwright who emerged from under a staircase. OK, but it may be more complicated than that, listening to his English and observing his personal bearing and ease with maths and design and impeccable taste. His father, Adrian French Goolden, is listed as a director of the Tally HO project, and also of Cardigan Mercantile Company, a British firm established in 1876. Not that there's, uh, anything wrong with that.
Oddly, there's apparently no Wikipedia entry on Leo. And the one on Tally Ho sorta misses the point.
One cool guy. At random:
Seven years ago Leo was busking on the street to earn money, now he's basking in the Caribbean as part of the superyacht set
www.bristolpost.co.uk
