£4.95 US$10.99
FEBRUARY 2022
T H E W O R L D’ S M O S T B E A U T I F U L B O A T S
THE LAST MCGRUER
Scottish builder’s swansong CLASSIC BOAT AWARDS Best boats of the year
AUTUMN PASSAGE West Country to East Coast on a century-old gaffer HYBRID POWER
Hardy 42 test
DESTINATION UNKNOWN
Sextant days
GALWAY HOOKERS Design analysis HOLDING POWER
Vertical vice
www.classicboat.co.uk
2022 Awards NOMINATED
THE LAST MCGRUER Launched in 1968, yet built in traditional carvel, Rinamara is the swansong of her designer’s career, and an era WORDS AND PHOTOGRAPHS NIC COMPTON
RINAMARA
C
alum Sillars was just nine years old when the boat of his dreams was launched. He and his family lived at Shandon on the east side of Scotland’s Gareloch, where the boat-mad boy learned to sail first on Cadet dinghies and the Bristol Channel pilot cutter Hirta (then owned by his uncle) and later on Dragons and Gareloch One Designs (designed by James McGruer). The family’s home overlooked the water, and directly on the other side of the loch was the yard of McGruer & Co in the village of Clynder. It was a constant source of fascination to the young Calum. “We lived about as close to McGruer’s as you could get on the east side of the loch,” he remembers. “Every morning, I’d throw my curtains open and there was the yard. I was wonderful to watch the launch of new boats down their slipway from the house. Whenever a new boat was launched, it was quite an event in the local community. Even at this time I admired McGruer yachts, particularly the lines of their yawls – of which at least one was invariably moored in the Gareloch.” One of the yawls launched at the yard in 1968 was more significant than most: Build No 623, the 47ft (14.3m) Rinamara, James McGruer’s final design. It’s quite possible that Calum watched the boat being launched, and he would certainly have seen her in subsequent years when she was based on the Clyde at around the same time that he had a summer job at the yard. Calum went on to have a successful career in the Royal Navy, travelling around the world and rising to the rank of Commander – not to mention a stint on Britannia and two years as Prince Philip’s equerry. But the memory of those perfectly-proportioned boats slicing through the halcyon waters of the Clyde would remain with him throughout his life and would influence his decision when it came to choosing a boat for his family half a century later. Rinamara was built at the peak of wooden boatbuilding on the Clyde, as elsewhere, and can justifiably claim to be the culmination of nearly 60 years of building and design at the McGruer yard. Established in 1911, the yard established a worldwide reputation building the
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Above left to right: The coachroof was rebuilt in France in c2000; A new deck was fitted by Stirling and Son in 2021, along with new windlass and ground table
Gareloch One Designs designed by Erwing McGruer in 1924, followed by dozens of Dragons (designed by Johan Anker) from 1936, and an extremely successful line of 8-Metre cruisers-racers – known as 8CRs – designed by James McGruer from 1951 onwards. Alongside these eye-catching racing yachts, the yard produced a series of fast cruising yachts, starting with the 42ft Kelana in 1946 and gradually evolving into a distinctive yawl configuration. “Cruiser Eights were the big-ticket boats, while the yawls were designed for owners looking for a genuine cruiser/racer,” says Calum. “I always thought the 8CRs should really be called the 8RCs as their predominant use was racing, with the occasional cruise to the Hebrides or beyond. The yawls were slightly beamier, with more volume, and more geared to cruising, though they could be raced successfully too.”
THE END OF THE WOODEN ERA It’s no coincidence that Rinamara was built for Irish flour miller Peter Odlum, who had previously commissioned two 8CRs designed by James McGruer: Namhara (1955) and Inismara (1963). The latter was particularly beautiful and successful, winning 17 out 25 races in her first year. At 47ft (14.3m) long, Rinamara was a considerably bigger boat than the 41ft (12.5m) Inismara and, at 17.6 tonnes, displaced nearly half as much again. But despite her concessions to creature comforts, she was designed to be fast. An article in the February 1968 edition of Yachting Monthly, written while Rinamara was still being built, describes her in terms that might well apply to the whole classic boat movement – pre-empting that happy occurrence by at least 10 years – while at the same time also suggesting that she was already a something of an anachronism: “… the McGruer board has produced a succession of classic designs and this is another: in fact classic is the best description for a design that has no gimmicks and does not pander to the trends of the moment, a design that embodies the best of development in the long term.” Not surprisingly, given the year she was built, Rinamara incorporated an interesting mix of old and
Main picture: Sailing off Plymouth shortly after restoration. The owner has reverted to the sail number she had when launched
RINAMARA
new boatbuilding concepts. Bear in mind that by this time cold-moulding was commonplace and even strip-planking had been around for at least ten years, as demonstrated by the range of boats built by David Cheverton on the Isle of Wight – though the epoxy revolution was just around the corner, with the Gougeon Brothers setting up in 1969. Rinamara was carvel built to best boatbuilding practice, with mahogany planking above the waterline and teak below. Instead of the traditional sawn oak crooks, however, she was fitted with laminated afromosia frames, stem, sternpost and floors – a sure sign of things to come. Similarly, her deck wasn’t the solid teak enjoyed by generations of sailors on the Clyde, but its modern equivalent: teak planks over a plywood subdeck, presumably stuck down with traditional glues, as epoxy wasn’t widely available yet. Indeed, the use of plywood for the coachroof meant that beams were no longer necessary, producing a clear deckhead with increased headroom. Rinamara was in many ways a modern wooden boat, then, though this peak of craftsmanship also foretold its end – for the time being, anyway. She was the last yacht designed by James McGruer, and a few years later in 1974 he retired from the company. His son George carried on designing one-off wooden yachts, but GRP was increasingly becoming the norm. Odlum enjoyed a good few years cruising and racing the boat from her base on the Clyde and sailed her to the Mediterranean in 1970 in the company of another McGuer yacht, the 55ft (16.8m) ketch Cuilaun of Kinsale. But even he seemed to have tired of owning a big wooden boat, and in 1973 sold her to buy a 59ft (18m) steel motor-sailer with a great deal more space.
RINAMARA CIRCLES THE GLOBE After a few more years in Scotland, Rinamara was bought by Tony Palmer, who had big plans for her: to sail around the world. He set off in 1980 and, over the next four years, visited the Canaries, the Caribbean, Panama (where he met his future wife, Mary), various islands in the Pacific, including the Marquesas, the 8
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Phoenix Islands, Kiribati, Nauru and Papua New Guinea, before heading on to Singapore, Penang, Sri Lanka, Aden, Sudan, Egypt, Suez, Cyprus, Greece, 1968. Rinamara Tunisia, Sardinia, Menorca and, finally, Ibiza.This was sported green in the era before GPS and chartplotters, so the couple topsides, red navigated by sextant and shipped hitchhikers to help antifoul and them sail the boat. white boot top “The highlight of the trip,” remembers Tony, “was being surrounded by a school of orcas rising next to us so close I could have touched them. And the totally wonderful Hermit Islands [in Papua New Guinea]. The low point was nearly losing her on a reef when we anchored, badly, in the lagoon of Canton Island [in Kiribati], with a Force 11 blowing all night.” RINAMARA Tony finished his world tour in Ibiza because that’s DESIGNED AND where his friend Archie Smith lived with his wife Annie. BUILT Archie was a boatbuilder who, by pure coincidence, was James Mcserving his apprenticeship at McGruers when Rinamara Gruer, 1968 was built and not only helped to build her but left an inscription on her that would resurface during her big LOA 2020-21 refit. 47ft 6in Rinamara’s next owner was Leo Hartong, a Dutch scholar who wrote books about Hindu philosophy. Not (14.5m) himself a seasoned sailor, he employed Archie Smith as LWL his skipper and cruised the boat locally around Ibiza. 35ft And it was the boat’s former owner Tony Palmer and Archie’s brother George who sailed the boat to the (10.7m) Mashford’s boatyard near Plymouth in 1987 for a BEAM comprehensive refit. Among other things, a new Volvo 12ft engine was fitted to replace the old Perkins 4170. Property developer Richard Bassi was in the same (3.7m) friendship group and took over ownership of Rinamara DRAUGHT in 1992. Once again, he asked Tony and George to sail 7ft 5in the boat back to the land of her birth to have a new deck fitted – the innovative teak-on-ply deck fitted by (2.3m) McGruer’s seemed to have worn out after 24 years. The interior was also remodelled to accommodate three SAIL AREA double cabins, and the systems were completely 1,172 sqft upgraded for a more fun-loving lifestyle, with deep 2 (109m ) freeze, a powerful sound system, better shower and, to top it all, a deep fat fryer, which occupied the whole of DISP 17.6 tonnes one end of the galley. Above: Launch day, summer
The newly refurbished interior, with extra stowage where the deep-fat frier used to be (!), elegant heads, cosy double berth, and saloon (with daughter Aurora)
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RINAMARA
This set up was clearly designed for crew racing (and partying!) rather than cruising, and for the next 13 years, Rinamara joined the burgeoning Mediterranean classic yacht circuit, sailing the length of the Med from Spain to Greece. She had a favourable CIM rating and won numerous races, including first places at Les Voiles de Saint-Tropez and the Trofeo Almirante Conde de Barcelona in Mallorca, as well as finishing second overall in her class in the 2000 and 2001 Prada Classic Yacht Challenges. There were further refits and improvements at the Astilleros de Mallorca, as well as a new teak coachroof fitted in France, and she adopted a more flamboyant Med livery, including turquoise antifouling and a yin and yang spinnaker. Rinamara’s next owner also liked to have fun. As a young man, Roger Perrot set up a cabaret act with two friends which they called Perrot’s Folly, performing shows for charity. His friend Nik later remembered: “In one of them, I found myself dancing with Roger, who was dressed as a stewardess, resplendent in a pair of size-ten high heels. This culminated in Roger performing a pole dance on the stage of St James, which brought the house down.” Roger went on to study law and became a Guernsey advocate and, by the time he bought Rinamara in 1992, had entered politics as a deputy in the Guernsey Parliament. He was also a keen sailor and, after fitting a new engine and Raymarine navigation system, raced and cruised locally as well as sailing to Cowes to take part in the Panerai British Classic Week. He and the boat also appeared in the BBC Coast series (Invaders of the Isles episode), in which Roger described modern yachtsmen as “armchair sailors” compared to the 19th-century privateers. After Roger died in 2019, Rinamara was put on the market – most of the proceeds of his estate would go to Elizabeth College, the co-ed school in St Peter Port which he attended. By this time, Calum had enjoyed a globe-trotting career with the Royal Navy, sailing 10
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Above: The modern nav gear doesn’t look out of place in her teak cockpit; Rinamara powers along under 1,170sqft of sail
boats wherever he went, including the Contessa 32s and Nicholson 55s owned by the navy and various dinghies and dayboats owned by yacht clubs in the ports he visited. After leaving the navy in 1999, he and his wife Amanda (herself an experienced offshore sailor and member of the RORC) raced a Daring at Cowes and island-hopped on the 24ft (7.3m) wooden lobster boat that they kept at their holiday croft on the island of Eriskay. Not surprisingly, their children turned out to be keen sailors too – particularly when the sailing involved charter boats in warm Mediterranean waters. When the time eventually came to buy a yacht for family cruising, Calum was drawn back inexorably to his childhood experiences. “At the back of my mind, there always was a desire to own a classic yacht,” he says. “McGruer was the favoured one because I probably knew more about them. We looked at several McGruer yawls in the 40-44ft (12.2-13.4m) range, which were wonderful but quite open plan. I was holding out for something a bit bigger and was very excited when Rinamara became available. She’s only a few feet longer, but she has a lot more volume, and the cabin arrangement worked well for us and our three children.”
RESCUED IN LOCKDOWN In the end, despite Calum’s bias, he insists the decision to buy Rinamara was very much a joint decision, and that both Amanda and Aurora (his eldest daughter) were equally impressed with the boat’s performance. First though, they had to get the boat back to mainland England. The man to do this was surveyor Will Stirling, whose yard in Plymouth they had chosen to undertake the latest refit. “It was during Covid, so movement was restricted and we had to get permission to collect the boat,” says Will. “We got a fast fishing boat from Poole to Guernsey, which took three hours. When we got there, the boat was moored on a floating pontoon in the middle of the