Craftsmanship Yard News
SECTION HEAD SUB SECTION
Edited by Steffan Meyric Hughes: +44 (0)207 349 3758 Email: steffan@classicboat.co.uk
GERMANY
Starling Burgess 8-M from history A new 8-M yacht designed by W Starling Burgess but never built at the time, has just been launched on the shores of Lake Constance, at the Josef Martin boatyard. The design, from 1937, was discovered and published by Burgess biographer Llewllyn Howland back in 2014, and was just waiting for the right person to come along and have it built, plugging another gap in the unbuilt history of yacht design. Starling Burgess was an extraordinary polymath, as Llewellyn Howland points out in his 2015 biography No Ordinary Being. He was a pivotal figure in early aviation, a published poet and designer or co-designer of every J-Class ever to win an America’s Cup. It seems the owner of the new yacht is aware of the size of her designer’s legend, as he
level of detailing, which started when Juliane Hempel lofted the boat,
has named the new yacht after him: Starling Burgess. John Lammerts van
marking the position of every fastening hole and plank bevel. The result,
Bueren, who has been intimately involved with the project, thinks this
says John is a yacht that is symmetrical to a 1.5mm tolerance. “The planks
build represents a new high-water mark in terms of precision in traditional
fit as if grown together. She went in the water and was so tight that the
build. The yacht was built as she would have been in 1937, but with a new
dust in the bilge stayed dry.”
ST OSYTH’S, ESSEX
Oldest wooden barge to be restored On 22 July, sailing barge May, the oldest
Barge Association and who with husband
wooden barge afloat, swept past Gas
Andy runs the St Osyth boatyard and
House Creek in Harwich, home of the
multiple barge champion SB Edme) and
famous Cann’s boatyard where she was
Helen Swift (who formerly ran her own
built, 130 years to the day after she was
catering company and now runs Essex
launched. A quick stop on the posts at
Heritage Workboats with traditional
Brightlingsea for a scrub and a fresh
boatbuilder husband Gerard), plan to work
coat of tar and she was on her way up
with groups and institutions aiming to
the narrow creek to her new berth at St
improve the lives of women who have
Osyth’s Boatyard, where she will spend
suffered trauma. May will visit communities
the next year while funds are secured
along the Essex coast as a safe haven for
for her restoration.
regaining confidence and trust, selling
70
bread and running sourdough bread
mills at Cranfield’s in Ipswich and flour to London, so her new life as a
workshops and sailing trips. Why roses? The trio explain that there have
floating bakery will be particularly appropriate. The female trio of
always been capable women in the shadows of a male-dominated
Connie Gadd (aspiring artist and potter, and whose late husband Gerald
barging world. This is a chance to blossom and come to the fore.
was May’s last owner), Jane Harman (first female chair of the Sailing
You can donate to the project at thebreadandrosesbarge.com
CLASSIC BOAT SEPTEMBER 2021
SANDY MILLER
May was built to carry grain to the
