According to yachting journalist Adrian Morgan one time owner of Sally II (Vertue number V2) apocryphally, a sign on Durban’s seafront forbids any yacht to put to sea in winds over Force 7, without the harbour master’s permission, unless she’s a Vertue.

Monie is listed as the third of the Vertue class, built in Lymington for Captain Deighton and like her older sisters she didn’t have the higher freeboard of the post war Vertues, but her deckhouse was a little longer than that of Andrillot and Sally II. She continues to thrive and can still be seen well cared for and afloat in the southwest of England

The masthead rig features two head stays but she is not a cutter; the rig which was first suggested by Giles was intended as a means of setting either a small head-sail on the lower or fore stay, or a larger genoa or jib on the masthead stay, but never the two together. In fact it was not until much later in 1973 that a cutter rig was stepped on a Vertue  (number V159 design number 0643).

Monie gained publicity after Humphrey Barton’s maiden voyage delivery from her builder at Lymington to her new owner in Wales.  He picked her up from the Berthon boatyard and set sail down the Lymington River and, at the mouth, instead of turning right to go Wales, he turned left and sailed ‘the long way round’ the UK, through the Straits of Dover, the North Sea, through the Caledonian Canal, and on south to Wales: a round trip of some 1,050 miles. It took 25 days, weathering two gales off the North East coast and two off the West coast of Scotland.