Classic Yachts 2021

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YACHTS

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12

STUNNING BOATS

and how they were saved

J-Class SAILING ON THE EDGE

BEST CLASSIC BOATS OF THE YEAR 8-METRE TWINS BUILT NEW IN WOOD REGATTA RACING ON A VICTORIAN YACHT GORGEOUS NAUTICAL KIT YOU MUST HAVE!

ROB PEAKE EDITOR

Scud, built in 1903 and racing in immaculate condition today

WELCOME TO

THE WORLD OF CLASSIC YACHTS

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CHELSEA MAGAZINES Jubilee House, 2 Jubilee Place London SW3 3TQ EDITORIAL Editor Rob Peake +44 (0)20 7349 3755 rob.peake@classicboat.co.uk Senior Art Editor Peter Smith +44 (0)20 7349 3756 peter.smith@chelseamagazines.com ADVERTISING Head of marine market Jodie Green +44 (0)20 7349 3722 jodie.green@chelseamagazines.com Advertisement production Allpointsmedia +44 (0)1202 472781 allpointsmedia.co.uk Published by The Chelsea Magazine Company Ltd Managing Director Paul Dobson Commercial Director Vicki Gavin Publisher Simon Temlett Group Sales Director Catherine Chapman © The Chelsea Magazine Company Ltd 2021.

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JUNE 2021

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

with

CYNARA AWAKENS

PRINCE PHILIP

A life in sailing

Japan’s big

EVENTS 2021 Regatta guide

class rebuild

SCHOONER RACING On board Mariette

BUYERS’ GUIDE Top ten 25ft cabin yachts

JULY 2021 £4.95

BLUEWATER SPECIAL Kit you really need

JOHN GOODE 1950-2021 Tribute to a sailing maverick

l l

Make your dream come true

BOAT TESTS

SECRET SOUTH OF FRANCE The Côte only the locals know

DISCOVERY 58 Ocean thoroughbred JEANNEAU 60 Cutting edge liveaboard PARISIAN SPEED Liuzzi runabouts 90 YEARS OF THE BIG RACE

Round the Island CB396 June cover.indd 1

ROUND THE ISLAND RACE Tips for competitors

TOM CUNLIFFE’S SEAMANSHIP

Restoring blocks

ALTERNATIVE HULL TIMBER

BRIXHAM GUIDE Pilotage + what to do

SAIL FASTER Read the weather to win

www.classicboat.co.uk

Beech boats

04/05/2021 14:11

ST+Y&Y July Cover A and B.indd 1

www.chelseamagazines.com

19/05/2021 12:31

elcome to Classic Yachts. Over the next 130 pages, you will find extraordinary stories, breathtaking photography and – of course – boats to die for.

Classic Yachts is a new, one-off publication from the team behind Classic Boat magazine and our intention has been to bring you a rich feast. The wooden boat world never ceases to astonish, so much so that it’s easy for afficionados to become blasé.

But a reality check doesn’t take long...

The idea, for instance, that there might have been a design for a boat drawn in the 1930s, lost in somebody’s basement for decades, and then discovered and built 90 years later – and not just any yacht – the J-Class Svea, on page 4.

Or the idea that a yacht sunk 70 years ago might be recreated faithfully in wood – and in duplicate. The 8-Metre Defender and her twin sister Invader. Turn to page 40.

How about, even, the article we have on the gaff-cutter Thalia, built in 1888? A wooden yacht built at the height of the Victorian age, still racing today? Turn to page 90.

And what is really great about the classic boat world is that it’s become an integral part of today’s global marine industry.

Traditional builders, like Ben Harris in Cornwall, are producing boats in the old style – like Panacea, on page 74.

Meanwhile modern classic manufacturers, led by Spirit Yachts in Ipswich, are introducing scores of mainstream yacht owners to the classic aesthetic. As we see in our article on page 94, Spirit Yachts is doing more than that – the company is leading the entire industry on ecologically sound build and fit-out.

We also revisit some of the greatest classic regattas – always a vital part of this scene and often a place to see some of the most famous boats ever built, be you in Antigua, Falmouth, Hamble or Auckland.

Our Classic Boat Awards recognises the best of this world each year and we review the latest batch of winners on page 100. Voted for by our readers, they always throw up some lovely surprises.

We hope you savour delving into this 130-page smorgasboard of wooden boat delights.

“Wouldn’t it be great to publish a magazine comprising the very best articles we’ve ever run in Classic Boat?” we asked. “The most incredible restorations, the most spectacular regattas, the best ‘classic’ kit, the most awesome photos?”

Here it is.

CLASSIC YACHTS 2021

3

CONTENTS

8

40

J-CLASS SVEA A forgotten design, found in a basement, built to sail

48

NEW WOODEN 8-METRE The original was lost at sea, but now lives again as twin sisters

AKELA Handsome

1951 ketch revived

56

FARIDA Laurent Giles

at his best

82

SAMSARA One couple’s

wooden boat dream

16

XARIFA Renowned beauty of her day gets total revamp

48

AKELA

90

THALIA

A tale of an owner’s passion against great odds

On board at

Hamble Classics

94

YACHT FOR THE FUTURE

A modern classic breaking new ground

110

TRANSAT CLASSIQUE

Old yachts race to the Caribbean

24

SCUD A no-holds-barred restoration of highest order

118

ANTIGUA

74

PANACEA

CLASSICS

A new boat built traditionally in Cornwall

Racing under the sun

124

HISTORY BOAT

2021 Awards

Classic lineage influencing today

130

PARTING SHOT

Classic Boat awards 2021 logos.indd 1

27/11/2020 15:16

Classic boat shows

32

CIRCE Named after the Goddess of Magic. Say no more!

4

CLASSIC YACHTS 2021

64

BEAUTIFUL OBJECTS FOR SAILORS

100

CLASSIC BOAT AWARDS: THE WINNERS The best restorations and new builds

Inspired by life on and off the water

xvstripes

www.xvstripes.com BEDDING - CUSHIONS - THROWS - INTERIORS - GIFTS & ACCESSORIES

FIVE GO ROUND THE ISLAND The Nutter family – Craig, Kate, Jack, Molly and their Harrison Butler cutter Sabrina – enjoy a day to remember in the Round the Island Race WORDS CRAIG NUTTER

6 | THE YACHTING YEAR 2018

WATERCOLOURS SUE PEAKE

After eights PICTURE GUIDO CANTINI / SEASEE.COM

WILLIAM FIFE III’S MOONBEAM IV One of the most famous classics, Moonbeam IV was owned by Prince Rainier of Monaco and played host to many famous names. Uffa Fox said she combined ‘the speed of a racer with the comfort of a cruiser’, while Eric Tabarly simply said she was the most beautiful yacht ever built.

Nonetheless, even a boat like this can suffer a period of neglect. She was rescued and given a new lease of life in 2001. Now she turns heads wherever she goes, sailed under gaff rig and with a splendidly traditional looking crew.

THE YACHTING YEAR 2018 | 7

SAILING J CLASS SVEA A day on a J-Class yacht is a special one, whoever you are. Not many people, however, have sailed a J in a Force 6. We hung on tight as we jumped aboard shortly after her launch back in 2017 WORDS STEFFAN MEYRIC HUGHES PHOTOGRAPHS CARLO BORLENGHI

SVEA

T

he flight to Palma should have been a warning. The little Airbus bounced stiffly through turbulence, occasionally dropping through the sky like a stone through a vacuum. The tail end of a big mistral was still blowing itself out, bending trees and bedevilling recreational hat-wearers on the ground, teasing the nervous and the God-fearing on flight EZY8627 as we flew south to Spain’s Balearic isles.

The day before, winds over 30 knots had cancelled race-training on Svea (‘Swede’). Now, as we waited dockside, the big, mast-mounted anemometer read-out flickered around 15. The friendly English captain Paul introduced himself, and I didn’t need him to point out that it was going to be pushier outside the marina – even in the protected bay of Palma.

It’s customary at this point to express awe at the size and grace of a J, but the truth is that it’s too big for that: you can’t take it all in. You must induce a fair bit of curvature in your lower back, then crane your neck all the way back, to see the tip of the black, carbon, quadruple-spreader mast, which at 173ft (52.8m) high, would rise above the Coliseum, Arc de Triomphe or the upper walkway of Tower Bridge.

The 29 race crew in their smart grey gear, some wearing headsets, huddle in groups to discuss the day’s aims. Most of them are from pretty serious backgrounds, like the Olympics and America’s Cup. Perhaps it’s a product of our unwillingness to take the present entirely seriously, or maybe it’s just that the scale and elegance of these vessels remains unchallenged in yacht racing, but sailors still judge the J-Class yachts of the 1930s as the pinnacle of sailing glory. Svea, of all the Js designed from 1930 to 1937, is not only the longest, newest and, theoretically, perhaps the fastest – but she’s got one of the most mysterious pasts, coming to fruition only through a chance encounter.

A MOTHBALLED DREAM John Lammerts Van Bueren, Dutch timber supplier, was on the hunt for original Tore Holm drawings to inform the restoration of his Holm 8-M yacht Cagg. He found the near-complete archive of one of the greatest yacht designers of the last century, in a series of ageing leather briefcases in the basement of a house near Stockholm.

That house belongs to Birgitta Holm, daughter of Tore Holm who, with compatriot boatbuilder Gustav Plym, drew Svea (then unnamed) to tackle American supremacy and claim sailing’s greatest title for Sweden.

Neither of them would have known that the America’s Cup would not be raced again for 21 years, and never again in craft as grand as the Js. Still less might they have imagined that in a new millennium, the Js would explode in popularity again and that a lone Dutch seeker would come knocking at Tore’s daughter’s front door, asking to see those old plans under the stairs, six decades after they drew them.

They held no special resonance for Birgitta, for whom sailing was a cold, wet necessity, as she helped her father deliver yachts to clients in all conditions, and John helped to secure this treasure trove for the Swedish Maritime Museum, where they were gently 10

CLASSIC YACHTS 2021

steamed open and scanned. And so it was that John, returning to the museum to see the treasure in all its glory, found Svea. His “heartbeat stalled” as he pulled out the drawings marked “KSSS [Royal Swedish YC) J-Båt”. There were the lines, sail plan, midship section and construction plan – a complete preliminary study.

After a couple of false starts and dissolved syndicates, a complete aluminium hull had been built by Dutch yard Bloemsma and finally, an owner for Svea came on board and took the project to completion at Vitters Boatyard. She was launched in January this year, eight decades after her design. To this day, no other record of Svea has been found, neither at KSSS or the New York Yacht Club. Like fellow modernday J build Topaz, she is neither a restoration nor a replica, but a dream that spent 80 years mothballed and is today sailing for the first time.

HIGH AND RISING Out at sea, I was asked to stay on the aft deck, the usual observation post for guests and journalists on a J, and surprisingly comfortable, even in 20-25 knots of wind.

What happened next was a quiet, efficient blur of action, punctuated in the memory as a series of impressions: diesel off, black mainsail rising up the mast, speed building, then the No3 (100 per cent) genoa climbing up the mast. The weather side went up as smoothly as a high rise lift, heeling at up to 37°, as we sailed hard into the wind.

Somewhere out there in the hard blue glitterscape of a spring day in the Med, our chase RIB stood off.

The presence of the chase RIB is standard in the J Class and means that Js are raced without lifejackets or guardrails, quite correct for this aesthetically-driven class that is nothing if it is not a spectacle. It also colours every moment with an exhilarating sense of vulnerability. Even in the enclosed bay with its limited fetch, a couple of days of mistral had raised a bit of a sea – perhaps 5-6ft (1.5-2m), but we cruised through them like a flying carpet, high and dry on the weather side, above the spray flying back down the lee deck, which is partially underwater. It would be a long way to fall into the water from here, but my perch is secure. Looking down and along that deck is a rare sight – 143ft of swept teak, barely interrupted as it tapers gently to a needle point.

Even more noticeable is the sound, as the rig judders and creaks from the insane loads. The load generated by the 5,000sq ft (4,500m2) mainsail is 14 tonnes: the mainsheet has enough pull on it to hoist a London bus into the air, and it jerks and creeks as the hydraulic primary winches pull it in. The mast compression load is a horrifying 180 tonnes, more than the boat weighs.

Even the vang load exceeds 4 tonnes, and snaps to show its disapproval as the load reaches 4.2 tonnes. There is little reaction from the incredibly calm crew. I imagine someone jots ‘get stronger vang’ on a tablet somewhere later, when we are back ashore. There is another noise, too, the backstay perhaps, playing its own moaning glissando that sounds eerily alive.

This feeling of tension and excitement are the things you might expect. Then there are the things you don’t expect, like the simplicity of the rig. The reality of J sailing is anything but straightforward, but ostensibly at least, you can kid yourself that you understand a

SVEA PREVIOUS SPREAD AND HERE: photos of Svea taken in a calmer bay of Palma, before we arrived for a sail

CLASSIC YACHTS 2021

11

JOHN LAMMERTS VAN BUEREN

SVEA

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CLASSIC YACHTS 2021

corner detail on

BUILDING ON THE PAST

the saloon table

When Andre Hoek first beheld the 1937 drawings from

shows part of the

Holm and Plym, they were far from the finished article. The

Norse compass

first job was to digitise the information, then fair the lines

rose, a visual motif

in a CAD programme and render the boat in 3-D. The results

used throughout

were sent to the J-Class Association, which must approve

Svea in an echo of

all prospective builds if they are to race in the fleet. Then a

her Swedish

new construction plan was drawn up for aluminium.

ABOVE L-R:

New boats have to be considerably stronger than their

origin; outside Bloemsma, where

1930s counterparts, to take the greater loads produced by

the aluminium

their modern sails – North Sails 3Di in this case. Laminate

hull was built

sails and zero-stretch rigging result in huge loads – 180 tonnes of mainmast compression, 36 tonnes on the forestay.... Add to that the fact that modern Js are built in aluminium rather than steel (apart from the 2003 Ranger which is steel), and you have a very different construction strength requirement.

After that came the mast position and sail plan which, thanks to the sailcloth, is far more powerful than the original, so the rig has remained very similar. Then came stability, weight and handicap considerations. “It’s a major job,” said Hoek, who has previously acted as naval architect on the Lionheart and Topaz J projects.

In fact, Hoek Design formulated a velocity prediction programme specifically for J boats while working on Lionheart. It suggested that Svea was going to be a flyer, particularly upwind, a theory that is proving true. She’s also the longest J on deck, with a correspondingly long waterline, so benefits in terms of hull speed.

There has been much talk of waterline length in the J Class, particularly since the association allowed an extra 4in (10cm) of freeboard, along with the lighter aluminium hull material. Svea floats lower than her contemporaries, in fact very close to her original design. Hoek maintains that the waterline argument is overstated, giving as evidence the last J race, where the fleet raced for more than two hours and arrived at the finish line within seconds of each other, a closeness that is aided further by the J handicap rule that theoretically nullifies differences in size – including waterline length.

That low freeboard is also a great boon to Svea’s appearance. She’s already earned a reputation as one of the prettiest boats in the class. “She’s gorgeous-looking,” C/O HOEK

boat like this. The bermudan sloop rig has (for racing) an unreefable main, a choice of three genoas (100, 120 or 140 per cent) and a spinnaker. For cruising, a staysail can be hoisted on its own luff to divide the sail area before the mast. The racing main is replaced with a reefable mainsail and stanchions and a fence are inserted. With a comfortable interior capable of sleeping 11, Svea is far more bluewater capable than you might imagine.

We bear off and run downwind for a while, the red spinnaker blooming out ahead of us, still at hull speed of 12 knots or more. In much the same way that a 6-M will sail at 6 knots “all the time”, the Js will power up in quite light airs, and suitably rigged, can take a lot.

Remember that they have been crossing the Atlantic since the 1930s. With their slender profiles and high displacement, the same qualities that enable them to hold their speed so easily, they apparently become submarines in a real seaway, but, in high-tensile aluminium and carbon rig, they simply plow on.

If a J on the wind is a serene drama, the sensation on a run is one of benevolent magic. The wind had died down a little and the sun, gathering strength, warmed our backs as we raced down the wind in silence, nothing other than the goosewinged sails to suggest that we are just one crash gybe away from oblivion – but that’s not going to happen today as I am not helming. Then suddenly the cry of ‘Man overboard’! It is instructive to see how quickly we lose sight of our man – about 20 seconds – but not before the RIB is racing through the sea to collect him and transfer him back to us, all without stopping. A single dolphin leapt out of the water ahead of us, and the uniform waves march slowly past the boat, rising almost above the freeboard, translucent aquamarine in the sun and close enough to touch. A crewman approaches, smiling and pointing to the spectacle of a wave slowly racing us home. It’s perfection.

Svea has not had much of a run-in period before the big America’s Cup races in Bermuda this June, but with boat and crew running well, she’ll be one to watch – if not there, then at Newport (RI) at the J Worlds in late August. As I write, Svea has reached the Azores, sailing on her own hull in the tradition of Js voyaging to the new world to make their challenge.

Tore Holm and Gustav Plym are gone now, but even in the lives of the dead there are sometimes second chances; their ghosts might prevail yet.

Andre Hoek

said Hoek, who also cites the pleasing balance between bow and stern overhangs. With such an effective handicap system, the real key to winning in the J-Class is crew work.

Velsheda, with her tried-and-tested crew, is the perfect

CLASSIC YACHTS 2021

13

SVEA example. Svea provided a unique opportunity to make a clear improvement in this area. Because the original drawings did not include a deck plan, Hoek was free to come up with a deck arrangement based around crew communication, key on a boat this size.

Unlike some Js where the winches and crew stations are ‘all over the place’, there are three distinct areas on Svea: the helm’s cockpit, with a large wheel to allow the helm to sit out and see the tell tales; the main cockpit directly in front of that, from where the main, genoa and running backstays are operated on the primary (hydraulic) winches; and the ‘pit’ forward of the mast, where the halyards and spinnaker sheets are handled on the secondary winches (also hydraulic).

The result of this is that the helm has good sight lines forward and good communication lines, being able to speak to the main, genoa and backstay trimmers without a headset.

Similarly, the spinnaker trimmer, who is always standing highside to see the action, can act as a comms bridge

ABOVE:The main

between the spinnaker winch men and the afterguard.

racing cockpit

“She’s got by far the best communication lines of any J,”

transforms into a

said Hoek. The other area in which Hoek had carte blanche

comfortable

was in the deck housing. Hoek came up with very low-

dining and

profile upperworks, which honour Tore Holm’s own

relaxation area

aesthetic sensibility, and as you can see from the photos,

with a table and

it’s another factor that adds to her appearance.

soft settee inserts

BELOW DECKS

BELOW: the stunning interior

The J-class fleet The J-Class fleet sailing today comprises these nine yachts, in order of their launch dates: Shamrock V Designed by Charles Nicholson, launched in 1930 and rebuilt in 2000

The interior was designed by Pieter Beeldsnijder, who died before seeing the fruits of his labour. “He was brilliant, great

Velsheda

to work with,” said Hoek. Michiel de Vos of De Vos De Vries

Designed by Charles Nicholson, launched in

Design, who acted as interior decorator, was in Palma and

1933 and rebuilt in 2006

gave me a tour of the interior, which is in classical raised and fielded style, but with a dash of modernity in the choice of wood – claro walnut with its vivid tiger stripes – and in the striped blue-and-white fabric settee coverings.

Endeavour Designed by Charles Nicholson, launched in 1934 and rebuilt in 1989

The interior is more commodious than you might imagine given the slim, overhang-heavy shape of a J. A full-width, en-suite owner’s cabin aft leads (as we go forward) to a double guest cabin, a twin-single guest cabin

Ranger Designed by Burgess/Stephens, launched in 1937, later scrapped, replica launched in 2003

(both en-suite), day heads, full-width saloon, galley, crew mess and crew quarters. The galley can open into the

Hanuman

saloon, so the owner can access it for small things like a

Designed By Charles Nicholson, launched in

coffee without rousing crew. The engine and generators

1936 (as Endeavour II), later scrapped, replica

are accessed through a large, lifting sole hatch.

(Hanuman) launched in 2009 Lionheart Designed by Burgess/Stephens in 1936, launched in 2011 Rainbow Designed by W Starling Burgess, launched in 1934, later scrapped, replica launched in 2012 Topaz Designed by Frank Paine in 1935, launched in 2015 Svea Designed by Holm and Plym in 1937, launched in 2017

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CLASSIC YACHTS 2021

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NOBLE LADY

The 1927 schooner Xarifa has been owned by royalty and by fishermen.

Today she benefits from a thoughtful modernisation PHOTOGRAPHS JAMES ROBINSON TALYOR

XARIFA

ABOVE: modern fittings join original features amid immaculate woodwork, much of it covering steelwork beneath

W

hen the three-masted schooner Xarifa was launched at Cowes in 1927 from the yard of J Samuel White & Co, it’s unlikely her build team, or anyone watching, ever imagined her one day flying a sail of 600 metres squared. It is equally unlikely they’d imagine her carrying a system by which at the touch of a button, a single person could bring in all of her massive sails quicker than the entire 1927 crew. Or that down below she’d one day carry 32.5km of wiring. A 2014 restoration of Xarifa aimed to preserve the yacht’s classic style, while equipping her with the most modern luxury amenities. It’s a task achieved plenty of times with other boats. Yet Xarifa was renowned as one of the most elegant yachts of her day.

The owner and his Spanish restoration team had a fine line to walk.

Xarifa was designed by engineer JM Soper for Franklin Morse Singer, one of the sons of the multimillionaire Isaac Singer, of sewing machine fame.

Singer jnr was a well-known American yachtsman and as he did with all his previous yachts, he named her Xarifa, an Arabic word meaning ‘noble, honest’. She was launched to some fanfare, with yachting magazines of the time praising her lines and particularly her magnificent interior. But just three years later, Singer ordered his next new yacht and Xarifa was sold, beginning decades of name changes and shifts in fortune that saw her at different times visited by high society (the Duke of Windsor and Wallis Simpson among others), being used by the Danish Resistance during World War II (as carriage between Denmark and neutral Sweden) enjoying a period as a film extra (appearing in The Sailor from Gibraltar in 1967, with Vanessa Redgrave and

18

CLASSIC YACHTS 2021

Jeanne Moreau) and even putting in an unlikely stint as a North Atlantic fishing vessel. Her current owner acquired her in 2012 and began a no-holds-barred refit at the Vigo shipyard Metalships & Docks, normally responsible for the build and repair of large commercial vessels but well-acquainted with old steel boat building.

Naval architecture and project management responsibilities were initially in the hands of Barracuda Yacht Design, of Madrid, which has designed a wide range modern and classic sailing and motorboats, as well as being involved in several Spanish America’s Cup projects. Iñigo Toledo, of Barracuda, said: “What was exciting for me was the challenge of working with something so old – respecting the past while handling modern requests. We’d seen that this boat had been abused in some of the modifications over the years, and we wanted to bring things back to how they were.”

As well as a new interior layout, Xarifa benefited from an extended rig, strengthening of the hull and much work to meet classification society requirements. All the while a close eye was kept on her overall aesthetic and her heritage.

Much work went into researching the boat’s history and the team found the original survey report, dated October 1926, and other documents from her launch, at Lloyd’s Registry in London.

Adam Fiander, one of the UK research team, said: “The jewel in the crown was our discovery and unearthing of many of her original 1920s plans and drawings, which were a combination of blueprints and linen, some exceedingly fragile, that were recovered from a skip just before the Whites yard was disbanded.

Thankfully, Isle of Wight Heritage let us have access to these and we got them scanned in ultra-high-resolution at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich at some

XARIFA

CLASSIC YACHT 2021

19

XARIFA

cost, as paid for by the owner. The quality, accuracy and sheer beauty of these hand-drawn plans by JM Soper and his staff are absolutely staggering.”

Just before the refit at the shipyard started, the project was taken on by engineers Javier Pamies from Cypsa and Alejandro Hompanera from Ership, both in Spain. Initial work at Metalships centred on the hull. The riveted steel plating was renewed, as were the steel frames. The original teak deck was leaking badly. In order to preserve what was to be an immaculate interior, the deck was completely removed and a new welded steel deck was installed. Mid-deck sound-proofing further increased watertight integrity and over the steel deck was fitted a new layer of Burmese teak.

Corrosion was found in the deckhouses, so new steel structures were built and covered with teak, a theme throughout the project to enhance the aesthetic and give a wooden appearance. The original deckhouse windows were kept.

There was a new teak helm but the interior mechanism remains the original, perfectly maintained bronze rods. Unsurprisingly, Xarifa in 2016 is fitted with an autopilot, as well as manual helm.

The rig has seen significant changes, with each of Xarifa’s three masts extended by Metalships to take into account the weight increase post-refit, compared to her sparse interior at launch. The fore mast was extended by 13ft 2in (4m), the main mast by 14ft 5 in (4.4m) and the mizzen by 5ft 3 in (1.6m). Originally Xarifa carried a gaff rig. Her sail area at launch is unknown, but it will have been greater than the subsequent marconi conversion. The new rig extension gives her a huge sail area of 1,386m2 (14,918sq ft), still not quite as much sail as at launch, but more effective. Her cream sails were

by North. Interestingly, there is an ongoing project run

by Dykstra Naval Architects that will see Xarifa revert to her original gaff rig in the near future.

Down on deck, the Lewmar hydraulic powered winches (in bronze) offer a whopping pulling capacity of 7000kg. (For those used to the manual kind, this means that each one can pull a load of 7 tonnes in first gear.)

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CLASSIC YACHTS 2021

ABOVE LEFT TO RIGHT: the new deckhouse was covered with teak; the owner’s architect wife did much of the interior design

There are two winches at each mast base for halyards, reef lines and topping lifts, and two at each side for sheet handling. The blocks have also been renewed, using wooden blocks with a bronze body and roller bearing sheaves, made by Ording.

On the foremast, two hydraulic furlers take care of the jib and yankee, while the two halyards are fixed to hydraulic tensioners in order to release the luff when not in use.

Stainless steel standing rigging has been renewed. The mizzen mast had been supported longitudinally by one backstay but, as the mizzen sail leech interferes with the backstay, new running backstays have been added that can be used during races. Dyneema ropes with classic appearance have been used for the running rigging.

The original wooden booms have been peeled and varnished. The Oregon pine used to build them was in immaculate condition. The bowsprit appeared to be in good condition but had deteriorated badly. The new one is steel covered with wood. The boat’s length was maintained, to achieve an LOA of 163ft 9in (49.9m), which is good for superyacht mooring spaces that are often up to 50m.

Down below, today Xarifa can accommodate 12 guests, with nine crew, all cabins fitted out to the most luxurious standard, including internal phones, satellite television, full climate control and en suite bathrooms.

The owner’s wife, an architect, played a key role in the interior design and was able to make specific requirements at an early stage that made life easier for the refit team.

Barracuda’s Toledo said: “When Xarifa was built, she was very practical. Down below, there were a few officers’ cabins, but the rest was an open space for crew and sails. The image of the classic yacht today, with glossy and curvy woodwork, is not always correct. Back then people were producing very simple, plain white interiors.

“A unanimous decision was made not to overcomplicate her interior or make her too ‘rich’.

Instead we opted for a look and feel that closely

XARIFA

Xarifa’s varied history Most classic yachts can look back on a colourful history, but Xarifa’s has taken her between continents, around the world, from private to commercial ownership and from newspaper front pages to near dereliction. Her first owner, Singer, sold her in 1930 to British newspaper magnate Edward Mauger, who three years later was to become Baron Iliffe. He changed the port of registry from New York to Southampton and raced her regularly. She became the platform for many society parties of the day. Camper & Nicholson bought her from Mauger in 1934 and sold her on two years later to the Baron Louis Empain, the youngest son of Baron Edward Empain, a wealthy industrialist from Belgium. Again, she BEKEN OF COWES

was renamed, this time L’Oiseau Blanc. She crossed the Atlantic to Montreal and made several cruises around Europe. Ten years after her launch, she was still turning heads. The magazine Wandelear et sur l’Eau, the official organ of the Belgian Yachting Federation, said of her in March 1936: “The yacht is certainly one of the most beautiful afloat. By acquiring this beautiful craft, Baron Louis Empain definitely moves at the head of Belgian yachting.”

Research suggests that in the final year of war, she was used on the sikre ruter (secure routes), in a pact between the Danish

But he didn’t hang on to her for long. Around 1938, the yacht

Resistance and the Germans, shipping German goods and

was sold again, this time to Georgette Malou, who now called her

weapons for the Resistance from neutral Sweden. Things were

Georgette. The following year yet another new owner renamed

about to become more settled and perhaps one of the happiest

her Capitana, in honor of Columbus’ flagship, and re-rigged her as

periods of the boat’s history began in 1951 when she was bought

a barquentine, using her to recreate Columbus’ voyages to

by Austrian scientist and voyager Hans Hass, known by some as

America, setting off days before the outbreak of the Second

the Austrian Cousteau. Haas bought her for 120,000 Swiss Francs

World War. Capitana was registered for trade use between New

and spent another SFr600,000 restoring her. He gave her back her

Bedford and Cape Verde in what was known as the Brava Packet

original name and used her on marine research trips around the

Trade routes, before falling into disrepair. In 1943 she was

world, especially through the Pacific and Indian oceans. After a life

acquired by an Icelandic merchant called Magnus Andersson in

circling the globe, she was taken to Italy for a refit by new owner

New Bedford, who took her to Reykjavik to be used for the

multimillionaire Carlo Traglio in 1960, then to Port Hercule,

glamorous task of fish transportation between Iceland and

Monaco, where she remained until 2012. It was then that Xarifa’s

Europe. He later converted her into perhaps the most handsome

current owner acquired her and set about a full, no-expense-

fishing vessel of all time.

spared refit.

XARIFA DESIGNER

Joseph M Soper BUILDER

J Samuel White & Co BUILD/REFIT

1927/2014 LOA

163ft 9ins (49.9m) BEAM

29ft 3in (8.5m) DISP

270 tonnes SAIL AREA

14,918sqft (1,386m2) 22

CLASSIC YACHTS 2021

resembled her original style, comprising dark mahogany furniture set against simple white planking and cabins that are symmetrical in shape and size. We had to merge the needs of a luxury megayacht with a respect for her original design and I think that has been achieved.”

Varnished wooden floors have been fitted throughout the vessel and teak furniture was built according to the original design.

The original portholes have been modified to be fixed instead of opening. To meet new class requirements, some new portholes, similar to the originals, have been installed at the forward area.

Would the onlookers in 1927 have approved of her modernisation? Would they have recognized her still, nodded at her beauty in the same way they did as she slid down the tracks on her launch day and settled into the waters of the Medina for the first time? They might pause over the new materials, they might scratch their heads over the fact that she boasts onboard wi-fi and a 14ft tender with something called a waterjet. They might raise an eyebrow, or even two, at her charter price of $80,000 per week in low season. But they would surely celebate the yacht’s immaculate refit and her return to sailing form, in the hands of a passionate owner who has ensured her survival for many years to come.

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SCUD MISSILE

Herreshoff’s newly-restored Bar Harbor 31 Scud lit up the classic racing scene in the Med with a double win at Cannes and Saint-Tropez WORDS STEFFAN MEYRIC HUGHES PHOTOGRAPHS JAMES ROBINSON TALYOR

SCUD

I

n the late summer and early autumn of 2020, the clouds briefly parted between lockdowns and the world stepped outside for a short spell of freedom. Throughout spring and summer, boatbuilding and restoration work had continued around the world behind closed doors at a steady, uninterrupted pace, but sailing had been put on hold.

Amid a series of ever more affirmative press releases (“We will go ahead!”) from the biggest beano of them all – Voiles de Saint-Tropez – a lean shape was taking form in a shed on the Tuscan coast.

In the end, the press releases came true, and that shape, a newly-rebuilt Bar Harbor 31 called Scud, was ready. With the huge rig, low freeboard and menacing, low-profile upperworks, she looked dangerous, and so she proved to be, winning first in class at Régates Royales in Cannes in September. Straight after that she reprised the feat at Saint-Tropez.

But is Scud, which had only emerged a few months earlier from her chrysalis, really the fastest classic yacht in the Med? Or even the world? The results suggest she was in 2020, but of course, it comes down as much as anything to the rating given by the Comité International de la Méditerranée (CIM); and the race crew on the day.

Those factors played to Scud’s advantage, not only in racing, but, in the case of a good rating, her survival.

In 1902, when they were designed, the Seawanhaka Rule to which they were optimised (which penalised LWL length but didn’t take into account the LOD) was “in vogue” and the “scow-like hull of the Bar Harbor with its long overhanging bow and stern was a result,” writes US sailing authority Maynard Bray.

The Bar Harbor 31s were in fact the last Seawnhaka yachts to leave the Herreshoff Yard before the Universal Class (think J Class) took over. Even with that end-of-era provenance, Scud, in common with so many designs from Nathanael Herreshoff, has a cleanliness and modernity of line make her look three decades younger than her age.

Under the water, the keel starts so far aft, with the bows so fine, and the relatively broad, typically American beam, that the boat is halfway between her era and ours. Above decks, the low cabin trunk and square windows are another Herreshoff motif. The gaff rig is the only clue to the fact that she is in fact 118 years old, launched in the

26

CLASSIC YACHTS 2021

ABOVE: Scud sailing 117 years ago off the Maine coast BELOW: Mozzino and Alberto – “fine carpenters”

spring of 1903, along with 12 sister ships, all built over one winter at the Herreshoff Manufacturing Company, then with a 300-strong workforce.

So Scud is the product of, by almost any metric, the greatest of all naval architects; not only that, but ‘the Wizard of Bristol’ (Rhode Island) was at the peak of his career and had, by 1903, designed and built 169 steam vessels, and invented, patented or improved many of the ideas that remain central to sailing even today. In 1903, the year Scud and her sisters were built, all eyes were on another yacht leaving the yard that year: the fourth consecutive Herreshoff-designed America’s Cup defender, the unsurpassed extreme machine Reliance, 144ft (43.9m) on deck with 16,000sqft (1,500m2) of sail, and so finely built that even the wooden cleats were hollowed out to save weight. Later that year, a few hundred miles down the coast, Wilbur and Orville Wright invented powered flight. From such a man, in such an era and place, the vigorous novelty of Scud makes sense.

HERRESHOFF’S FORGOTTEN CLASS While some of Herreshoff’s other classes, like the New York 30s and ‘fighting’ New York 40s, even his more modest designs like the 12½ dayboat, have come to define his legacy, The Bar Harbor 31 class was, until those two regattas in the Med, something of a forgotten class. Even at their outset they were, according to Maynard Bray “not unusual boats for their day and, in fact, were about the smallest sailing craft – at just over 30ft LWL – that could lay official claim to the title of ‘yacht’ and thus be eligible to race and cruise with major yacht clubs.” The Bar Harbor 31 was not dissimilar to the Buzzard’s Bay 30, but with a fixed keel rather than centreboard, and 9in (23cm) longer.

The owners were wealthy east coast yachtsmen, many with holiday homes in Bar Harbor, Maine. It was not the most cohesive class: these are challenging boats with a huge sail plan, and history records scattered finishes, collisions and even two entire losses of rig. Within about five years, all but two of the yachts had changed hands and left Maine. In time, auxiliary engines and bermudan rigs began to show up. Some were even naturalised into the new Universal P Class but “never made much of a

SCUD

ABOVE LEFT TO RIGHT: Oregon pine bowsprit; heart-shaped thimble; mast hoops; oak tiller

CLASSIC YACHT 2021

27

©ALEX PANZERAI JRTPHOTO

©ALEX PANZERAI JRTPHOTO

SCUD

showing since their ratings were so high for their speed.”

Despite the clear racing pedigree, the generous beam and depth of the boats meant that they later made good cruising yachts, after conversion to bermudan rig.

The second quarter of the 20th century was tough on the class, as it was on all boats, continues Bray, citing the depression, the 1938 ‘New England’ hurricane and then, of course, the war. Many of the class were lost.

When Federico Nardi, manager of the Italian boatyard Cantiere dell’Argentario, discovered Scud around the turn of the millennium, it was a only a happy accident caused by a trip to see anther boat (the S&S yawl Sonny) in Maine.

“I noticed Scud in the corner of the shed and went inside to look” he remembers. “The boat was a disaster but I went inside and made a short video to record the moment.” This is where the seed was sown. “I knew this would rate well and be a very fast boat” he said. A shaky, handheld video clip shows Federico’s excitement at the find, and the boat does, indeed, look disastrous; the interior is like something from a frightening dream.

At that time, Federico could not find anyone to take on the project. Soon after that, boatbuilder Brian Pope took Scud to England and found a Belgian buyer, who transported Scud back to Belgium. In the autumn of 2017, Federico managed to find the boat and its new owner in Gent. The project had been started with the disassembly of all the interior fittings and the removal of some of the hull planking. By the time Federico arrived on the scene, the boat had become home to a group of travellers. “They were very helpful in the sense that they helped to keep the boat alive,” said Federico.

By this point, Prada CEO and yacht collector Patrizio Bertelli had expressed interest in buying Scud and having her restored. It seems the Belgian owner had bitten off more than he had realised with this job, and Federico had to gently persuade him that it could never happen.

He told the owner: “If Mr Bertelli takes on the boat, he will get it going again and then you’ll be able to go sailing on it as his guest. It’s the only way this boat will ever sail again.”

The owner saw sense and sold Scud, which then made the overland journey to Cantiere dell’Argentario, a world-class boatyard at the foot of the pretty hill town of Porto Santo Stefano on Italy’s Tuscan coast. The yard specialises in the sort of glamorous yachts that go on to become well28

CLASSIC YACHTS 2021

ABOVE LEFT: Racing in the Med, 2020 ABOVE RIGHT: Three Herreshoff yachts together at Cannes

BELOW: As found in a shed in Maine

known in Mediterranean regattas. Past restorations include the Charles Sibbick fin-keeler Bona Fide, the famous S&S classics Dorade, Stormy Wheather, Nyala and others; and the Herreshoff New York 30 Linnet.

From floating on a barge on a Belgian canal, the boat now found herself in safe hands, and with a fresh timber delivery from John Lammerts van Bueren at Touchwood BV, things were progressing nicely.

Enter one of the project’s great assets, Kurt Hasselbach at MIT, Herreshoff’s alma mater and a repository of his design work. “He gave us a lot of help, and all the drawings we needed,” said Federico.

Herreshoff, perhaps surprisingly for a designer of such technical marvel, was a half-modeller rather than a draughtsman, and would rely on his boatbuilders to take a table of offsets from his models to make that threedimensional dream into a two-dimensional reality on the loft floor. Unless you are holding the Wizard’s half-model in your hand, any drawing that you see will probably be at least once removed from his primal intention. Enter a young naval architecture graduate of naval architecture, Irene Focarile. “Young girl, very clever” said Federico.

“So I gave her Herreshoff’s old notebook, containing the offsets for 46 sections, all with amendments and said ‘go for it’.” Two months later, she returned with Scud in two-dimensional form, of vital importance before the project could begin in earnest, given how much her shape had deteriorated over the years.

Many of Herreshoff’s sailing yachts have kept their shape relatively well over the years. This is a legacy of the way they were built – ‘engineered’, some might say.

Herreshoff yachts were commonly planked in two layers of carvel with the seams offset to create a stiff, waterproof shell; and with an internal skeleton of bronze diagonal ‘strapping’. Herreshoff specified four bronze straps on each side of the Bar Harbor 31s, each one connecting the hull to the keel to augment the keelbolts’s holding strength, and mortised into the fabric of the interior. But after 118 years, even Scud had succumbed to the slow gravitational pull of age.

The hull was rerebuilt: the new keel and steam-bent timbers are in white oak. The two planking layers are in white Atlantic cedar, 5/8in (16mm) for the outer layer and 1/2in (13mm) for the inner. Deck beams and bilge stringers are in Oregon pine. The new deck is 1 1/8in (29mm) yellow cedar. Inside, it’s a different story.

C/O FEDERICO NARDI

MIT

TOP: Interior of Scud looking forward. ABOVE LEFT: Old drawings and, RIGHT, a CAD render CLASSIC YACHTS 2021

29

SCUD

“Fortunately we saved most of the original interior in white pine, renewing some of the missing parts in the same timber and painted the finish white; and the beautiful hanging knees in varnished hackmatack are off the original boat,” explained Federico. All spars are in Sitka spruce varnished with Epifanes mono-component coating. The topsides are in tough, two-pack Awlgrip.

As with so many other big rebuilds it would have been cheaper to build new. “It takes much longer to build a boat on top of an existing one!” says Federico.

Given her age (118), Scud was originally engineless, meaning the new Yanmar diesel could go anywhere in the boat. The team chose the centre, under the saloon table. “It gives the best weight distribution,” says Federico. Traditional wisdom has rejected this advantage against the drawback of noise and vibration in the accommodation, but smaller, quieter engines are beginning to swing the balance of the argument. And Scud, although she appears in these photographs before interior finishing, now has a comfortable interior with standing headroom, a private heads and small galley.

Metal fabricator Jim Reineck & Son produced all the hardware “with the sole exception of the round, forward-facing cabin windows that for some reason were not stolen from her,” said Jim. This was done using the same drawings from MIT sourced by Kurt. It’s a long list that includes all the blocks, deck hardware including the cleats, flange eyes, the mainsheet traveller, main boom gooseneck, headsail fairleads, bow and quarter chocks. There was also a new stainless steel main shaft for the original anchor capstan, all rudder hardware 30

CLASSIC YACHTS 2021

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: Piero and his plane; the ceiling going in; hackmatack hanging knees; offering up a plank

SCUD LOA

49ft (15m) LWL

30ft 9in (9.4m) BEAM

10ft 5in (3.2m) DISP

10 tonnes SAIL AREA

1,425sqft (132.4m2)

including the rudder stock and deck bearing, the tiller socket and the rudder bearing straps on the rudder and deadwood. And finally, there was the spar hardware including the mast spreaders, the mast and boom flange eyes, the martingale spike and bowsprit end fitting. “I am probably forgetting something though,” he added.

All the parts that would originally have been wrought iron, like spreaders and the martingale, were redesigned in bronze, and the blocks run on ball-bearings, Reineck’s USP that translates into less friction and more speed.

After Guido Cavallazzi of North Sails had made the new sails, Scud was relaunched in March 2020 into the silence of a pandemic. By Régates Royales in September, she was ready with a crack crew of Olympians and other top sailors, along with a good rating from CIM, which values originality; and Scud’s broad beam and modern underbody are as designed. The Bar Harbor 31 still sounds as terrifying as those wealthy Maine holidaymakers found a century ago. “With no winches, she’s really above the limit of manual handling,” says Federico. “The big genoa creates a terrific strain. And we fly an authentic, poled-out spinnaker, for which you get a two per cent handicap advantage. It’s worth it... but you really earn it.

It’s hard, and you need good crew to handle her.” Today, Scud is one of four class survivors: Indian is indoors at the Herreshoff Museum; Desperate Lark is cruising with a bermudan yawl rig. And lastly, Joker is for sale as a project at Artisan Boatworks. There’s a gauntlet for you.

The author would like to thank Federico Nardi, Alec Brainerd, Jim Reineck and, indirectly, Maynard Bray for the story of Scud and history of the Bar Harbor 31 class.

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THE

PERFECT LINE The S&S Circe was the toast of New England in the 1950s, but later hit the headlines for the wrong reasons.

Now she’s in good hands again and is a stunning sight on the Med scene

WORDS ROB PEAKE PHOTOGRAPHS JAMES ROBINSON TAYLOR

CIRCE

W

here do you take a Sparkman & Stephens yawl if you want to really test her against her kin? If you want to put her up against the best and most competitively sailed and also most immaculately looked after boats bearing S&S lineage, you go to the Med. There you’ll find your pride and joy lined up on a quay somewhere alongside Blitzen, Stormy Weather, Argyll, Manitou and Skylark among others. Imposing company, given their long race histories and professional standard of maintenance today. They effectively form a class within a class, probably deserving of its own Sparkman & Stephens trophy.

Among the S&S royalty tied up stern-to at Cannes’ Régates Royales a few summers ago, there was a newcomer. Kind of a newcomer – she’s been around since 1950 and had a few victories to her name over the years, including Fastnet line honours in 1951 and class win in the 1954 Newport-Bermuda. Circe was designed

by Olin Stephens in 1949 and built at the Plym yard in Sweden. Launched into Sweden’s post-war yachting scene, she won the Gotland Runt (Round Gotland) race in 1950 and has led an international and colourful life since then, including being owned by a Hollywood star and almost being burned to ashes by a disillusioned lover – haven’t all the great boats such tales to tell?

STOCKHOLM ROOTS Circe, the goddess of magic, an enchantress before whom men fall bewitched and helpless, is possibly the most apt name for a wooden yacht ever. The Greeks pronounce both c’s in the word with hard k’s, the Italians use a ‘ch’ sound and others say it with two soft s’s. It’s not recorded what particular consonant was uttered as the bottle smashed over her bow at Neglinge, in Saltsjöbaden near Stockholm, but her launch will have been quite a moment, even for the experienced builders of the Plym yard. August Plym, who founded the yard in the 1890s, died in 1924, but the high quality of work that he’d been known for had continued. Plym had developed new construction methods at the turn of the century and introduced strict quality control, employing the best men and often building to his own designs. After his death, his son Carl Plym took over, but six years later he died in an aircraft accident. Bengt Plym and his brother Gustav Plym then took on the business and became known for building yachts by well-known designers, including Knud H Reimers, Tore Holm and Olin Stephens.

Perhaps a dozen Sparkman & Stephens designs were built at the Plym yard, including Refanut, Ballad and Barracuda II. At the time, European yards, particularly Scandinavian yards, were favoured by some Americans who wanted to have a yacht built. The owners enjoyed an economic advantage, as well as the Scandinavian build quality and the sail home.

Despite the Plym yard’s impeccable reputation, the ever fastidious Rod Stephens visited Circe’s build to ensure things were being done as he’d want. Clearly, they were. Circe was said to be one of the strongest yachts of her time and Rod later wrote that boats built at the Plym yard didn’t need bilge pumps.

It was an era when S&S could do no wrong. Their boats were fast, beautiful and seaworthy, proven time 34

CLASSIC YACHTS 2021

ABOVE L-R: Marvin Buurman owned her in California; current owner Theo Danel

and again in race victories and long-distance cruises.

Circe was every inch an S&S thoroughbred. Her full transom, carvel mahogany planking bent over 2½in (64mm) frames, teak deck, bronze fastenings and floors, gave her strength. Her wineglass bottom, masthead rig, powerful mainsail and what was reportedly the world’s largest Dacron genoa, by Ratsey & Lapthorn, over a narrower beam than some of Olin’s designs of the period, gave her speed.

Her first owner was Carl Hardeberg, a pilot and aeroplane salesman who commissioned the boat in 1948.

An enthusiastic yachtsman, he envisaged Circe as a fast offshore cruiser, but raced her widely in her first years afloat, including in the 1951 Fastnet, where she took line honours. Victory on corrected time went to Owen Aisher and Yeoman III by more than five hours, but Circe had shown her pace against a competitive fleet, and proved her seaworthiness in severe weather that caused many retirements and a dismasting.

Hardeberg was forced to sell due to financial difficulties in 1951 and she passed into the hands of Carl Hovgard, a prominent Wall Street financier. In 1954, Hovgard made headlines when he rescued the Nevins yard in New York from closure, buying it for $900,000 to run as a “breakeven hobby,” according to Time magazine, and because he wanted a suitable berth for Circe.

The boat took part in various New York Yacht Club events and in the biennial Newport-Bermuda Race of 1954, where she won her class against other S&S designs Stormy Weather, Bolero and Argyll. A year after that, she headed back to Swedish waters in the Transatlantic Race from Newport to Marstrand. Seven yachts took part, all with amateur crews. A Sports Illustrated photo caption showing Circe before the race says: “She is a dangerous competitor on a spinnaker run or on a beat to windward. Her fast hull and efficient yawl rig give her relatively high handicap. Nevertheless, she is considered the boat to beat.”

A New York Times preview of the race calls Circe “as slick a yacht as you are ever likely to see”. The article also mentions Circe’s cook: “He has canned chicken, canned turkeys, canned hams, steaks and such things aboard. He also has two weeks’ supply of iron rations, but hopes he does not have to use them.”

He didn’t. Circe came home in second place.

Her racing career continued in style on both sides of the Atlantic, with Hovgard, who became Commodore of the American Yacht Club in the late 1950s, sailing her to victory in many southern New England events.

CIRCE

By the 1960s, however, she was getting on for a race yacht and Circe’s suitability as a capacious and fast cruiser came to the fore. She changed hands more than once and was moved to the US west coast by an Italian physicist, Giannini, in the 1970s, to be used as family cruiser out of San Diego YC, later going up for auction and becoming a liveaboard boat, pampered by her owners but covering relatively few sea miles.

FIRE AND REBIRTH “I was coming across from Catalina on a Rhodes yawl and this other boat was coming up, catching us. Nobody ever caught us! What was this boat?” Marvin Buurman never forgot his first sight of Circe. When his attention was taken some years later by an online news story about a serious boat fire in California, he didn’t have to look twice to know it was her again. Circe had spent time ashore and at one point was almost bought by

ABOVE: an attractive interior; racing at Cannes

naval architect Doug Peterson. Instead she went to someone who planned to sail her around the world. The trip never happened, but he undertook a major restoration, carried out by Taylor and Snediker in Mystic Seaport, Connecticut. This was an extensive 15-month job, starting in December 2000, that took the boat back to her bare essentials and built her up again for the kind of offshore voyaging she’d been built for.

It was shortly after this work, in 2002, that Olin Stephens attended a winter meeting of the Sparkman & Stephens Association at Mystic Seaport, where he and guests saw four S&S designs – Circe, Bolero, Comet and Brilliant. A report of the day records: “When pressed later at lunch, Olin offered that of the four yachts toured that day, Circe is the one he would choose to have as his personal yacht.”

His chosen one she may have been, but the ups and downs of a classic yacht are many. She changed hands CLASSIC YACHTS 2021

35

CIRCE

again, selling to a Hollywood actress, and it was on one unhappy night in 2007 that a ‘domestic fire’ broke out and Circe was almost reduced to ashes.

Marvin Buurman recalls: “I read a story about this boat fire. It showed a photo of the bow, but I just knew it was the same boat that had sailed right past us all those years ago. I called the boatyard and they said it was totalled. When I walked on board, she was black, but not destroyed. It just looked bad.”

She went up for auction and Buurman put in a bid.

“Six whole months went by and they emailed me.

‘Your bid’s been accepted.’ I went: ‘Oh no!’”

But Circe had gone to the right man. An amateur woodworker, Buurman took on much of the job himself.

“I cared more than anyone I could hire!” All fire damage was repaired, much woodwork was replaced and everything was repainted.

“I relaunched her within a year and a half,” says Buurman. “The interior still had burn marks, but we went and raced her right away. We picked up a scratch crew, took her out and won.

“Three months later I was reading the paper and there was an obituary of one of the crew from that day. The obituary mentioned that he’d sailed on Circe. That’s the thing about these boats. It’s an honour to sail on them.”

TO THE MED At the helm off Cannes sits Theo Danel. Cigar in mouth, sunglasses on, barefoot and in a light blue collarless shirt bearing a Circe moniker, he eyes the other S&Ss jockeying for position on the start line.

Danel has an artistic background – “I paint and I write,” he says – and he has lived the itinerant life of the skipper, helming yachts in and around the Med circuit, 36

CLASSIC YACHTS 2021

ABOVE The 1949 design

by Olin Stephens

CIRCE LOA

56ft 10in (17.3m) LWL

40ft 4in (12.3m) BEAM

11ft 9in (3.6m) DRAUGHT

8ft (2.4m) SAIL AREA

1,378sq ft (128m2) DISPLACEMENT

20 tons (44,800lbs)

for 25 years. He’s also a naval architect, having enrolled in the respected Westlawn Insititute correspondence course for naval architecture and graduated after four years of evening study aged 36.

“At a certain point you’re doing the varnish but your mind is not developing!” he says. “When you understand the maths behind the designs it gets much more interesting.”

Danel put his new-found knowledge into practice, drawing a 48ft (12.8m) Spirit of Tradition gaff sloop – a foam-core composite hull with inverse bow that rates well under both IRC and CIM. “It was radical when we launched it and it still is,” he says.

Meanwhile he restored the Fife Iona, a delightful 25ft (7.6m) Belfast Lough One Design also on the water at Cannes, and he carried on skippering, among his charges the S&S Zwerver II, which by coincidence is a sister ship to Circe, built in 1954 on the same lines but as a sloop, not a yawl.

Perhaps it was his close knowledge of Zwerver II that caused him to pause over a yacht-for-sale advertisement two years ago. “It was the perfect line,” he recalled. “I’m not particularly an S&S man, more Fife or Estlander! But on this yacht Olin had continued the bow and the stern a little bit and bumph, it’s the perfect boat. We got attracted to it and we went to have a look, in California. I said beforehand: ‘We are going to sit on the boat and if it feels okay, then okay. If it doesn’t feel okay, we walk away.’”

It was okay. He and the ex-owner with his son sailed the boat to Mexico, then shipped her to Fort Lauderdale, put her back in the water for a week and then shipped her to the Med. From a base in Saint-Tropez, he took her back to bare wood below the waterline and applied an epoxy coat, then raced her twice, at Imperia and Cannes.

“With that information, knowing how the boat behaved, we started work,” he says. New sails were designed, then redesigned, paint and varnish was stripped, systems were overhauled, the engine was serviced, new instruments were fitted, the aluminium mast was stripped back, lightened and repainted, water tanks were replaced with bags, solid stanchions were taken off, bunks were refitted down below, a heads was removed and everything was reupholstered.

Danel says: “We have tried to give her a little bit of a different character than the other S&S yawls, just a bit off, but very sensitive, not too aggressive. Even down to the sail numbers – they’re grey, not black. If there’s a lot of input on a boat, your eyes are always looking, but the less you have to look at, the nicer it is. It calms the eye.”

On the water at Cannes, Circe is a magnificent sight.

She was designed without reference to any rating rule.

The Cruising Club of America rule might have encouraged a broader beam than her 11ft 9in (3.6m), while the RORC rule might have seen her longer-ended and with a lower rig, as a Yachting World review of the ‘New Yachts of the Year’ noted at the time. “Olin just wanted the best boat he could do,” says Danel.

Certainly, the boat is surrounded by photographers on the Cannes town quay. How did she do on the water?

When Circe crosses the finish line, Danel looks around and asks: “Where is everybody?” We’re alone bar the committee boat. The entire Med fleet is in our wake.

Circe has shown her colours again.

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STUNNING CLASSICS FOR SALE FROM EDMISTON

38

MOONBEAM OF FIFE Known as one of the most successful and most recognised classic yachts in the world, Moonbeam of Fife excels on the regatta circuit, consistently coming in the top three.

Commissioned by the lawyer Charles Plumtre Johnson, the 30-metre sailing yacht was built in 1903 by William Fife as Moonbeam III. She was the third in a series of four Moonbeams and hull number 491 to leave the Fife yard and is considered to be one of the most acclaimed classic yachts around.

Not only a fast cruiser, she is proven on the regatta circuit, regularly taking part in the Mediterranean regatta scene, where she has taken part in virtually every major Mediterranean regatta on the circuit, coming in top three since 2001. She has undergone numerous refits over the years.

OUTLAW

CANDIDA

It was in 1963 that Outlaw led the British team to victory in the

One of the last of the great 23m Class racing yachts, Candida

Admiral’s Cup under the ownership of Sir Max Aitkin, a

was built to the International Rule, and along with Astra and

well-known figure in offshore racing. Twenty years later this

Cambria is a well-known addition to the Mediterranean

famous yacht was rescued by a 30-year-old sailing enthusiast,

classic yacht circuit. These fine yachts were later converted to

and a new life started for this Souter’s built Illingworth &

the J Class rule, and competed against such vessels as

Primrose designed racing machine. After an 18-month rebuild,

Endeavour, Velsheda, and Shamrock V. It is a testament to the

she headed south, first to Portugal, then on to the Med, where

quality of construction of the time that all these vessels are

in 1989 she found her new home on the Côte d’Azure. For the

still going strong today. Candida’s interior includes a main salon

last 32 years she has been raced and cruised by that same

complete with a dining area and coffee table which can

owner, between Southern Italy and the Balearics, taking part in

comfortably welcome up to six guests. The en-suite twin

all the major Mediterranean regattas. She won the overall

master cabin features a skylight, a central desk and a

Classic Prada Cup in 2000 and the Panerai Trophy in 2005, as

dressing table, while the en-suite twin guest cabin offers good

well as many other more recent victories.

storage facilities.

CLASSIC YACHTS 2021

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FEI SEEN

RUGOSA

The 30-metre ketch motor sailor Fei Seen was built in 1961 by

This classic sailing yacht, last refitted in 2007, has proven herself

the renowned German shipyard Abeking & Rasmussen, using

as both a family cruiser and an accomplished racer. The

the finest materials. This beautiful luxury sailing yacht was

21.94-metre yacht was built in 1926, a New York Yacht Club 40,

originally commissioned by an US Admiral who sadly died one

the most coveted model in a distinguished line of Nathanael G

year later, she was then purchased by the Carghill family,

Herreshoff NYYC One-Design classes. Uniquely, Rugosa was

owners of the Carmac range of motor yachts. Fei Seen is the

built as a yawl, and has the potential to beat the existing NY40s

epitome of the heavy Philip Rhodes motor-sailor, perfect for

that successfully compete on the Mediterranean circuit, namely

comfortable long distance cruising. She can accommodate up

Marilee, Rowdy and Chinook. In her early years, Rugosa won the

to six guests in three pleasant staterooms. Her general layout

1928 Bermuda Race under the ownership of the first of many

suits both deck lifestyle for warmer climates and interior living

owners, Russell Grinnell of Providence, Rhode Island. She went

for periods spent in colder cruising grounds. With her sturdy

on to have notable racing successes before being bought by

centreboard she is ideal for many parts of the world inaccessible

Halsey Herreshoff, grandson of NGH, who has cruised and raced

to deeper draught vessels.

extensively on her in his 30 years of ownership.

THENDARA

TIGRIS

Thendara represents the ultimate in civilised cruising, with a

This classic gaff cutter was built in 1899, a Clyde 20-ton class,

level of ease rarely found on board a classic yacht.

commissioned by the Clyde Corinthian Sailing Club to a design

The story of this elegant vintage yacht begins in 1936, when Sir

by the great Alfred Mylne. Of the five yachts built by Mylne for

Arthur Young, one of Scotland’s leading yachtsmen,

this class, only Tigris survives. She underwent a complete

commissioned the legendary Alfred Mylne to design her.

restoration in 2001 and was most recently refitted in 2014, when

Built and launched the following year by the Clydeside yard of

she was sent to the famous Brittany yard of Chantier du Guip in

Alexander Stephen & Sons, she was an immediate success on

Brest. Renowned for their expertise in all aspects of wooden

the racing circuit, and went on to provide her owner and guests

boat construction, they proceeded to strengthen and upgrade

with many pleasurable years of cruising. In 1993, Southampton

her structure. Work included (but was not limited to) the

Yacht Services carried out a full refit. Her interior design sees a

rebuilding of the stem, the fabrication and fitting of new bronze

main saloon complete with a formal dining area. Finished in

floors, the addition of a new mast step laminated in Iroko with

mahogany panelling, there is an abundance of charming and

stainless steel strengthening, and the rebuilding of parts of the

completely original Edwardian features.

bulwarks. Now for sale for the first time in many years.

CLASSIC YACHTS 2021

39

YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE Fife’s last 2nd Rule 8-Metre sunk in the 1960s. Thanks to an extraordinary project, the boat is sailing again – and she has a twin sister WORDS ROB PEAKE PHOTOGRAPHS BEN MENDLOWITZ

DEFENDER

PETER BRAUNE

T

ake an early morning flight from London to JFK, drive north east for an hour to Oyster Bay in Long Island and you can have the mainsail up on a brand new wooden 8-Metre before most people in the UK have had their first cup of afternoon tea.

It’s a journey between different worlds that provokes a discombobulated shake of the head – the grey of Heathrow and the tranquility of Long Island’s north shore, separated by little more than a transatlantic snooze. But it’s worth it. Oyster Bay is home to Billy Joel, the Seawanhaka Yacht Club and more recently an extraordinary private collection of classic boats. There are Herreshoffs, Fifes and others, all kept in immaculate condition by a dedicated team, racing several times a week through the summer.

Three years ago, the fleet was joined by a sight for sore eyes, a brand new wooden 8-Metre, a replica of a boat designed by William Fife in 1931 for the Canada’s Cup. The boat won a Classic Boat Award in 2015 and has been the object of admiration in boatbuilding and Metre boat circles worldwide. Incredibly, she now has a sister.

An identical 8-Metre, built as a match-racing partner, with the same timber, fittings, hardware, sails and interior.

Apart from the hull colours, only the tiller handles can tell them apart, one being in holly, the other in ebony.

Invader and Defender are a Metre boat event, a near once-in-a-lifetime happening that as wooden boat enthusiasts we should cheer to the rooftops. We covered the first build, Invader, in CB335, but there’s much more to the story, as we found out when we took that morning flight to JFK. The original Invader II was designed and built by Fife in 1931, commissioned by George Gooderham of the Royal Canadian Yacht Club to win the 1932 Canada’s Cup, an event that pitted the US against Canada and which at times drew crowds of up to 20,000. The Cup was raced on Lake Ontario, which is split down the middle by the US/Canada border and with the two rival clubs, the Royal Canadian in Toronto and the Rochester YC in New York State, on opposing shores.

The 1930 event, the first sailed in 8-Metre yachts, had

42

CLASSIC YACHTS 2021

ABOVE LEFT TO RIGHT: the 25ft by 2ft keel in white oak; Wooden Boatworks shipwrights fit Defender’s shutter plank to complete the hull; deck in Alaskan yellow cedar

OPPOSITE: Defender’s handsome interior is kept bare for racing OPPOSITE TOP LEFT TO RIGHT: handrails were as Fife dictated, but in stainless steel; tiller in stainless steel and the dome in Nickel Aluminium Bronze; typical Fife detailing throughout

seen the Royal Canadian lose again to Rochester.

Canadian hopes were high that Mr Fife had provided a winner for the 1932 Cup. Invader II was a sister to Saskia, Fife’s 1930 8-Metre design that would go onto prove so successful. Like Saskia, Invader II was easy on the eye, and coming as she did right at the end of the Second Rule (the Third International Rule was introduced in 1933), she was the sum of everything Fife, then aged 74, had learned in that period. She had a long waterline, slightly more beam, well distributed moderate displacement and moderate sail area. She was an all-rounder, with slippery lines – not much to stop her underwater.

Newspaper cuttings from the time show the tremendous build up to the Canada’s Cup match, with each yacht’s movements followed closely by reporters.

The US defence came in the form of Conewago, drawn by a young designer called Olin Stephens. This was Olin’s first 8-Metre, built in 1930, and in her opening season she had been written off as uncompetitive. Now, however, having won the Rochester trials, she was quite the opposite.

The quadruple whammy of a head-to-head between the designers (“one, a mad young genius, the other, a wise craftsman,” gushed one reporter), as well as between the rival clubs, the countries and two very different skippers filled many column inches in national and local newspapers. “The affair is dramatic even before it has begun,” wrote one. “The arrangement is so pat for drama that it almost seems staged.”

Even Conewago’s new spinnaker, ordered at the last minute and stitched in record time by Ratsey, based in City Island, New York, made headlines. The stage was set for an epic battle.

Off the Port of Rochester at 1pm on a breezy Monday, over a windward/leeward course of 18 miles, the two boats started out evenly paced. The Canadian contingent in a huge flotilla of spectactor boats cheered as Invader II got ahead, but downwind the Americans brought out their new weapon. “Conewago’s big spinnaker pulled like wild horses down the wind,” reported one newspaper afterwards. She took the first victory by 35 seconds.

DEFENDER

BEN MENDLOWITZ

BEN MENDLOWITZ

CLASSIC YACHTS 2021

43

DEFENDER

ABOVE: The original Invader II in one of the many press clippings from the build-up to the 1932 Canada’s Cup.

BELOW: Defender is launched at Wooden Boatworks’ Greenport site in eastern Long Island

PETER BRAUNE

The following day, on a triangular course, Invader II levelled things with a victory of around a minute. It all came down to the third and final race. But it was not to be. A well-sailed Conewago prevailed and the Canadians had to settle for second place again. In a letter to the Rochester YC afterwards, however, Invader II’s owner wrote: “I believe that Invader II is fast enough to win against any 8-M on Lake Ontario, or for that matter anywhere. I feel that unless something radically new is developed, there will be no need for a new challenger should there be a race in 1934.”

And so it was. Two years later the same yachts battled it out again, with the same result. Their names would be etched in Canada’s Cup history.

There was no disgrace for Invader II and she remained on the Great Lakes, often racing in 8-Metre gatherings and other regattas, and becoming a much-loved part of the local sailing firmament. She was skippered by David Howard, a former Royal Canadian YC commodore, from 1945 to 1953, and is well remembered by him and his friend George Cuthbertson, also of the club.

But one night in the mid-1960s, as she was bound south to Florida in poor conditions, disaster struck.

Cuthbertson recalls: “She didn’t get beyond New York and returning home, powering up the Hudson River at night, the skipper saw two lights, one red, one green, and decided to go between. Mistake! Collision with a tug towing several barges.”

Invader II sunk to the bottom of the Hudson River. A great 8-Metre story was over.

Well, not quite. Fast-forward to 2014, when one Bryan Hunt Lawrence, of Oyster Bay, Long Island, began looking for a Fife 8-Metre to rebuild or restore. He turned to Donn Costanzo of Wooden Boatworks in Long Island for advice, and to others, but the quest led nowhere. “Then we got onto this 8-M that had sunk,” recalls Costanzo. “We either had to raise this thing from 225ft (68.6m) of water, or recreate her just the way she was.”

John Lammerts van Bueren, timber supplier and leading light in the International 8-Metre Association, said: “The owner wanted a Fife and to my mind, opting for Invader II was a no-brainer. In the class overall she is regarded as a good design, not with the greatness of an

44

CLASSIC YACHTS 2021

Iskareen, Silja, or Vision, for the simple reason that these boats were campaigned by the best sailors and campaigned hard, winning many prizes. Invader II did not have an owner who raced her as hard as the others and that made her a hidden pearl.”

The recreation of Fife’s ‘hidden pearl’ began in an eastern Long Island potato barn owned by Wooden Boatworks.

From the outset, Bryan Hunt Lawrence’s idea was to build two identical sister boats, to create a match-racing platform for young classic sailors (see panel on p12). Things might have faltered early on when one project partner had to pull out, but Hunt Lawrence simply took on the whole deal himself.

The Wooden Boatworks team had two keels laid out and they bent on all the frames for both boats right away.

From then on, the projects became staggered, with Invader being built first.

Costanzo recalls: “I said to the guys: ‘This isn’t a particularly complicated boat to build, but it’s an exacting boat to build’.”

They stuck to Fife’s scantlings and weight dimensions but had to deviate in choice of wood. May Fife McCallum’s Fast and Bonnie records that Fife used mahogany, spruce, cedar, Oregon larch, American elm, teak, oak, cypress, yellow pine, plywood and ash in the construction of Invader II. Fife also had at his disposal an incredible 88 sets of grown oak primary frames, as good as impossible to source today.

Experience from restoring boats by Long Island designer and builder Gil Smith had shown Costanzo that black cherry was not only a great boatbuilding material, but that it would stand in well for the original’s frames: “It laminates well and is rot resistant, it’s dimensionally stable and has a beautiful hue to it.”

Steam-bent oak intermediate frames to Fife’s method completed the picture down below, with an oak backbone and Douglas fir beamshelf. The boats are planked in Alaskan yellow cedar, supplied by Touchwood BV. Cherry was used again for the cabin coamings up top, the covering boards and king planks. The spars were spruce. She was launched at a small ceremony at Wooden Boatworks’ Greenport site, where she sat perfectly to her lines, partly at least thanks to the much-mourned naval architect Theo Rye, who had recalibrated her waterline for saltwater from Fife’s original’s fresh water commission.

As we let go our swinging mooring at the Oyster Bay Marine Center, the breeze is steady, the water flat and the sun is out. Regular local sailors have the sails up quickly and Defender and Invader pick up the pace and settle into the groove. Looking from one to the other as the sister 8s slide gracefully out past the Seawanhaka Yacht Club, one can’t help but wonder at the dedication to classic revivalism that brought this once-lost design back to life. As a match-racing platform, it surely can’t be bettered. Both Defender and Invader are rock steady over the course of our sail but like all racing 8-Metres they are wet boats in the right conditions. Knowing the

DEFENDER DESIGNER

Fife

BUILDER

Wooden Boatworks, 2016/17 BEN MENDLOWITZ

LOA

MAIN: Defender (foreground) and Invader grace their home waters of Oyster Bay, Long Island ABOVE: Donn Costanzo of Wooden Boatworks

48ft 2in (14.6m) LWL

30ft 8in (9.19m) BEAM

8ft 6in (2.58m) DRAUGHT

6ft 6in (1.98m) SAIL AREA

868sq ft (80.6m2) DISPLACEMENT

8.4 tonnes

ROB PEAKE

DEFENDER

authenticity of the build, it’s quite fascinating to take the tiller and feel the design as Fife intended. Costanzo says: “You have to experience it yourself, the power and how they ramp up real quick, right out of the starting blocks.

They’re beautifully balanced, you only need two fingers on the helm. You know you’re on a real thoroughbred. If you’ve sailed Fife, you’d know and you’d recognise it.”

Even with his 45 years’ experience of working with Fife designs, Costanzo found himself scratching his head at the speed and quality the Fairlie yard worked to. “Fife advertised at the time that if you ordered an 8-Metre, he’d have you rigged and ready to sail on the dock in a month. I don’t even know how the paint dries that fast.

Remember Fife didn’t even have electricity in the yard before about 1933. Plus with that speed and efficiency of work came the quality they achieved. It’s staggering.”

Costanzo’s small team was hardly taking its time, running up both 8s in less than a year each, to the very highest standard. John Lammerts van Bueren remarks: “The joinery is second to none and would have Mr Fife’s approval for sure. The joints and seams fit as if grown together and the attention to detail just blew me away. It was clear that everyone took tremendous pride in building these boats and that lifted the quality to a level you seldom see.”

Invader and Defender are not quite Rule compliant, due to their height of foretriangle and spinnaker. The owner felt the boats could do with a bit more horsepower in the light conditions of Oyster Bay and asked Theo Rye to design the mast and rig accordingly. That, however, is an easy fix if they were ever to race under class rules, 46

CLASSIC YACHTS 2021

CLOCKWISE FROM ABOVE: skipper Peter Brauné with crew Sophie DeLaCour, Justin Corso and Lukas Corso; a Bartel’s furler running below decks to the forestay; well-balanced and easy to helm

something the association would love to see. “Two stunning ambassadors for the 8-Metre class, raced every week,” says van Bueren. “Sure they are missed dearly at the big 8-Metre events but something tells me they will one day join.”

And the race that all would love to watch, of course, would be a Canada’s Cup re-run. Conewago still exists, under restoration in Holland.

“That would be wonderful but first dear old Connie needs to be restored and back in the water,” says van Bueren. “Rumour has it that she will be ready for the 2020 Worlds in Holland. A rematch with Invader would be magic but they are separated by the ocean. It won’t be an easy weekend plan…”

There are other sister 8s. Saskia and Invader II were sisters. So are the Fifes Fulmar and Falcon. Nicholson built several identical twins and even a series of three (Vision, Suzette and Cutty) and they have a fourth sister in Luna which was built 10 years ago. Starling Burgess and A&R built a series of 11 identical 8-Ms. Now we can add Invader and Defender to the list.

In conclusion, perhaps we could borrow a line by the German classic boatbuilder Josef Martin, who in the Tom Nitsch film on the International Rule remarked: “If something looks good because it functions by a rule, then it’s immortal.”

A great design, proven on the race course years ago, has risen again – in duplicate!

Thanks to John Lammerts van Bueren for his help with this article.

Quality Assured!

•Boat painting and varnishing •Bespoke fabrication •Marine engineering •Accident/insurance repairs •Osmosis treatment systems •Teak/synthetic decks laid/restored •Engine repower centre •Bow thrusters fitted •Project management Bucklers Hard 1p (LHG):Layout 1

18/12/20

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Visit our website for•Boat the latest news and and varnishing offers! www.bucklers.co.uk painting •Bespoke fabrication Bucklers Hard Boat Builders Ltd engineering Located•Marine in Bucklers Hard and Hythe Marinas •Accident/insurance repairs Phone (01590) 616214 Email: info@bucklers.co.uk BEAUTIFUL YACHT RESTORATION •Osmosis treatment systems BH Boatyard Services in Hythe Marina (Bucklers Hard Boat Builders) carried out a beautiful restoration programme for a long term customer (of over 19 years) on his newly acquired Freeman Attrill 40 classic motor yacht “Delfino”. Works included a full strip down of all paint and varnish systems, timber •Teak/synthetic decks laid/restored repairs, a new bespoke wheelhouse made and fitted in the joinery shop and a series of fabrication works. Delfino underwent a full transformation from a •Engine repower centre white duckling to a Beautiful Blue Water classic motor yacht over the course of the winter/spring ready for the season with remarkable results as can be seen.

•Bow thrusters The team of craftsmen at BH Boatyard Services have been looking after several of the owner’s boats in thefitted past and were very proud to be running such a fabulous and interesting project. She now sits proudly on The Hamble where she attracts many admiring onlookers •Project management and returns each year for her annual spruce up, when our team of boat builders/joiners, marine painters, engineers and fabricators make sure that she is kept in tip top condition. As with most of our customers there is a bond of trust that has been maintained over years of getting to know theexpert boats and each other.

Friendly staff, advice, Details of boat: Designer Reg Freeman. Builder H. Attrill and Sons Bembridge. Date 1966. Length overall 40 fttrained 0 in / 12.2 m. Length deck 40 ft 0 in / 12.2 m. professionally skilled workforce Length waterline 0 ft 0 in / 0 m. Beam 12 ft 2 in / 3.7 m. Draft 4 ft 7 in / 1.4 m. Displacement 17.7 Tonnes.

Construction Carvel Pitch pine Seasonal Special Offers! planking on oak frames.

Engine 2 x Perkins M130 Total 260 HP.

Visit our website for the latest news and offers! www.bucklers.co.uk

Bucklers Hard Boat Builders Ltd • Located in Bucklers Hard and Hythe Marina Tel: (01590) 616214 • Email: info@bucklers.co.uk Visit our website for the latest news and offers! www.bucklers.co.uk

HOW WE SAVED EACH OTHER A retired special ops man, a lifelong dream and a classic ketch that showed up at just the right time WORDS SAM HAMILTON PHOTOS HENRIK HANSEN

AKELA

L

et no one, least of all this magazine, if only by implication, ever tell you that restoring an old wooden boat is easy. In 2010, Danish man Bendix Sandfoss Laxvig was visiting Copenhagen and spotted a 66ft (20.1m) ketch lying in Frederiksholm Canal. She’d been there for 26 years, letting the elements wreak their havoc on her fabric.

Bendix, a lifelong member of the Frogman Corps (the Danish equivalent of the SBS or Navy Seals), had been sailing since the age of eight, starting with a friend in Optimists out of Elsinor and moving into the yachtracing scene in Denmark, helming everything from Folkboats to X-boats, with some of the country’s most noted sailors. Through all these years, Bendix somehow managed to avoid owning a boat of his own. The dream of boat ownership, however, had been planted in his mind at the age of 25 when, while travelling with the Frogman Corps, the owner of a classic 12-M invited Bendix and some mates aboard for a tour, above and below decks. “There was a soul... and a smell... to it,” he recalls. “I remember thinking, ‘if I get the money when I’m older, I’ll buy a boat just like this’.”

When Bendix visited Copenhagen on that sunny July day and spotted Akela, that time had come – money was tight, but a pension was looming, and there was a new impetus to the timing. “My fiancée was dying,” he said.

“We knew she had only two to four months to live, and I had to find a different way to live. I thought Akela might need a little paint.” It turned out Akela was indeed for sale, but at a price beyond Bendix’s reach; a price, however, that the owner quickly dropped once he realised that Bendix was going to be the man to save the yacht and keep her in her home waters of Denmark.

It’s been said before that boats sometimes save their owners as much as their owners save them, and this was the case with Akela, when Bendix moved aboard for a year to start work bringing her back to the way she was when launched in 1951. His fiancée had died and the project was to prove a great distraction from his grief.

This was the new way of life, and every weekend and holiday for nine years, Bendix would return during shore leave to continue his complete restoration of the yacht.

For the first two of those years, he was informally an

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CLASSIC YACHTS 2021

BELOW LEFT: Bendix with the ‘harpoon log’ for best restoration in 2018 BELOW RIGHT: A snug berth

apprentice to boatbuilder Hugo Hansen in his yard in RØdby, in the Sjaelland region of Denmark. Between them, the two men replaced much of the aft section of the yacht, with Bendix absorbing some of the boatbuilder’s art along with the realisation of the sheer magnitude of the project he had taken on.

A PROHIBITIVELY EXPENSIVE BUILD Bendix was also learning about Akela’s past and what a superlative yacht he had bought himself. “She was built for Sven BØgelund-Jensen, then chairman of the Danish Sailing Union and of the Royal Danish Yacht Club. Her building, coming after the savagery of the war and the paucity of material wealth that followed, “became a much talked about and expensive project that almost made the shipyard go bankrupt.” It seems BØgelundJensen held the high standards suggested by his exalted position in society, and specified a two-inch (50mm) thick hull of Danish larch below the waterline and Cuban mahogany above, with pretty much everything else in teak, including the solid, 40mm (1.6in) thick deck. During construction, the high standards continued, one example being the clothes drawers – they all had to be discarded after BØgelund-Jensen found they were of insufficient depth to stow his shirts in a way that would ensure they remained neatly folded. BØgelund-Jensen ended up parting with DKK500,000 (about £57,000 by today’s exchange rate), an astronomically high price for the time.

The designer, Oscar William DahlstrØm, of dual Finnish and Danish nationality, was well known for his Metre yachts and slimmer skerry cruisers, and even an ice yacht for King Christian X – Denmark’s ruling monarch until 1947. He also drew an 8-Metre cruiser/ racer and a number of coastal and archipelago yachts, but he is lesser known for his bigger yachts, including Akela. DahlstrØm was also in correspondence with the great Scottish designer William Fife in the mid- to late1930s, following the launch of Fife’s Eilean (now best known as ‘the Panerai yacht’) in 1936. The two bear a striking similarity in terms of size, shape and rig – in fact, the only discernible difference that Bendix can see is in the layout of the deck hatches.

ABOVE INSETS: Deckhouse, skylights and deck are all in Burma teak, fastened with bronze screws; full rig; newly varnished wooden blocks made in Marstal Shipyard

AKELA

THE ROYAL YEARS Akela gained status in the Royal Danish Yacht Club, and his royal highness Prince Henrik (1934-2018) would board her every summer for cruises to the islands of LaesØ and Anholdt. During that time, when BØgelundJensen was chairman, Akela was used for representative purposes in the royal yacht club and for the Danish Sailing Union. Portraits of Queen Margrethe and the Prince hang in the saloon as reminders of those halcyon years, and the yacht sails with three stars in her ensign, signifying membership of the royal club.

BØgelund-Jensen kept the boat for a run of 27 years. Then, between 1978 and 2010, she had four subsequent owners. Bendix has been in touch with all of them as part of his research into Akela’s history. By the time 2010 rolled around, and Bendix came into the boat’s life thinking she might need “a little paint”, she was in a sorry state, but at least it seemed BØgelund-Jensen had not wasted his money during 1949-51, when she was built – nor after, when for decades he wintered her annually at Peter Molich’s yard. “The hull was new when the first paint was scraped off,” Bendix recalls.

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CLASSIC YACHTS 2021

ABOVE: The saloon, with black-and-white photos of Queen Margrethe and Prince Henrik – ex-shipmates of Akela – hanging on the wall

STRIP BACK AND START AGAIN Today, aside from the replacement transom and stern section, which had been damaged through previous ownership rather than build or design, Akela remains almost entirely original. No part of the boat remains untouched by the restoration, but mostly it has been a process of stripping and refinishing. Everything above the deck – mast, mizzen, both booms , the bowsprit and all superstructure – were varnished with 12 coats, says Bendix. All running and standing rigging was replaced.

That thick, teak deck, although fundamentally sound, needed complete refastening. Even now, although the boat is as finished as any wooden yacht can ever be – in other words, as finished as the Forth Bridge, or “once you finish, you must start again”, as Bendix puts it – he is still anticipating more cutting of plugs to fit over the holes where the screws secure the deck to the deck beams.

All that work had to be replicated inside the boat, then it was time for a renewal of all standing and running rigging, all new sails (from Quantum), engine overhaul and all-new systems inside and out. Once the major surgery of the new bow section of the

AKELA AKELA, 1951 DESIGNER

BEAM

Oscar William Dahlstrøm

14ft 3in (4.4m)

BUILDER

DRAUGHT

Knud Jensen (of Roskilde)

9ft 6in (2.9m)

LOA

SAIL AREA

Original drawings,

66ft (20.1m)

2,900sq ft (270m )

LWL

DISP

57ft 4in (17.5m)

2

45 tonnes

probably from the mid-30s, when Dahlstrom was designing fast 6-M yachts and Fife-inspired cruisers like the extant Orianda

CLASSIC YACHTS 2021

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AKELA

yacht had been completed with Hugo Hansen during the first two years of the project, Akela’s essentially sound hull meant that she could be launched, and her restoration from 2012 to now has been of the ‘sail in summer, work in winter’ sort. In fact, in 2012, both boat and owner moved to the little harbour town of Kerteminde, and a fairy-tale existence on Fyn, Denmark’s third largest island (after Jutland and Sealand) and the birthplace of Hans Christian Andersen.

The island is also noted for the port of Svendborg, where the boat winters. Svendborg is the epicentre of the Danish classic boat community, and a good place to winter, as the fast tides that squeeze through the area ensure that the water never freezes over.

RACING OR CRUISING “Participation in races and regattas in Denmark and Germany showed how well she sails, but also the necessary adjustments that had to be made in order for the ship to look right and to be manageable.” For racing, the crew aboard Akela numbers eight, all of them friends who come out for their summer holidays to help Bendix campaign the yacht, although she will cruise with just two, as Bendix has disovered with his new fiancée Pernille, also a lifelong sailor. The two of them cruised for four weeks this year under mizzen and genoa, a wellbalanced cruising rig, and one of the great advantages of the ketch-rigged yacht. The manpower is mostly needed to control the mainsail, hence the much larger crew that comes on board for regatta racing.

Below decks there is a lot of room. Akela originally offered 12 berths, but a previous owner’s galley enlargement means that she now has 10: two in the forepeak; four in the saloon; two in a guest room near the galley; plus the very luxurious stern cabin. The boat has a still-original sitting bathtub in her heads, one of the last items on Bendix’s to-do list (having started all over again of course!). “We have everything here onboard – washing machine, even a tumble dryer,” he says.

“There is a magic that happens onboard after 54

CLASSIC YACHTS 2021

TOP, LEFT TO RIGHT: Thomas, boatbuilder at Hugo Hansen Shipyard, making the new stem in oak; the new bow complete, with hole for the new 14ft 9in (4.5m) bowsprit; Hugo Hansen shaping the new bowsprit from four staves of Oregon pine

a couple of days – she’s very special, I can’t explain it. The crew are all so happy when they are aboard Akela.”

With the accommodation and comfort Akela offers, it’s tempting to wonder why Bendix and crew have spent so much time racing around the cans, when the waters of the world await – but it turns out Bendix does have some cruising ambitions. The bucket list, such as it is, includes northern Norway, the UK, Ireland and the Baltic islands.

Bendix, 64, realises that he won’t be young enough to own a boat like this forever.“I feel like 45,” he says, “but I know that when you get to 70, ‘things ‘happen’.” In the meantime, it seems he will make the most of Akela.

STORM STRICKEN The worst moment in Bendix’s story to date came in the winter of 2013, while he was still in the Frogman Corps.

Named storm Bodil was wreaking havoc, and when his phone rang it was the harbourmaster from Nysted, where Akela was moored. The storm had emptied the harbour, sinking her to the bottom with her bulwark trapped under the hammerhead of the pier. She was stuck there when the water returned and was not freed until the hammer was released by chainsaw. The damage caused was considerable, but the silver lining was that Bendix realised how much more beautiful Akela was without her guardrail, which was never reinstated.

The happiest memory so far – “there have been a lot” – was in 2018, at the Royal Regatta in Germany, surrounded by his crew. “We came in third out of 45 boats,” Bendix says. “I’d just put new sails on the Akela, and then we won the prize for best restoration that year – the ‘harpoon log’. The crew was happy and I was newly in love.”

It’s been a long journey for someone who thought that Akela just needed a bit of paint.

It’s always that way with boats. As with all momentous life events – having children, moving house and the like – restoring Akela has been as beneficial to her owner as his attention has been to preserving her for generations to come.

Perfect propulsion for every classic boat

THE propeller for electric and hybrid powered craft

THE REBIRTH OF BEAUTY Laurent Giles didn’t really do ordinary – and after a total rebuild Farida is back to her unique loveliness WORDS STEFFAN MEYRIC HUGHES PHOTOGRAPHS LESTER MCCARTHY

FARIDA

T

he effect that Farida has when you first see her is hard to explain. Even at her mooring in Gosport’s Haslar Marina on a hot day early last summer, there was a buoyancy and purpose and... oh, forgive me, god of clichés... elegance to Farida that compelled the eye to return over and over again. The mysterious allure of this yacht is made all the harder to understand when you consider her designer, Jack Laurent Giles (1901-1969).

Now, Laurent Giles was, without any serious doubt, one of the most innovative British naval architects of all time, a designer who, in his heyday of post-war Britain, knew for many years what it was to stand on the shoulders of the world. His technical brilliance is well documented, and its effects are still with us today. Among his (debatable) firsts were the coachroof-stepped mast, and doghouses for smaller yachts (as on the 30ft/9.1m LWL Etain drawn in 1931).

The names of some of his light, fast racing yachts are household names these days – in the right households of course. Among them are Myth of Malham (with John Illingworth), Gulvain, Sopranino and Lutine. Despite this slew of radical yachts, he is remembered these days mostly for the stout, traditional little Vertue Class, much as NG Herreshoff is most remembered for his H12.5 dinghy; never has Norman Skeen’s great, if terribly sober, truism “originality is rarely the key to success” seemed so true. As much as anything though, Laurent Giles is known today as a designer who pushed the edge of aesthetic sensibilities – many of his designs are divisive.

Whooper, for instance, the 37ft (11.3m) Bermudan sloop of 1939 that has arguably won more races than any other yacht in the classic yacht revival of today (she’d have to share that imaginary podium spot with Dorade), is imbued with a clarity of purpose, but is not picture-postcard pretty. The little Sopranino, while a startling boat of innovative gestation (a dinghy with a lid to ride the great waves of the ocean blue, essentially) fulfilled her brief brilliantly, but these days is poignantly dated, her reverse sheer and curvy lines a portrait of the misplaced optimism of a now-forgotten future.

Farida is different from anything else out there. Her near-plumb sawn-off counter, tumblehome at the stern and lovely doghouse (Laurent Giles certainly knew how to draw doghouses that didn’t look like Thomas the

58

CLASSIC YACHTS 2021

ABOVE LEFT TO RIGHT: tiller rises out of the king plank on the aft deck; owner John Richardson; a new ash block

Tank Engine) work together to form an arresting, handsome silhouette. Her name describes her well. It’s an Arabic word that appears in its native language as a lovely calligraphic squiggle that must reach its English translation through some sort of cultural, as well as linguistic, transliteration because no two definitions are the same. But the words that crop up most often are ‘unique’, ‘precious’ and ‘beautiful’. Farida is all three.

I hopped on, careful and shoeless, and tried to look proprietorial, while waiting for the real owner, John Richardson and photographer Lester McArthy to arrive.

This was to be one of her first shakedown sails after a comprehensive, six-year restoration. Farida was built, optimistically you might think, the same year as Whooper, and launched at the start of World War Two in 1939 by RA Newman and Sons of Poole in Dorset, possibly for Mr Newman himself. He is registered as the owner from launch until 1948, but whether it was for personal use or perhaps built speculatively in yard downtime, is not known. Mr Newman’s address at the time – 76 Chesterfield House, London W1, an elegant apartment block in Mayfair – suggests either was possible. After 1948, Farida went through the usual succession of owners and cropped up in two Beken photos in 1951 and 1952, in the Solent, swooshing along in black and white, with an old-fashioned symmetrical spinnaker flying from the mast. She was owned, at that point, by a Cecil E Donne, of Cowes, Isle of Wight.

FARIDA AND THE GULF WAR Half a century after she was launched, Farida had not changed much but warfare had. You will remember, no doubt, the endless footage of green lights strobing the sky as one Iraqi Scud missile after another was chased and downed by American Patriot missiles, the footage of bombs being laser-guided through air vents in the tops of buildings, General Schwarzkopf (“it’s hammer time”) those wide, low American Humvees, stealth bombers and Saddam Hussein’s moustache. Of course, war is never trivial, but the iconography of that conflict is so powerful because this was the first war that was broadcast live to the world. And out there in the desert, covering it all for ITV, was Michael Nicholson. “I covered that war with an old wooden boat to savour in the few quiet moments between shelling and it was the thought

FARIDA LOA

35ft (10.7m) LWL

27ft 6in (8.4m) BEAM

9ft 6in (2.9m) DRAUGHT

6ft (1.8m) DISPLACEMENT

BEKEN

c8 tonnes

ABOVE: Farida sailing off Cowes in 1952

FARIDA of her and what I was going to do with her when I got back that kept me sane,” Michael told CB years later.

Michael had bought Farida on a very rainy New Year’s Day in 1991, the day before he left for the Middle East.

“I knew that I’d buy her even before I set foot on her.

I thought her shape and sheer were gorgeous,” said Michael. “We’ve had some fantastic sails in her since.

The lovely thing about Farida is she’s heavy – and she’s got this lovely, long keel, and is very well-balanced.”

A LABOUR OF LOVE

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: the new interior, showing engine box with built-in chart table; the mostly original cockpit; detail of the butterfly hatch; new, manual windlass; lifting forehatch with the quality touch of a portlight

and then we were free, out of the rush of the shipping lanes, and close to the coast, unhindered by strife and sailing in a relative sanctuary of peace and silence.

When John found Farida in 2012, he believed, on the strength of a survey, that he’d bought a sound boat, with a corresponding price tag of £35,000. Until, that is, he was sailing around the Portland Bill, known for its fierce tidal race, en route from Yarmouth to Brixham, a year after purchase. “She’s a wet boat anyway, but water was pouring in through the sheerplank. The jibsheet track had been pulled out of the deck. Cleats were pinging out of the mast.

A second surveyor, and boatbuilder John Shaw of JWS Marine, rebutted the first survey. The keel was hanging on by just two bolts. At least 12 hull planks were shot. Frames crumbled in the hand. Cast-iron floors were not even through-bolted to the hull. Farida needed serious work. “It’s frightening now to think of her slamming her way around Portland Bill,” recalled John, an ex-headmaster and experienced solo sailor who clearly does not scare easily. He barely needed to add the words “alone” and “at night” to induce a shiver.

The rebuild took six years in the end, but at least it gave the chance for some revisions to the interior. It’s still mostly original, but John has added some modern touches to make it more liveable. The sole-to-deckhead aft bulkheads have been cut back at chest height, the lost strength replaced with vertical steel poles, the better to gain a sense of space and to let light into the cabin.

The new 28hp Volvo Penta is positioned to give access to the propshaft, with the chart table built into the engine box top. Electrics and batteries are sited neatly in a convenient spot above the engine.

The offset companionway that opens on the starboard side led to “quite a wet situation” in terms of the starboard quarter berth, so John had that moved to the port side. The cockpit is still largely original, notwithstanding a more modern instrument array and

JACK LAURENT GILES

Current owner John Richardson has arrived at the marina by this point, and without much ado – we’d spoken at length about the boat previously, so weren’t strangers to one another – we motored out into Portsmouth harbour, where the summer holidays were had started early. John, an experienced sailor with lots of solo miles under his belt, was unruffled by the light breeze, Force 3 at best, but it was no joke taking the helm of a boat like this, shiny with new varnish, vulnerable with prettiness and loaded with history, into the busy shipping channel. Clearly, you don’t stuff a thing like Farida into the path of an oncoming ferry.

We set off on a long, gentle port tack, the best we could lay to try to clear Gilkicker Point, praying for a little more wind to fill the sails and tilt the deck a bit for the sake of photographer Lester, who was following us in a RIB and driver, very kindly lent to us by Premier Marinas. Behind us loomed a giant ferry bound for the coast of France, while ahead on the starboard side, a ferry bound from the Isle of Wight approached, bellowing her horn in the sour, repetitive little monologue that means, technically at least, “make your intention clear”. For a moment, I assumed it was for us, but it turned out to be some other poor fool afloat on the busy, blue glittering sea that day. The Portsmouth-Ryde hovercraft joined in the mêlée, skimming past in a plume of spray and white noise,

OPPOSITE,

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CLASSIC YACHTS 2021

FARIDA

ABOVE: note the unusual tumblehome on Farida

no guardwire. She’ll reach hull speed very easily.”

After that began the process of getting to know the boat, reefing over and over again to make sure he could do it quickly when needed – important for one who usually sails solo or shorthanded.

Similarly, John put a lot of practice into anchoring: “It can be tricky on your own to make it bite.” And after that, finally, happiness at the end of the road.

Arriving in Studland Bay, near Poole in Dorset, Farida’s birthplace, and one of John’s favourite cruising areas, after a blowy passage, he woke up in a lovely anchorage – “Riddle of the Sands stuff”– and the morning was peaceful, the sunset golden. “Then I knew I was on the right track.” In the future, John would like to cruise to the west coast of Scotland, east coast of Ireland then perhaps foreign shores: the Baltic, Frisians, perhaps the Med after that. The main thing for now is just enjoying ownership. “People often recognise her.

If they don’t, they at least come and say she’s beautiful.”

C/O JOHN RICHARDSON

placement. John clearly believes in the sensible practice (at least on a yacht this size) of furnishing much of a yacht’s interior down its centreline to avoid cramped conditions, so similarly, the heads, which is in the forepeak, has moved from its starboard position stipulated in Giles’ general arrangement, to the middle. The approach has clearly been to create a comfortable, spacious interior by not squeezing too much in, and it has been a success in this area, as well as on deck.

A year after that day in Portsmouth Harbour, John went to work on his snagging list, tackling plumbing, cushions, galley, instruments, swinging the compass, even making the many deck covers himself.

Since then, he has been sailing the Solent, sometimes singlehanded, and reports that the boat is “very, very seaworthy. Bit of a wet boat, drops a rail, feels really secure even though you’re near the water and there’s

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: replanking from the keel up; the new and original planks in contrast; new mahogany transom in place; silicon bronze strap floors ready to be fitted; details of the new deck; the original lead keel, cleaned up and ready for a newly rebuilt Farida to be lowered onto it

Farida’s total restoration The story of Farida’s restoration will be familiar to anyone who

corroded beyond repair, the sheer planks were rotten, the stern

has fallen in love with a beautiful boat only to find their worst fears

was crumbling and many of the deck beams were fractured. She

realised. It started in 2012 when the present owner bought her

needed a new deck and the cabin trunk and coachroof required

from a classic boat enthusiast who had undertaken a restoration

radical surgery. Even the mast was beyond saving and had to be

after a limited fashion. She looked magnificent and there was

replaced. What had begun as a targeted and contained repair

reason to believe she was in good condition. The reality, however,

had turned into a full-scale and unimaginably expensive rebuild.

was very different indeed.

A further survey led to JWS Marine in Southsea being

62

The agony has been real, but the ecstasy is that Farida is now in even better shape than when she was launched from Newman’s

commissioned to replace three planks either side from the

Yard in Poole in 1939. She has been skilfully and beautifully

garboard upwards but as soon as they were stripped away, it

restored using as much of the original as possible and with the

became clear that many of the frames were in poor shape and

very best materials where she is new. She is surely one of the

the floors completely shot. And that was just the beginning. As

finest classics from the Laurent Giles drawing board and once

the boat’s infrastructure was laid bare, more and more came to

again truly ‘unique’ or ‘precious’ as her name suggests. She is

light: the chainplates, iron frames, keel bolts and mast spider were

a thoroughbred and a work of art – and worth every penny.

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DESIRABLES Irresistible objects for the home or boat of the discerning classic sailor

AQUARAMA MODEL “The plaything of the very rich back in the 1950s,” says manufacturer Ionian Interiors. “The Côte d’Azur, Cannes, Monaco, Lago di Como… A beautiful model to remind you of that elusive dream.” £545 ionianinteriors.com

CAMERON GREGORY/SMITH

WIND ROSE COMPASS The Nautical Company produces this handsome compass with a colourful wind rose design, in red, navy and green, presented in a quality wooden gift box, “a beautiful gift for nautical enthusiasts”. £54 thenauticalcompany.com

BOAT-SHAPED KNIFE The Runabout 1956 was recently launched as a

BEN AINSLIE’S SUNGLASSES You’ll be interested to know that when Sir Ben and his cohorts were out in Auckland, they were

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steak knife by a French manufacturer and has distinct nautical appeal. The designer tells us: “We developed the idea of dedicating a knife to the famous Runabout boats of the 1950s, reflecting the unique charm, elegance and technical precision of the popular

protected from the awesome sunshine by

motorboats of that era. Thus originated the

Smith sunglasses. The range has partnered

knife with the typical trunk lines and the

with INEOS Team UK, outfitting them with

curved contours of the runabouts as seen in

customized helmets and eyewear.

Chris-Craft or Riva boats.”

smithoptics.com

standop.net/voiles

CLASSIC YACHTS 2021

FIRST EDITION SIGNALS BOOK Here’s a treat for the serious collector of nautical books: a rare, 1871 first-edition signal book compiled exclusively for the use of the New York Yacht Club by its then commodore, James Gordon Bennet (1841-1918), of early transatlantic racing fame. It’s beautifully bound and illustrated.

Price £2,750 ,

PERSONALISED DECK SHOES

peterharrington.co.uk

RUGGED HANDBAG These were designed as

New deck shoe brand Wuzzos is

handbags for female sailors

offering a branding service so

but have since gained a wider

you can have your boat name,

market. Their construction,

sail number, initials, company

waterproof roll-top design and thick

name or even your skipper’s name

material will withstand a serious battering

embossed on a pair of high-spec,

on any boat, while their design is cleverly

leather deckies. The hot-foil emboss can be

rugged and stylish. They also fit perfectly

overlaid in silver or gold or left natural to

as carry-on luggage on planes.

provide a dark, burnished finish. £15 extra

Available in black, white, red and blue.

on the price of a pair of shoes wuzzos.com

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SHIP’S WHEEL WINE RACK

sacqua.com

When you’re in need of a bearing come sundown, simply turn to your ship’s wheel, where nestled among its spokes you will find all the direction you need.

60cm x 15cm x 52cm, aluminium. £190 athomeinthecountry.co.uk

CLASSIC YACHTS 2021

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WOODEN PROP We’re always fans of these wooden props from Dad’s Boats.

They come in different timbers and this one is one of their larger props at 300mm (1ft) diameter.

From £149; model shown £499 dadsboats.com

WIRE ART Unique wire sculptures insipired by the coast and the nautical history of Cornwall. Shipwright Ben Baker uses iron wire to transform his single line drawings into something tangible, pairing the designs with found timber, or using pieces from the vessel depicted if he can. The wire drawings can come to life using cranks, levers and threads of nylon. £POA, available for commissions benbakerart.com

XV STRIPES BEDDING

SHIPWRECK LAMPSHADE

Inspired by coastal living and the ocean, up and coming brand XV Stripes hails

One of a range of shipwreck

from Cowes and offers nautical bedding,

lampshades using imagery from a

upholstery and interior decoration for your

series of 18th-century, hand-coloured

home or boat.

prints. Available as a ceiling shade or

Oxford pillowcase/cushion £60

lampshade in three sizes and

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boasting an “extra deluxe feel” with a navy linen interior. Handmade in Falmouth, Cornwall. From £58

BAG FROM SAILS We always enjoy the products of German company 360Grad, which makes bags and accessories from recycled sails. The brand’s spring and summer 2021 collection uses a series of carefully selected colours: “The yellow stands for optimism, luminosity, spirit, sunshine, light. The grey means strength, resilience, and serenity. Thus, our models in the yellow /grey combination stand for confidence and patience – strength and hope.

Everything will be fine!” All models are handmade, light, weatherproof, robust and upcycled. POA taschen-aus-segeltuch.de 66

CLASSIC YACHTS 2021

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DESIRABLES

NAVAL G-SHOCK WATCH The latest G-Shock comes with an unexpected tie-in with the Ministry of Defence. The Royal Navy G-Shock Frogman “is an unbreakable timepiece built from a ‘Never Give Up’ philosophy that makes it perfectly equipped to support UK service personnel”, Casio tell us. The unique aesthetic takes inspiration from HMS Queen Elizabeth, the largest aircraft carrier ever to serve the Royal Navy. Here the Royal Navy’s “instantly recognisable colour palette” of red, white and navy is used to striking effect, alongside the contrasting light grey which is said to replicate the ship’s hull. £799 g-shock.co.uk

MARIQUITA PRINT It can only be one yacht with that sail number – and what a stunner she is. This appealing shot of Mariquita is one of a series of classic yacht prints for sale by Mindthegap. £TBC mindtheg.com

ANCHOR LUXURY MATCHES

NAUTICAL WALLPAPER Surround yourself with this atmospheric

A stocking-filler if ever we saw one. A

gaffer-and-Cornish-cottage scene, which

large, square box of “luxury” matches,

is brought to us using environmentally

with an anchor illustration to recognise

friendly paper and inks. For every roll of

your loved one’s expertise on the

wallpaper sold, the manufacturer plants a

foredeck.

tree in conjunction with ‘One Tree

Price £5.95

Planted’. Price £69

annabeljames.co.uk

fionahoward.com

BRETON WOOL JUMPER Billed as an “authentic” Breton striped jumper for men, in navy blue and cream stripes, 100 per cent wool with shoulder buttoning.

Price £110 thenauticalcompany.com CLASSIC YACHTS 2021

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WOOD-COVERED NOTEBOOK A range of wooden-covered notebooks and journals is available from Bark & Rock. The family company sources sustainable woods from around the world as well as from its local environs in the south of England. Each notebook arrives beautifully presented in a luxury package. It is hand-crafted with fine details throughout, yet is designed for life, with the pages refillable. Special editions include silver and 24-Carat gold personalisation and wood inlaying.

Priced from £190. barkandrock.com

VINTAGE CHARTS Marine Chart Services has organised its Vintage Charts section into geographical areas, making it easier to find old charts of sea areas that interest you. Priced from £7.95. Among those on offer

WATCH SUPPORTS THE RNLI

Malta and Gozo (£80), an 1869 edition chart of the Magellan Strait (£92.95)

Elliot Brown is giving £35 to the RNLI for

and an unused 1810 edition chart of

each Kimmeridge watch sold. The

Beachy Head to Worthing (£225). The

Kimmeridge is decorated with the RNLI

website reports ‘1 available’

rope-and-anchor logo and has small white

chartsales.co.uk

and blue circular dial indices outside the hour batons, a reference to the white and blue boat hooks carried on all RNLI offshore vessels. These recall the early days of sail and oar, when lifeboat oars were blue on starboard and white on port, so people could see which way the double-enders were rowing. Men’s and women’s versions £365. elliotbrownwatches.com 68

are a 1919 edition chart of

CLASSIC YACHTS 2021

STEINER BINOCULARS Hard to say why a pair of binoculars is so acutely desirable a gift, but maybe these new Steiners give some hint. Every bit as rugged and scientific as we’ve come to expect from the German manufacturer, the new Navigator range boasts a greater field of view, a rubber grip with particular water-repellence and the product is said to be waterproof to five metres. You can choose to have an integrated analogue compass, which is liquid-damped to absorbs ‘large shocks’ on deck, and there is also an integrated bearing marker to “leave nothing to be desired by the demanding sailor”. From £399 intro2020.co.uk/steiner

DESIRABLES

CHAIN PIPE Bronze, 1.5in, a thing of beauty.

Ready to do an important job on your boat, or your mantlepiece. £69 classicmarine.co.uk

SHACKLE PENDANT Terribly chic or simply ludicrous – we’re not quite sure which.

Either way this shackle pendant will help bolster your nautical credentials while ashore, while on the boat it may come in

ROBBE & BERKING CHAMPAGNE FLUTE

handy when attaching the main halyard. A ‘wonderful mix of silver

You can get your hands on one of

and steel’, says the manufacturer.

these elegant silverplated flutes by

Strung on a 28in silver-plated snake

winning the Centenarian of the Year

chain £30

prize in the Classic Boat Awards, run

factoryfloorjewels.com

by our sister title Classic Boat. Robbe & Berking generously donates the prize each year to the winning boat.

For everyone else, they’re from the

STORMGLASS

fine German silversmiths’ Belvedere

The Stormglass was first used in the 1750s. This

Bar Collection. “The Belvedere

ES Sorenson Stormglass was designed by Stig

drinking vessels resemble the

Larsen in 1982, based on a design for the Darwin

cannelures of antique columns,” says

expedition of 1831-1836, consisting of a glass tube

Robbe and Berking. “Their

mounted on a wooden plate, with a brass housing

simultaneously modern and fresh

to protect the tube. Available in brass or stainless

appearance gives them a very special character.” From €284. shop.robbeberking.com

steel. £87.20 inc VAT + shipping, wooden presentation gift box £28. calibramarine.com CLASSIC YACHTS 2021

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DESIRABLES

POND YACHT One of many high class pond yachts from this manufacturer, this is the 36R, a class established in 1930 and one of the oldest model yacht classes still in existence. Each model is built to order and you can specify bespoke paint work and cotton or Dacron sails. It was designed by Bill Daniels, the leading model yacht designer of the period, who preferred to give it overhangs rather than the longest waterline possible to fit in its box. Mahogany above the waterline and pine below, with a beech plywood deck. The vane steering gear is based on the Clem and Corby vane gears of the 1940s Price: £ 2,950.00 + PP Tel 07956 922836 or email grovepondyachts@gmail.com

MARINER’S SELECTION An essential selection of items that might find a place on every traditional boat or boatyard. The sailmaker’s needles, palm, hook, beeswax and twine wouldn’t have done Ben Ainslie much good as he raced in the Prada Cup in Auckland, even if he did have ‘real’ sails, but they are all items still used today by traditional sailmakers classicmarine.co.uk

AUTOPROP ECO*STAR

SHOE BOX

A new version of the Autoprop,

Where else to put one’s shore shoes?

Classic Yacht Shipwrights, based in Mallorca, produced this elegant solution for Velsheda and the company has worked on many other classics. This one comes in bare teak but other materials, including carbon, can be specified.

Tel +34 971 201 412 cys-sl.eu

developed for hybrid and electrically driven craft, both motor and sail. You get the auto pitch ability of the traditional Autoprop plus many more specific benefits including the option to let the prop turn in your yacht’s wake, recharging the batteries.

Retrofitable and is available in various diameters and for various

LATITUDE KINSALE Cork-based Latitude Kinsale’s hand-gilded 24 Carat Gold leaf charts can be made up for any area of the world in any shape or size. The gold leaf is painstakingly applied to an aluminium composite. The family team behind the company then prints the nautical chart as a negative with UV-cured ink. The land is displayed as gold with the text in black ink, the sea black with the chart depth details in gold leaf.

From €2,500 for artwork of 70cm diameter (includes chart design, back lighting and hanging system). latitudekinsale.com 70

CLASSIC YACHTS 2021

shaft diameters. bruntonspropellers.com

SPONSORED

Dometic shares its top product for tackling the summer sun while sailing Dometic talks to Classic Yachts about the challenges posed by the summer sun whilst sailing, and discusses how those challenges provoked the company to design innovative shading solutions for hatches that help boat users around the world stay cool and comfortable in any

D

ometic provides a wide range of shading solutions uniquely designed for sailing life; blinds created to work with and allow full function of hatches and openings while integrating seamlessly into yacht interiors.

Originally founded as Oceanair and utilising over 30 years’ manufacturing experience, Dometic Blinds are the leading supplier of blinds and soft furnishings to the marine industry, providing a variety of durable, smart, and elegant window covering solutions that meet a wide range of customer requirements.

They spoke to us about the Dometic Oceanair Skyscreen Recessed, one of the most well-known and loved products of boat builders across the globe for hatch installation, and the benefits it offers sailors in handling hot temperatures, intense sunlight, and insect control whilst out at sea.

Charlotte Styles, Product Designer at Dometic Blinds, says: “The Dometic Oceanair Skyscreen Recessed is uniquely designed in that it can sit flush with a yacht’s headlining, through minimal installation effort, on a wide variety of hatches, making it ideal for retro-fit. Every aspect of the product has been meticulously designed to meet customer needs, from its smooth magnetic closing mechanism to integrated recoil damper system, ensuring a great user experience in every operation.

“This hatch blind truly stands out when it comes to light, ventilation and insect control due to its ability to combine a blackout roller fabric with flyscreen roller material. This gives users the ability to block out light for the perfect night’s sleep and protect both themselves and their boat interiors from harmful UV damage, while also having the option of a flyscreen that allows for fantastic air circulation yet simultaneously prevents bugs from getting inside.”

Manufactured using durable aluminium hardware combined with specially marinised fabrics, the Skyscreen Recessed comes in

standard sizing options based on standard hatch sizes, making it easy for boat owners to find the perfect fit, while custom sizing is also available for unique requirements.

Charlotte says: “These features help sailors control the intense summer sun and temperatures within their yacht interiors, creating a comfortable onboard atmosphere with an effective shading solution that still allows for full hatch functionality, takes up minimal space, and integrates subtly within the headlining.

“This helps keep a consistent internal appearance but adds an extra layer of effective light, UV, and bug protection.”

Blinds are one of many products that Dometic offers for enhancing comfort onboard, with decades of experience in providing everything from electric toilets to touch-controlled air conditioning systems, as well as an increasingly popular range of integrated and portable refrigeration solutions for marine users.

Julien Lefeuvre, Vice President of Dometic Marine EMEA, comments: “Dometic are proud to work closely with marine users and boat builders across the globe, giving us a unique understanding of the challenges posed by sailboats and life on the water. We work hard here at Dometic to ensure that our users are able to benefit from the same comforts of home while on the water, ensuring our products are intuitive in use, easy to service and beautifully made so that they fit seamlessly into the stunning yachts available on the water today.

“We are proud that innovation is part of our foundation here at Dometic, and look forward to sharing more of those innovations with the marine industry at upcoming events this season.”

Along with blinds, refrigeration, and air conditioning, Dometic provides thousands of products for marine use, helping avid sailors to stay on the water for longer, explore further, and discover more.

View the whole range at dometic.com

CLASSIC YACHTS 2021

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DESIRABLES HISTORIC PRINT This image by the Detroit Photographic Company shows the gaff schooner Emerald from 1894. It is part of a series of four similar images offered by Mind the Gap, printed on lithographic paper and come framed. £198 mindtheg.com

ANTIQUE MARINE TELESCOPE When sweeping the horizon for that elusive buoy, what better way to demonstrate your traditional seamanship to your crew by whipping out an antique telescope? This example is a mid-19th Century, three-draw marine telescope made by JP Cutts and offered by Scientific Collectables. It measures 8in (20cm) closed, extending to 23in (58cm), and has a 40mm objective lens with 15x magnification. Described as in excellent condition with original baleen cover, sharp optics and a smooth but firm draw, it could be yours for £240. scientificcollectables.com

NAUTICAL ART Participants at Les Voiles de Saint-Tropez will enjoy this watercolour by Patricia Edith Mary Thompson, whose work includes a range of sailing scenes, some painted in atmospheric style over nautical charts, and also classic yachts, like this oil of Sintra.

Purchase direct from the artist via patriciathompson550@gmail.com Saint-Tropez £78 hartgallery.co.uk

WINDVANE There still aren’t enough classic sailing boats decorating rooftops, but Black Fox Metalcraft is here to rectify that. They can create a personalised weathervane based on any boat, working from customers’

Handcrafted, detailed models using historical photos, drawings and plans.

They are made to scale with high-grade wood using plank-on-frame construction,

photos. The whole piece is TIG welded,

taking hundreds of hours to finish. The

electroplated with zinc to prevent rust,

model pictured, of J-Class Shamrock V,

and finished in a durable black powder coat. They offer four different sizes and a variety of fixings, depending on where the weathervane is to be mounted.

From £149 blackfoxmetalcraft.co.uk 72

SHAMROCK OPEN HULL MODEL

CLASSIC YACHTS 2021

shows the framework beautifully, with complete decking details. It is secured on a solid wood base with a brass nameplate. Mast and sails are folded down for shipping. $350 sdmodelmakers.com

EXHILARATING. LUXURIOUS. INNOVATIVE. SPORTY.

ALL CLASSICS. What does owning a Lyman-Morse yacht mean to you? Perhaps it expresses your individuality. Maybe it’s how you unplug and reconnect to a simpler way of life with family and friends. Or it could be the thrill of enjoying performance and quality on a boat with soul.

Let Lyman-Morse show you why owning one of our yachts will change you forever.

BOATBUILDING | SERVICE | BROKERAGE | MARINA | FABRICATION | TECHNOLOGIES Thomaston, Camden, Northeast Harbor, Maine | Newport, Rhode Island, U.S.A. +1 207.354.6904 | www.lymanmorse.com | info@lymanmorse.com

THE

PERFECT PANACEA An Ed Burnett design built in Cornwall for an Australian owner who intends to use her for the wider good WORDS AND PHOTOGRAPHS NIGEL SHARP

PANACEA

I

t was in the spring of 2005 that the first boat was launched to a new design by Ed Burnett. Frolic, a 23ft 1in (7m) gaff cutter, had been built by Hegarty’s Boatyard in Ireland to a design that had evolved as a result of a series of conversations between Ed and his father. “This little cutter started life as several different boats,” Ed later wrote in Watercraft magazine. “Typically, the conversation would begin with ‘Why don’t you design something like….?’ or ‘What I want now is….’ Either statement would, of course, be followed by a brief quite different from that which he

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CLASSIC YACHTS 2021

BELOW: Ben Harris with girlfriend Iona, who also worked on the build, on Panacea, anchored in St Just Pool near Falmouth

had delivered the previous month, week or perhaps even just prior to lunch.” Eventually, Ed decided to “keep things simple and versatile” and produce “a straightforward and honest little boat”. According to his brother Bill, he initially saw it as a long-term stock design but it wasn’t long before he was commissioned to complete and refine the design for Frolic.

In June of 2018, a second boat to his design was launched. She is Panacea, built by Ben Harris in Cornwall for Australian Richard Allen. Richard grew up sailing dinghies, moved on to keel boats and then had a number of power boats when his children were growing up. When they began to take an interest in other things, he returned to sailing, mainly racing on Perth’s Swan River. In recent years, business interests have restricted the time he has available for sailing. “I went looking for a traditional yacht of a size and design that would give good sailing performance and could also be sailed short-handed,” he said.

Among other designs, he briefly considered the Stuart Knockabout, the 28ft (8.5m) day-sailer from the board of L Francis Herreshoff, built today by Ballentine’s Boatshop on Cape Cod. Then he came across Frolic.

“I really taken by the design, and from the available video clips, by the way she sailed.”

There were yards on Australia’s east coast that would build the boat, but if he was going that far he might as well go to the UK. “I came across Ben Harris’ video about who he was and his philosophy about wood and building boats, and his thoughts aligned with my own,” said Richard.

PANACEA

When Ed Burnett suddenly died in 2015 it looked as if the build might not be possible, until Ben Harris established communication with Ed’s family, who were able to supply the plans. Although he never met Ed, Richard was upset by his death. He said: “Building Panacea would, in some way, help honour his memory.”

Ben started work on the boat in March 2017.

Although Ed had begun to produce plans for an alternative construction method (epoxied strip planking over plywood bulkheads) the hull on Panacea is carvel planks over steamed frames.

THE BUILD BEGINS To build a boat like this, Ben would normally expect to start by lofting it full-size, but thanks to the detail and accuracy of Ed’s plans, he didn’t have to. All information was supplied in a PDF file, as well as on paper plans, and this allowed him to contract local company Digifab to cut out all the moulds on a CNC machine. The PDFs also allowed full-size Mylar templates to be made for most of the centreline components, showing their profile shape and rabbet lines, while the table of offsets was accurate enough to provide the information for the wood keel sections. “I had some trepidation about all that,” said Ben, “because I have always done full size lofting previously and that process allows you to get your head around the whole boat.”

But Ben was “astounded” by the accuracy of the plans and found that just one mould near the bow needed minimal fairing. Throughout the build process he found that Ed’s drawings were really clear. “Obviously 78

CLASSIC YACHTS 2021

ABOVE: Panacea will be used to help people suffering from mental illness

PANACEA DESIGNER & BUILDER

Ed Burnett/Ben Harris LOD

23ft 1in (7m) LWL

20ft (6.1m) BEAM

7ft (2.1m) DRAUGHT

4ft (1.2m) DISPLMNT.T

3.5 tonnes SAIL AREAT

400sqft (37m2)

as a boatbuilder there is a lot that you have to figure out for yourself,” he said, “but the information was all there and there wasn’t ever a point where I was wondering what he meant.”

With regards to timber, Ben already had most of what he would need to build the hull. He had sufficient oak for all of the centreline components apart from the wood keel itself, for which he managed to get a “really lovely plank” from Hewins in Somerset.

For the remainder of the hull – oak for the ribs and for the top and bottom planks, and larch for the rest of the planking – he had had most of it in stock for over two years, as he had been planning to build a replica of the Falmouth Quay Punt Curlew. “I bought it from Somerscales in Grimsby,” he said. “I went up there to select it and had a lovely long chat with Stuart Somerscale who keeps all his good logs aside for boats as he has such a passion for them.” There was a small amount of wastage as the Curlew replica would have had 1in (25mm) planking where Panacea’s is 7/8in, but Ben was pleased with the quality. “I didn’t really notice it until I started unstacking it to build this boat,” he said, “but they were really clean boards with a totally tight grain.”

Ben is passionate about training and in particular about passing on his skills in traditional boatbuilding.

Throughout the project, a number of people helped him build Panacea, often on “an exchange basis” whereby he provided them with accommodation and meals at his own house while they worked with him for a few days each week. “Panacea was an ideal boat for that,” he said, “as all the timber components were a manageable

CLOCKWISE FROM MAIN: Panacea’s interior looking forwards – upholstery to be done in Australia; riveting, with just two planks left to fit; the christening; hitting the water for the first time; apprentices were key to the build

PANACEA

“Sailing is a great way to forget about other problems and to focus on the joy of the wind and the waves”

size and none of the tasks took too long. With the planking, for instance, we were getting some really good first-time fits which is amazing considering we were working with people who hadn’t done it before.”

Among those who worked with him in this way were Sally Fishlock, who helped him with the initial workshop set-up, Austrian Lukas Lamprecht, who had previously been making furniture in Germany, Esther Deeks, who had been “doing basic woodwork” in refugee camps in Calais, Stephen Matthews from Falmouth Marine School, who helped with the keel casting, Lyme Regis Boat Building graduate Sam Robinson, and Iona Wallis who helped with the finishing. During my regular visits, Ben often told me how much he was enjoying that whole process. Back in Australia, Richard, to whom Ben sent regular updates with photos throughout the build of the boat, engaged with the training aspect as well. “He really liked the fact that he was investing in something that’s enabling future generations to keep the craft going.”

It’s hard to imagine that Ben will ever build a boat in any material other than timber: his passion for it is there for all to see. “Not only is the material attractive to look at,” he says, “but when you look at the end result you can see how it’s been put together. You can see the manual work that’s gone into it and it kind of makes 80

CLASSIC YACHTS 2021

ABOVE: Panacea on her maiden sail at Falmouth Classics, with the 1948 barque Kaskelot behind

sense. It’s a material that people have an affinity for. I’ve never heard anyone say they love working in fibreglass.”

In the middle of July, Panacea had her first sail at Falmouth Classics. It was a slightly muted one as the crew was understandably so concerned about damaging the shining new boat in an unwitting racing incident that they generally sailed far off from the racing fleet. But it was enough for Ben to see she performed as expected on the water, and as you might guess from these photos, she attracted more than a few admiring glances. Thereafter she was loaded into a container to be shipped to Perth where Richard was eagerly awaiting her arrival.

You might be wondering about the name. Panacea means, of course, “a solution or remedy for all difficulties or diseases” – entirely appropriate, as Richard intends to use her to help people suffering from depression. “Sailing is a great way to forget about other problems and to focus on the joy of the wind and the waves,” he says.

He will mainly sail her in the Swan River but will occasionally venture out into the Indian Ocean.

“Panacea is a beautiful boat and has been built with great care, skill and devotion by Ben and this shows through in the end result,” he said. “She is a visual treat.”

WE ARE FAMILY They had a bag of tools, an old gaff ketch and a dream. Could they make the dream come true?

WORDS ROB PEAKE

ABOVE Tomas and Audrey provide musical entertainment for their guests

ABOVE: a charter experience on board Samsara offers the traditional and the medicinal

SAMSARA

V

alentine’s Day, 2011, on a beach in Perth, Australia. Two French kitesurfers meet. They have never crossed paths before, but discover they’re from the same area of Lyon in France, they have been to the same bars and clubs and they’re the same age. And they both share a dream to sail the world. It doesn’t take long before they fall in love.

Then picture if you can the final day of Antigua Classic Yacht Regatta seven years later. The same two people are lying in the shade on an old wooden fishing boat, their two-year-old daughter playing on the foredeck and a bump revealing a second child on the way. Thousands of miles lie in their wake.

“Sometimes we dream of a studio flat in Paris!” says Audrey, surveying their floating home, Samsara. “We always wanted to raise our kids at sea. When I got pregnant we started looking for boats…”

NORTH SEA ROOTS Samsara was known either at launch or in her early years as Argus. She was built in 1924 in Skagen, Denmark, most likely by the local JP Nippers yard, which built many boats to catch turbot and other flat fish in the North Sea and Baltic. Traditional boaters in the La Rochelle area may know a boat called Lola of Skagen, built in 1919, of similar heritage.

Argus was a yawl, not the ketch that Samsara is today, with a covered cabin amidships. Her sail number was S421, the S referring to Skagen, the number meaning she was the 421st ‘Hajkutter’ which means shark cutter.

Nets would be hauled by the windlass and hoisted with

ABOVE: shooting a 1920s scene for the film Antan Lontan about Martinique’s history

halyards. In those days fish were brought ashore while still alive, so seacocks let in water to bilge compartments for the fish to swim in until landed.

It was an unremarkable, simple and sturdy design that lasted decades and probably fed hundreds of thousands of people. A 24hp engine was fitted in 1924, for manoeuvring in the port, but otherwise her appearance and role barely changed. During World War II the boat continued to work, ordered to catch fish for the occupying German troops. Photos from the decades after the war show the boat very close to an original appearance and condition, although of course some owners looked after her better than others.

Then in 1979, when she was called Monica, she almost sunk in Skagen and a private Dutch buyer began a 15-year project to turn her into a yacht. He kept her in authentic style – minus the holes in the hull – and kept some of the structure including the frames and knees. A subsequent Dutch owner finished the job, then five years later sold her to an Englishman who took her to the Caribbean in 2014. The boat was now in great condition and caught the eye of many when she did the 2015 Antigua Classic Yacht Regatta, winning first prize at the event’s prestigious Concours d’Elegance. When she was put on the market afterwards, in Martinique, two kitesurfers spotted her for sale.

CORPORATE LIFE Audrey Measson grew up in Paris, her father an anaesthetist and she dreaming, aged 10, of becoming a cardiac paediatric surgeon. In fact she became very CLASSIC YACHTS 2021

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SAMSARA

good at the violin, studying at a conservatoire for 15 years, then giving up music to get a Masters in Finance and joining a series of big companies including Ernst & Young, Total and KPMG as an auditor. But the corporate life was not for her. She quit to go travelling, although not one for “bumming”, as she puts it, sought projects where she could help as a volunteer. This included donating her life savings to set up a skatepark in Columbia, then staying for months to teach the children to skate.

By the time she met Thomas on a beach in Perth, she and he were mad-keen kitesurfers, teaching it to fund their hobby. He had grown up near Antibes, sailing with his parents in Corsica every summer and learning woodwork from his father, who worked on refits of The Blue Peter and Mariette among other projects. Thomas became a commercial scuba diver, working on fish farms and spending most of his life at sea.

“He always surprises me because he is a very instinctive sailor,” says Audrey. “The sea is definitely his environment. That’s why I met him on a beach. I wouldn’t have met him in a museum.”

FUNDING A DREAM Sheltered from the Antiguan sun by a wide awning covering Samsara’s deck, Audrey and Thomas lie back on cushions, telling their story with many laughs in lilting French accents. Nut-brown Maya, almost three, climbs up and swings from the mainsheet. If the picture of two free spirits raising their daughter on a gaff ketch makes an appealing picture – a tempting argument for a life away from modern pressures – both admit it has taken drive and commitment to make it happen.

“We put in all our money when we bought Samsara,” says Audrey. “So Thomas had to keep working as a 86

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ABOVE: at sea with a happy charter party

carpenter from 7am to 3pm, then after that he’d be working on the boat. Meanwhile I was dealing with all the marketing stuff and the paperwork to get the project started, but also I was breastfeeding Maya.

“There was so much stress! We spent so much time arguing and the first year was very difficult.”

The idea was to live aboard and offer Samsara as a charter platform, for private cruises, for regattas, for film and TV work, for corporate work. Kite-surfing took a back seat as new responsibilities grew.

Thomas says: “I grew up around boats and I knew what it meant to have a wooden boat. This is a serious boat to take on. For almost a year we were putting her back into sailing condition as she’d been ashore for more than six months.”

The hull was good but there was caulking to do, painting, sail repairs, new ropes, fixing the electrics and

A fine chance to purchase the famous New York Yacht Club 40, belonging to Halsey Herreshoff, grandson of the original designer.

Having proved herself time and again with extensive cruising worldwide, and regatta wins too numerous to mention here, Rugosa could once again, with some refit work, join her illustrious sisters Marilee, Rowdy and Chinook on the racing circuit.

S/Y RUGOSA Nathanael Herreshoff, 1926 / 2007, LOA 21m, LOD 18m, 770.000

Own a rare classic

Mike Horsley: +33 493 34 68 98, MJH@edmiston.com ANTIBES MONTE CARLO LONDON NEW YORK MEXICO CITY edmiston.com

+33 493 34 68 98 +377 93 30 54 44 +44 20 7495 5151 +1 212 792 5370 +52 55 52 80 95 74

A fine chance to purchase the famous New York Yacht Club 40, belonging to Halsey Herreshoff, grandson of the original designer. Having proved herself time and again with extensive cruising

CLASSIC YACHTS 2021

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SAMSARA

ABOVE: from left: in her Dutch days; the near-sinking; on the hard

water system, modifications to the cabin arrangement and lots of varnishing.

They had bought the boat in Martinique, a Frenchspeaking island with many experienced sailors who offered advice, among them marine carpenter Wim Mendetls and previous owner Ton Sondag, who sent old photos from the Netherlands and shared his experience of doing up the boat. Finally, they put to sea.

“When you are sailing you are putting some love into the boat. These boats have to sail, especially in the tropics, where there is more rain than you think and the fresh water is so bad for the boat. Plus of course the sun is so strong here – after six months on the hard the ropes were eaten through.”

Samsara has proved a flexible platform, for family life and charter work, and she is a good sailer. “She is not so fast, but what I like is that there is no noise, you just hear the wheel and the sea,” says Thomas. “When the sails are properly set, you don’t touch the wheel. It’s quite an easy rig so I can pretty much do it by myself.”

Charter guests have enjoyed the homely experience, which is given added flavour by the presence of Maya, who on occasion has proved more comfortable at sea than some of the guests, and also by “the captain’s secret” – a musical interlude, given the right conditions, where Thomas and Audrey serenade those assembled on the violin and guitar. “It’s not for purists but it doesn’t sound bad,” remarks Audrey.

Below decks there is a big wooden table for eight and the couple describe themselves as ‘epicureans’ – the food on Samsara is as good as the entertainment.

SAMSARA

STORM FORCE WINDS

Category five Hurricane Maria hit Martinique on 18 September, 2017. On the island it caused gusts of 69ft (21m) 65 knots. Elsewhere in the Caribbean it was catastrophic. Samsara was anchored in a bay with two LOD hooks out and Thomas ran the engine from 6am to 3am 55ft 2in to keep the boat head to wind. “If we hadn’t been on (16.8m) board we would have been washed into the mangroves, but still, that will be the last time we are on board in a BEAM hurricane. We were lucky it was not stronger,” recalls 14ft 10in Audrey.

(4.5m) When a Tropical Storm Matthew hit the year before, Audrey and a very young Maya had gone ashore, DRAUGHT Thomas remaining on board and using his scuba gear to 7ft 7in (2.3m) create a web of anchors and shore lines to keep the boat DISPLACEMENT solid. His scuba skills have come in handy on other 45 tonnes occasions, allowing him to inspect and caulk the hull underwater. Coming through such experiences has given them trust in the boat and in their own combination of skills. “I’m the sailor and she’s the businessman,” says Thomas, who is climbing on board again after having paddled the tender across the harbour with Maya, in search of a fresh fuel filter. They’ve returned happy, he with the filter, Maya with a chocolate ice-cream. Life on board Samsara is good. But at sea and on land, nothing remains settled for long. “We decided to make another baby!” says Audrey. “Life was too boring otherwise!”

Baby Titouan arrived in June last year, delivered by BELOW: the deck Thomas on deck after the midwife didn’t arrive in time. layout is safe and The newborn spent his first two nights sleeping under the comfortable stars with his parents and sister. He is now seven months old. “He loves sailing…every time we go out he gets very excited,” Audrey wrote in an email. But then came a surprise. “Working on Samsara with two very young kids doesn’t leave much time for sleeping!” she wrote.

“We are still in love with Samsara and the day we move out will be difficult. But we would like to sell while we still feel so positive about her. Life is full of adventures...”

“There is nothing like a dream to create the future,” wrote Victor Hugo in Les Misérables. A chapter in the life of a working boat may be closing, one of gypsy jazz, French food and Caribbean sunsets, one that the original owners hauling turbot off Skagen could hardly have imagined, but Thomas and Audrey’s work on Samsara means she sails on towards her centenary, in 2024, in fine condition.

LOA

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PAUL WYETH

THALIA

RACING ON THALIA Sailing en famille at Hamble Classics on an 1888 gaff cutter...with a puppy dog and a unicorn?

STORY ROB PEAKE

P

iercing screams, then a roar of dismay, echo up the companionway. “Are the galley crew revolting?” wonders helm Bill Blain.

The gaff cutter Thalia, which in her 129th year is playing host to a raucous children’s card game in the middle of the first race at Hamble Classics, heels with the breeze and sails on.

Owners David Aisher and Kristi Roger have invited me to join their family outing on the boat, one of the oldest and finest classic yachts in British waters. We’re lucky to have her – she was saved from the axe, literally, by 11th hour reprieves in 1969 and then 1997, when previous owner Ivan Jeffries undertook a restoration celebrated by our sister title Classic Boat at the time (CB165). David bought her in 2010 and gave her a new mast, boom and sails. These days, Thalia is just your average family cruising boat – as far as average cruising these days comes with block and tackle and a tiller the size of a table leg (but considerably more elegant).

If Thalia is spectacular, our crew for the two-day regatta is hardly average. Jane Coombs, known as co-chair of Antigua Classic Yacht Regatta, owns a Harrison Butler, Cora, which is 80 years old and safely tied up somewhere in Antigua, a far cry from the sunny but nippy Solent today. Calling course is Wendy Laynton, who spends most of her summer, she delights in telling me, racing from the Hamble. She has that ‘comfortable on the foredeck’ look to her.

And then the aforementioned Blain, the man behind the Batfish series of Solent race yachts that have twice been RORC champions and won a fair bit in between.

Bill, who gave each of his Batfish yachts the tag ‘scourge

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of the Solent’, as he set out to demolish all opposition, brings a degree of boisterous IRC-mongering to Thalia that the old girl might not have experienced in Victorian times.

“The weather wasn’t what we ordered,” he remarks, sniffing the light northerly breeze disapprovingly as we motor out of the Hamble.

We are one of 64 classic yachts entered for the second edition of Hamble Classics 2017. The event was launched in 2016 by Jonty Sherwill and his partner Vicki Weston, and perhaps to the surprise of some attracted more boats in its first year that most events take a decade to work up to. The appetite for a season-closer was clearly there, but as Sherwill says, it’s strange that Hamble, the cradle of UK yacht racing in so many ways, has not had its own dedicated classic regatta before.

“Would I have volunteered for the good ship Thalia, had I known we were going round Cape Horn?” our man Bill bellows to nobody in particular as the bite in the wind deepens and we zip our jackets to the neck.

Our start isn’t absolutely textbook but we’re in amongst Jolie Brise, Aeolus, Ivy Green, Sophie and a smattering of Harrison Butlers. Not unsightly company.

Jolie Brise doesn’t take long to power through below us, her crew pointing their smartphones in Thalia’s direction as they pass.

“If in doubt, just pull on the brown rope,” advises Bill as I stand over a snakepit of traditional coils on the stern. My role today is mainsheet, and it’s a good thing the second year of Hamble Classics is proving a light airs event. Admiring the fleet from my position perched on Thalia’s counter, my reverie is broken by a ‘main in’ call

ABOVE FROM LEFT: Wendy Laynton checks our course; Bill Blain prepares his pirate

ALL INSET PHOTOGRAPHS BY ROB PEAKE

bandana; Jane Coombs

ABOVE: Kristi Roger and David Aisher leave it to Penny Roger to steer Thalia home

THALIA

from David. He comes back to haul in while I tail onto the cleat. Doing this for Thalia’s sizeable mainsail in strong winds would take some welly.

Our efforts are rewarded as Kristi delivers sausage baps and Bill breaks into a mellow tenor: “I love the sausage, the bonnie little sausage…”

“Do you know the sausage song?” he asks between bites. Nobody does, but the culinary and musical interlude is quickly overshadowed by a sighting of the lesser-spotted pink unicorn, which pops its head up the companionway after deciding mid-morning is a good time to get up. Ten-year-old Penny Roger, dressed in a glamorous pink onesie crowned by a unicorn’s horn, is hands-down the best dressed sailor in the regatta. She and David’s daughter Sophie, 13, enjoy a relaxed day on board. They are both as at home on the mighty Thalia as they are, no doubt, in their shore-based home. Do they care that David’s grandfather won the 1951 Fastnet and helped set up two British America’s Cup challenges? Do they care that David’s uncle won an Olympic medal in 1968 in the 5.5-metre class? Do they care that David is, ahem, not too shabby a sailor either and a former Commodore of RORC? Why bother with such irrelevancies when there’s a bowsprit net to be clambered over and a boom to be balanced upon? Although not, as David sternly points out, while going downwind.

Thalia is a hardly a stripped back race machine (unlike the new Spirit 52D that moored alongside us in Hamble, just 13 decades between the two boats’ launch dates), but it doesn’t take much to power her up and unlike the Spirit, we have the voluble Blain to aid our progress.

“Hike like badgers!” he commands, as Thalia’s 12-tons of oak leans with the wind. The youngsters dutifully take a pew on the side decks.

“Do I have an issue with these logs?” Bill calls to David, who is directing from the bow. Logs floating in the Solent? All I can see is the small boat fleet, some Darings and XODs. Further references to ‘speed bumps’ follow, as Thalia thunders between them and someone suggests to Bill: “You could get three on the bowsprit.”

The fleet is converging on the line and Thalia is crossing with a 1920s cutter on starboard. Will we make 92

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ABOVE FROM TOP LEFT: Sophie Aisher on the bowsprit with friend Ryan; Thalia’s bowsprit was carved in 1997; David Aisher gives course advice

it? “I’m coming up,” yells Bill as he follows David’s directional advice. “It’s my reputation, but it’s your boat!”

We pass safely in front, but the final straight dodgems is far from over as yet another boat crosses our path.

This time it’s time to ‘take our medicine’, as Bill says, pulling the hefty tiller towards his chest and aiming smartly for just aft of the yacht’s stern. “I’m going to take a paint sample,” advises Bill. “I’m going to make the skipper kiss the puppy dog’s tongue!”

Thalia has the head of a dog carved onto the end of her 14ft bowsprit.

As we pass inches off the yacht’s stern, her crew smile benignly in our direction. It’s impossible to tell if they can hear Bill or not; perhaps better not. “Kiss the puppy dog’s lips!” he roars, offering a few ‘yip, yips’ to the wind as we carry on and David calls for a match-racingstyle turn: “Okay, I’m doing my sixpence act,” gasps Bill, reddening in the face as he puts every ounce of his weight behind Thalia’s tiller.

We can’t keep up with Jolie Brise, but we’ve outdone more modern boats and finish a respectable fifth in class – cheers all round as we cross the line and the girls come up from below. “Dad, can I go on the bowsprit now?” asks Sophie.

If Thalia was on the Med circuit, there’s every chance she’d be crewed by a team of strapping blokes in matching white cotton smocks. Nothing wrong with that, but here she is sailed regularly by a family of four.

The Aishers and the Rogers, it is little surprise, value and respect her heritage as much as anyone, but at the same time Thalia is simply the family boat, a situation to which, after 22 owners, she seems entirely suited.

With Sophie installed on the bowsprit, Penny suddenly comes aft and says: “I am going to helm.”

Our collective delight at seeing ‘the next generation’ on the tiller is tempered as Penny steers straight for the nearest big ship wake – and we realise the real reason she wants to helm – an entirely natural, half-sisterly desire to get Sophie soaked. As the wake hits, Thalia’s nose plunges downwards and shrieks reach us from the bowsprit. The look of glee on Penny’s face says it all.

Thalia is in good hands.

ARTISAN BOATWORKS CUSTOM YACHT BUILDERS

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ELECTRIC LADY Spirit’s 44CRE might look like another chip off the Spirit block, but she’s a vision of a new future WORDS STEFFAN MEYRIC HUGHES PHOTOGRAPHS RICHARD LANGDON

SPIRIT 44CRE

T

he old ways… make do and mend, rinse and return, make haste not hurry… might have been rebranded as life-hacking, recycling and mindfulness, but there’s no doubt, as most in traditional sailing will recognise, that the future was really written quite a long time ago. The age of unrecyclable, plastic yachts is nigh, and one day, the great container ships will almost certainly enter the second great age of sail.

It’s no exaggeration that we’re at the dawn of a new age in consumerism, but at first sight, Spirit’s new yacht, the 44CRE, embodies nothing of all this. Its look is pure 1930s – sawn-off transom stern, nice sheer, spoon bow, a good dollop of overhang and elegance all round. The CR moniker means ‘cruiser racer’, a category Spirit introduced in 2015, and which has been proving popular. The CR range sits between the original Classic range (the most elegant, with low topsides, low-profile cabin trunk, a whiff of the Skerry Cruiser and standing room for a bottle of gin) and the sturdier deckhouse range, bluewater cruising yachts typically used for long, comfortable cruises. So the CR is a compromise: most of the elegance of the Classic, with the ability to put your

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TOP: The boat at anchor, showing its sheer and transom shape INSET: Manual Lewmar winch

trousers on below decks. So far, so good.

It’s the ‘E’ where the clue lies. The ‘E’ stands, of course, for electric, and it’s Spirit’s first fully-electric yacht, with sufficient generative capability to be infinitely autonomous: no back-up generator here, unless you count the wind and sun. Nigel Stuart, Spirit MD at the time of our visit, was on board to give the tour, and it seems that he was as excited about this boat as the one sat beside it on the dock – the Spirit 111, the longest wooden yacht built in Britain since the J-Class Shamrock V in 1930.

The 44CRE is, say Spirit, the first yacht built in Britain with solar panels integrated into the mainsail and deck. The two colour-matched Solbian deck-mounted solar panels, together with the three smaller ones on each side of the mainsail generate up to 1.47kW and, combined with the 1.5kW generated by the regenerative propeller, create a total of just shy of 3kW. All this power charges the Oceanvolt 48v DC battery system, with a total capacity of 30.4kWh, powering the Oceanvolt ServoProp 15 sail drive, as well as everything else on board – and that even includes air-conditioning. The figures boggle the mind slightly, although Nigel is good at explaining it; and they seem to stack up. The

SPIRIT 44CRE

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: The interior is in black walnut, mahogany, yellow cedar and white paint; Deck lines and a very low-profile gull-wing hatch for extra light below; Forward twin cabin with lovely design; Traditional wheel and pedestal meet discrete battery management monitors

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SPIRIT 44CRE

philosophy behind using a boat like this, which doesn’t have unlimited power, is a traditional one: sail when you can, motor at an economical speed when you must, sail in harmony with wind and tide, as sailors of old always knew to, and this thing could be as autonomous as a nuclear sub. Nigel is optimistic about how well this yacht is going to perform in the real world – and he’s clearly pleased that the owner will be creating a website detailing his usage of the boat along with details of power consumed and generated.

Inside, it’s a similar story: there are no hydrocarbons in the entire boat. The finish is mostly black walnut, a relatively earth-friendly wood, being as it is, a secondary product of walnut food agriculture. Even the finish uses rhubarb juice as the necessary acidic agent. If you’re going to take ecological responsibility seriously, as Spirit clearly do – their approach goes far deeper than tokenism – you need to consider every stage, from the sourcing of materials, to the build, to the likely use, then finally to end-of-life disposal. Death is not something we like to speak of in Britain, whether it be human or anthropomorphic; but at the end of its life, this is a wooden boat, and wood, as we all know, eventually returns to earth’s embrace.

The lack of a diesel in the companionway area means an extra bunk in the aft cabin, a gain in comfort and utility that is a happy secondary benefit of electric power.

Aside from that, the interior is a conventional lay-out, with an ensuite forward twin bringing the berths to a total of four. What you might not expect of a vessel with such thrifty ambitions, is the level of comfort, which includes a fully-equipped, small galley, reversible heating/ air-conditioning and LED lighting throughout.

The central saloon has a port-side, u-shaped sofa around a wooden dining table with a second sofa to starboard. Aft of the saloon, to port, is the open-plan galley, complete with fridge and spirit-burning stove. The feeling below decks is warm and cosy, with most of the interior in matt-finished black walnut set off by the white-painted bulkheads, sipo mahogany ringframes and exposed yellow cedar planking.

SPIRIT 44CRE DESIGNER

Sean McMillan BUILDER

The owner’s point of view Vincent Argiro, a retired technology entrepreneur living, sailing, racing, and exploring in British Columbia What attracted you to Spirit Yachts?

Like many before me, I fell in love with Sean McMillan’s

Spirit Yachts

designs when I saw a photo of the Classic Spirit 46.

LOA

about the possibility of a design retaining much of the

44ft (13.4m) LWL

Once the hook was set irrevocably in my heart, I asked 46’s performance, but more liveable like the 47CR, and a bit shorter. Sean kindly took up the challenge to create what I now call the “minimum liveable Spirit.”

30ft 8in (9.4m)

How was the design and build process?

BEAM

Sean’s brilliant vision and the rest of the team’s wide

10ft 10in (3.3m)

experience and substantial advice and expertise, has been a true and rich collaboration.

DRAFT

How do you envisage spending your time on board?

7ft 7in (2.3m)

I started out wanting a boat I could race competitively

DISP

6.5tonnes PROPULSION

48V DC Oceanvolt motor

The freedom to create a truly white sheet design, with

short-handed, and explore with in the magnificence of coastal British Columbia (BC). Now that I see what a capable and comfortable boat Spirit Yachts has built for me, I expect to do long passages, including offshore races. I also expect to live aboard for many months.

BC sailing is year-round for the rugged among us, so she will see lots of use in all seasons.

Are yachts like Avvento the future?

That is my overriding purpose in building her. I was never interested in building a toy for myself. I am committed in sharing her, not just with many friends and family, but with the sailing community at large.

Avvento is meant to be a defining prototype of an energy self-sufficient and sustainably-built sailing vessel— a living laboratory and research platform for proving out all the technologies and practices that make eco-sailing attractive. She will soon be live on the internet for all to study her “energy metabolism” wherever in the world she is!

Spirit Yachts, Tel: +44 (0)1473 214715, spirityachts.com 98

CLASSIC YACHTS 2021

Hardware for traditional ships and classic yachts Webshop: www.toplicht.de Free catalogue: „The little Brownie“

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THE

WINNERS The winners of 2021 Classic Boat Awards, run by our sister title Classic Boat, would make a spectacular fleet. Here they are in full. You can watch the virtual awards ceremony at awards.classicboat.co.uk

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IN ASSOCIATION WITH

RESTORED SAILING VESSEL OVER 40FT

CYNARA 27/11/2020 15:16

Restored by a team led by Paul Harvey and Ben Hobbs, designed by Charles E Nicholson, built 1927, LOD 95ft (29m), rig gaff ketch The gaff ketch Cynara is proof that big-yacht restoration is not dead.

She was sold into Japanese ownership in 1973 and has been there ever since, in recent years often spoken about as “one of the last left to do”. Work on the gargantuan project began in April 2017, made up of a group of boatbuilders from 12 nations and a team of skilled Japanese carpenters. She is now sailing again, and with an estimated 92 per cent of her Burma teak hull still original.

RESTORED SAILING VESSEL UNDER 40FT AWARDS SPONSORS

BEL’ROSE

Restored by Nyhamns Såg & Båtbygerri, designed by Albert Andersson, built 1894, LOD 30ft 6in (9.3m), rig gaff cutter The Swedish Ravanis brothers Martin and Mathias won our award in this category in 2018, for the sailing fishing boat Bessie. This time, they have taken it with their restoration of one of Sweden’s earliest and best known racing yachts. The Ravanis guys are purists of the first water, and this restoration, like their others, began in the forest, looking for grown bends. Methods and materials are as original: there are no laminations or epoxy here, but plenty of good, quarter-sawn timber, linseed oil and skill with hand tools.

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‘

Japan’s first extensive big-yacht restoration was carried out by experienced European boatbuilders and skilled Japanese craftsmen

’

C/O HORIZON

NIGEL SHARP, AUTHOR AND HISTORIAN

RUNNER-UP RESTORATION OF THE YEAR OVER 40FT

IDA Restored by Horizon Boatworks, designed by Chas Bailey, built 1895, LOD 46ft (14m), rig gaff cutter Originally built as a Five Rater, the elegant Ida was in danger of being broken up in 2015, C/O CYNARA PROJECT

when she was found in Australia by her current owners, who shipped her home to Auckland NZ, and Horizon Boats, where Wayne Olsen and team performed the full works, rebuilding much of the boat to bring her back to as-new condition today. This included decks in the almost mythical kauri timber. Now, she’s queen of the A-Class in NZ classic yacht racing, fulfilling the promise born 125 years ago.

2021 Awards

‘

Bel’Rose will outlive me and for that I am very proud Classic Boat awards 2021 logos.indd 1

27/11/2020 15:16

NICK PHILLIPS

’

HENRIK BAGER, OWNER

RUNNER-UP RESTORATION OF THE YEAR UNDER 40FT

RAVANIS BROTHERS

ATALANTA Restored by Mike Dixon, designed by Uffa Fox and Alan Vines, built 1954, LOD 24ft 3in (7.4m), rig bermudan sloop The Atalanta is a bold, post-war sculpture created by the best of British intelligence at the time: Fairey Marine and Uffa Fox. The triple-diagonal aircraftstyle hull construction could not have been an easy thing to take on, but Mike Dixon brought Atalanta back from wreck to perfection. She’s still largely original.

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sdaw awegawert serg

‘

I thoroughly enjoyed recreating Scarabee and I want to continue building yachts like this

’

PIETER VAN DER AA, OWNER/BUILDER KEES STUIP

2021 Awards Classic Boat awards 2021 logos.indd 1

27/11/2020 15:16

THE

TRADITIONAL NEWBUILD ALL SIZES

SCARABEE

Built by Pieter van der Aa, designed Sparkman and Stephens, LOD 55ft 8in (17m), rig bermudan yawl When most people talk about building a boat for themselves, they have a kit dinghy in mind or perhaps, if they are ambitious, a small yacht, or something built to instruction.

Pieter was talking about a 56ft S&S yawl, something he achieved in just seven years of downtime. She’s a nearidentical copy of the 1935 yacht Avanti. The only difference is in her construction, which is strip-planked. What makes this David-and-Goliath task even more extraordinary is the fact that she’s not Pieter’s first self-built S&S replica: before Avanti, there was the the 45ft 4in (13.8m) sloop Masquerade.

Avanti offers twice her internal volume.

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NIGEL SHARP

WINNER RUNNER-UP TRADITIONAL NEWBUILD ALL SIZES

PELLEW Built by Luke Powell, LOD 68ft (20.7m), rig gaff cutter Cornwall-based boatbuilder Luke Powell is synonymous with the boom in new English pilot cutter builds over the last few decades, under his company Working Sail. This one, his ninth, dwarfed all that came before and is, in fact, the largest traditional wooden boat built in Britain in a generation. Unlike the other eight, all Scillonian types, this is a Falmouth pilot cutter with a distinctly different look.

asdaw awegawert serg

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27/11/2020 15:16

‘

I really enjoyed the challenge of taking a traditional hull and rig design and using modern materials to build a best-of-bothworlds hybrid

’

SANDY MILLER

SAM DOMAN, BUILDER AND OWNER

THE

WINNER SPIRIT OF TRADITION SAILING VESSELS ALL SIZES

WATERLINE MEDIA

Built by Sam Doman, LOD 14ft (4.3m), rig standing lug This GRP replica of Atlas (1949) was restored by the Pioneer Sailing Trust then stripped back, polished and waxed by the builder to make a mould for this GRP replica, which bears the imprints of the original larch grain and nail heads. The new boat has a slightly larger sail area of 120 sqft (11.1m2) and is lighter than the original, so it’s ideal for trailing. She’s reportedly fast and stable under sail, with a lot of sail area, beam and heft: clearly, she’s the real thing in all but material, and saw off some serious multi-million pound superyachts to win the award, proving the charm of the concept.

RUNNER-UP SPIRIT OF TRADITION SAILING BOAT ALL SIZES

SPIRIT 111 Built by Spirit Yachts, design by Sean McMillan, LOD 111ft (33.9m), rig bermudan sloop The strip-planked Spirit 111, longest wooden yacht built in Britain since the J-Class Shamrock V in 1930, sent shockwaves through the sailing world. There is the sheer size, there are the eco credentials (filtering down into the company’s smaller yachts) and there is the single most extraordinary, concentric circular interior design we’ve ever seen on a boat, by Rhoades Young. Spirit is setting the standard in many ways.

RICHARD JOHNSTONE-BRYDEN

THE LONGSHORE

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THE

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27/11/2020 15:16

WINNER

‘

Each custodian is part of the vessel’s history and these Dunkirk little ships live on through our dedication to them securing their legacy for future generations

’

C/O DENNETTS

STEPHEN DENNETT, RESTORER

RESTORED POWERED VESSEL ALL SIZES

MAKAIRA

Restored Michael Dennett Boatbuilders, designed and built British Powerboat Company 1938, LOD 47ft (14.3m), engines TSDY Makaira has much of the panache of a fast World War Two HSL (high-speed launch) or MTB (motor torpedo boat) but she was in fact built as a private launch... just a very fast one. Her length, carried over a slender beam that tapers down to just 6ft (1.8m) at the stern, combined with a 30-knot+ top speed and offshore capability, means Makaira has incredible lattice-work framing along both axes of the hull to stop her snapping in two as she makes passage through chunky conditions at speed. The recent restoration has kept not just the spirit of the original, but the speed: Makaira will offer the performance originally intended.

RUNNER-UP RESTORED POWERED VESSEL ALL SIZES

C/O HMS

MAIMONDE

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Restored by Harbour Marine Services, designed and built

by Saunders Roe, 1937, LOD 45ft (13.7m), engines TSDY Saunders Roe, forever bound to 20th-century British engineering innovation like the hovercraft, used to build boats like this Medina Class yacht to the highest imaginable standard. This one is in Burma teak with a construction and detailing closer to engineering than boatbuilding. This is Harbour Marine’s third Medina rebuild. Maimonde was a very complete rebuild, and served at Dunkirk. Her restoration was part of a big, nationwide slew of Dunkirk Little Ships restorations, all in readiness for the (cancelled) 2021 return.

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40 week Boat Building course 12 week Furniture Making & Advanced Furniture Making 2 to 5 day short courses in boat bo building and woodworking

Bursary-assisted places are available for the 12 and 40 week courses

11ʹ West Wight Scow tradiional clinker sailing boat built by Ian and the Class of August 2019

OneSails GBR Timeless elegance and sophisticated lines, a deep expertise amongst its designers and sailmakers, and a real passion for detail ensure that all OneSails are the ultimate combination of style and quality.

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Racing or cruising, classic or modern, we have construction styles to suit every project including 4T FORTE™ composites, custom membranes, radial cut laminates and carefully selected woven Dacrons. Contact either loft to find out more.

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www.onesails.co.uk CLASSIC YACHTS 2021 Classic Boat GBR 2019.07 v02.indd 1

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NEW

‘

Ittir Kaktir will tow the 50+ vessels in the museum’s collection BRUNO CIANCI, RAHMI KOC MUSEUM

’

2021 Awards

THE

27/11/2020 15:16

C/O CW HOOD

WINNER NEW POWERED VESSEL ALL SIZES

ITTIR KAKTIR

Built by RMK Marine, design Devlin Boat, LOD 33ft (10m) Here is a delightful yet functional little tug, built to tow the 50+ vessels at Istanbul’s Rahmi M Koç Museum. She has a plywood and epoxy hull with a solid mahogany keel and longitudinal elements, and teak-laid decks. She was launched to a stretched design by Sam Devlin and among the other embellishments are heightened headroom. She’s not just, however, a pretty face. Ittir Katkir has been fitted with a silent but powerful 150hp Ford diesel engine that allows her to easily manoeuvre in the waters of the Golden Horn, Istanbul’s natural harbour and home to the museum.

The Rahmi M Koç Museum, opened in 1994, is a major industrial museum with a large collection of boats including the Fife III yacht Lady Edith and Falka, a rare Fife-designed and built motor launch.

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RUNNER-UP NEW POWERED VESSEL ALL SIZES

HOOD 57LM Built by Lyman Morse, designed by CW Hood and Stephens Waring, LOD 57ft 3in (17.4m), engines twin Volvo 1,350hp If you want to stand out from the crowd in a motor yacht with the rugged appeal of a flybridge sport fisher, but all in wood (the hull is cold-moulded and the upper is bright-finished teak), cruise at 40 knots, and your pocket can bear it – you have just found your boat. The 57LM combines two very traditional things (20th-century sport fisher and bright finish) to create something that carries serious modern/ retro wow factor.

RICHARD JOHNSTONE-BRYDEN

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BRUNO CIANCI

CLASSIC BOAT SPECIALISTS

FULL REFITS TO RUNNING REPAIRS TRADITIONAL BOAT RESTORATIONS STRUCTURAL MODIFICATIONS INTERIOR JOINERY PAINT & VARNISH DECKGEAR & RIG WORK

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N 01326 372 121 w www.mylor.com

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27/11/2020 15:16

THE

WINNER GSTAAD YACHT CLUB CENTENARIAN OF THE YEAR

THALIA, 1888

The 45ft (13.7m) gaff cutter Thalia, built by GF Wanhill in Poole, Dorset, spent her early years racing out of Cork, Ireland, and moved to the Thames in 1914, where she remained for 50 years. She was saved from the axe in 1969 and 1997, and found her current owner David Aisher in 2010, who has had much work carried out at the Elephant Boatyard. David, ex-RORC commodore, Royal Yacht Squadron member and Tall Ships Youth Trust chairman, loves to campaign her in races, particularly the Round the Island Race and other Solent regattas.

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The Gstaad Yacht Club was formed in 1998 by a group of sailors with the vision to “create a unique global yacht club away from water”. The Centenarian of the Year trophy ties in with the club’s annual Centenary Trophy race, at Les Voiles de Saint-Tropez, attracting some of the oldest yachts afloat.

The Centenarian of the Year silver bowl and silver champagne flute (above) are made and donated by Robbe & Berking.

HAVE YOU

CHECKED? Life Jackets, and in particular the inflation mechanism should be checked at least annually.

Working Sail

Traditional Shipwrights Offering New Builds, Restoration & Repair

Check the expiry date on your cartridge and replace with a new cartridge from your local chandler or service agent.

Working Sail Ltd, Rhoda Mary Ship Yard, Truro TR1 2SU

www.workingsail.co.uk • Email: info@workingsail.co.uk Telephone: 07790 638084/ 07814 008290

www.uml.co.uk

PS Elite Check Your Cartridge Iss3 - 2020.indd 1

04/02/2020 13:00:31

WHAT?

A family run boatyard experienced in handling mono and multi-hulls up to 40’ DQG 7RQQHV 2IIHULQJ WLGDO PRRULQJV OD\XS DVKRUH RU DÀRDW EURDG KDUG WR dry out for surveys/prop change? Showers/toilets, free parking. Maintenance of hull, rigging & engines. Pressure wash & antifouling.

WHERE?

One mile WNW of Chichester Harbour Entrance by sea and 5 miles south of Havant main line train station & M27/A27(M).

HOW?

Just call us on (0) 2392 464869 or email info@wilsonsboatyard.co.uk

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CLASSIC YACHTS 2021

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Xarifa

Eilean skipper and crew celebrate

FROM VOLCANO TO A fleet of classics raced from Lanzarote to St Kitts in the Panerai Transat Classique.

We met the sailors and followed the action WORDS ROB PEAKE PHOTOS CHRISTOPHE VARÈNE AND JAMES MITCHELL

TRANSAT CLASSIQUE The winner

Glen Mael nighttime arrival

Coch y Bondhu crossing the finishing line

T

VOLCANO Stiren arrives at St Kitts in second place

he so-called gateway to the Canaries, the familyowned Marina Lanzarote in Arrecife, is an atmospheric place. Just 80 miles off Africa, it’s not uncommon for decks to receive a light dusting of Saharan sand. The lunar landscape behind, with more than 100 volcanoes on the island and little greenery, is eerily fascinating. Four million tourists fly into Lanzarote every year, but few of those visit Arrecife, which is local and Spanish in flavour. The climate is sunny but mild, meaning almost any outdoor activity you care to mention flourishes on the island – and sailing is one of them, with top-flight regattas run here and Volvo Ocean Race crews training here.

The marina itself plays host to hundreds of yachts. Some are full-time Lanzarote-ites, enjoying the great cruising to be had between the islands. Some are on their way somewhere, parked up before setting a course for blue-water anchorages across the ocean. Among this contingent, in January, were nine classic boats.

The Panerai Transat Classique started in 2008 and has run three-yearly since then, organised by Frenchman Loïc Blanken and a small, dedicated team that includes François Séruzier, of the handicap rule JCH, as race officer.

Participating yachts this year sailed to Lanzarote from Italy, France and Spain. Previous editions have seen a bigger and more international fleet, and the organisers are keen to attract boats next time from the UK, northern Europe and North America. Those in Lanzarote were a varied and interesting bunch, with yachts ranging hugely in size and age, and sailors ranging from famous professionals to family crews and skippers who had dreamed of an Atlantic voyage since childhood.

The atmosphere on the pontoons in Lanzarote was relaxed and friendly and as start day approached, stores of fresh fruit, water and other refreshments were loaded, winches were stripped down, routes checked and weather predicted. The preceeding days saw a series of evening dinners and parties, put on by the race organisers and sponsors, that gave many laughs between crews and left sore heads in the morning.

All were heading for the luxury marina of Christophe Harbour on the island of St Kitts. “From volcano to volcano,” was one observation, with just 2,800 miles of open ocean in between….

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TRANSAT CLASSIQUE RACE REPORT Close racing at the start off Lanzarote

How the race played out The big decision as the boats left Marina Lanzarote in

Coch y Bondhu and Hilaria, two yawls built 20 years apart on

early January was which way to go out through the

opposite sides of the Atlantic, whose crews duelled on the

Canary Islands. The archipelago experiences ‘wind

way in and were separated by just 40 minutes after 2,800

acceleration zones’ between the islands with winds

miles of racing, with Coch y Bondhu just ahead.

increasing rapidly to gale force at times. Played well,

Race sponsor Panerai’s yacht Eilean followed the

these could provide a rocket boost out into the

same day, some 10 hours later. Lys, which had left

Atlantic, but on the other hand might take one in the

Lanzarote late due to last-minute repairs, but had caught

wrong direction for the trades. On the day, the entire

up quickly, eventually finished eight hours after Eilean.

fleet headed directly south west in search of the steady trades bar one boat, Xarifa, which took a flyer north west, leaving her alone and leading the pack.

The smallest boat, the One-Tonner Glen-Mael, arrived a few hours later and Bryell 2 a day later on 29 January, just before the finish line officially closed – 21 days after the start.

But Xarifa’s gamble didn’t pay off as well as she’d hoped, as

Only Aramis, which had to put into Las Palmas in the Canaries

the strong winds to the north failed to materialise. She headed

due to a damaged tiller, missed the party in Christophe Harbour.

south again to join the rest of the fleet, but she remained one

She put in to Guadaloupe after 25 days at sea on 2 February.

of the leaders for most of the early days and, due to her size,

The fleet was rated in Lanzarote using the JCH system by JCH boss

eventually stretched ahead to take line honours in Christophe Harbour,

François Séruzier (pictured) and after handicaps were applied

St Kitts, after 17 days.

in St Kitts the finishing places were:

Just nine hours behind her was Stiren, the Sparkman & Stephens yawl skippered by Spanish offshore star Alex Pella and owned by

1 Coch y Bondhu, 2 Stiren, 3 Glen Mael, 4 Hilaria, 5 Bryell 2 6 Xarifa, 7 Lys, 8 Eilean, 9 Aramis (DNF)

Oren Nataf. Her regatta results showed she was fast, and so she proved to be.

The closest finish was between

For information on taking part in the next Transat Classique visit paneraitransatclassique.com

RACE FOUNDER LOÏC BLANKEN

“I was crossing the Atlantic on my own boat in 2008 and I saw a gaff schooner in the middle.

Something clicked – the classics needed a great transat. Many of them cruised and raced the Atlantic in years past, like Dorade.

For many people, crossing the Atlantic is their first real adventure. I’ve done it 18 times. Three solo, three double-handed. I did my first one aged 19 in the Mini Transat with no GPS. For me, it’s one time in your life when you are really free, you forget everything about modern life. For those who cross for the first time, you have to savour it. It’s a rare thing.

But you have the dream and then you have reality. You have around 16 days and nights at sea.

It’s a serious undertaking and you have to prepare very carefully and seriously. We can advise on fitting out and we assess each boat for safety before the start. It is clear immediately if a boat isn’t ready to sail the Atlantic. If it isn't, she will be barred from competing. We don’t take risks.”

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TRANSAT CLASSIQUE THE BOATS

ARAMIS

Designer Frans Maas, 1964, LOA 39ft 1in (11.9m) Owner Christian Welter read Flight of the Firecrest by Alain Gerbault at the age of 10 and wanted to sail the Atlantic ever since. Aged 68, he was not doing his first transat solo, like Gerbault, but with his adult son Etienne and two friends, Thomas and Jean-Michel, while wife Eveline remained at home. Aramis was the only boat in the race with a GRP hull, coming as she does from the composite era, with a superstructure and spars in wood. She was one of two boats in the event built by the Dutch Maas yard in the 1960s and was once sailed by Eric Tabarly.

Christian bought her in 2016 and she is his first boat, used as a family cruising yacht after decades of chartering all over the world. On the pontoons in Lanzarote, Christian said his charters had always been for two-week periods, so the transatlantic time on board would not be an issue.

BRYELL 2

Designer Britton Chance, 1967, LOA 37ft 1in (11.29m) “With a bit of luck we should not miss America!” said crew member Alain Cardonnet (pictured) with a laugh as he cast off the lines of this steel-hulled, multi regatta-winning yacht. “I always wanted to do a transatlantic since I was a child. It was a lifetime dream, but in life often you don’t do what you want. I was working. I had no time for leisure.

Now I find I can achieve my dreams,” said retired electrical company manager Cardonnet, who, at 73, was the oldest person in the race.

The boat is 52 years old, designed by Britton Chance in the same era that Chance was involved in the America’s Cup-winning Intrepid. Owner Jerome Cathala has sailed the Atlantic twice and with Bryell 2 has won many regattas in the Med and Atlantic. Also on board was Frederique Weyand, a sculptor from the Loire valley: “For me, it’s a personal challenge in how I will react with the people, the weather, the boat. I think I will learn a lot about myself.”

COCH & BONDHU

Designer Rodney Paul and Laurent Giles, 1936, LOA 49ft 6in (15m) A 17-ton Gauntlet built at Berthon in Lymington, Coch & Bondhu’s name means ‘red and black’ in Gaelic and has been misspelled on the boom end, to the ribald delight of all passers-by in Lanzarote. The crew sailed 2,400 miles just to reach Lanzarote, from Rimini in Italy, where she received a serious restoration 10 years ago, overseen by timber merchant owner Paulo Zangheri (pictured). He told of finding an “abandoned skeleton” in a building site in Rimini. “Why buy such a wreck? Because I’m not normal! I was fascinated by her story and the lines are fantastic.” She was built for the proprietor of the London Times and is said to have been at Dunkirk, although no official record exists. Paulo was joined by friends Ivano Brolli, Renato Tartarini and Claudio Magrini. “We’ll do two hours on and two off. The boat is very narrow, just a 11ft (3.3m) beam, so she will roll a bit!”

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TRANSAT CLASSIQUE THE BOATS

EILEAN

Designer Fife III, 1936, LOA 72ft 8in (22.2m) The yacht rescued from the mangroves and still owned by race sponsor Panerai, despite the watch manufacturer pulling out of classic regatta sponsorship after 2019, was here with a new skipper. Stefan Valente (pictured) said: “We are

missing [former skipper] Andy Cully but it is great to be captain and for me it is a special boat. I don’t know what happens but everyone is always very happy on this boat and we have a good time. That is the most important thing, more so than winning the regatta.”

Eilean had done around 36 tranatlantics already.

“She’s a cruising boat and doesn’t like a lot of tacking,” said Stefan. Nine others were on board, including a British doctor from Watford Hospital, a former Italian navy seal and Ricardo, one of the restorers of Eilean in 2006/9 in Viareggio. Eilean was later hoping to sail back from the Caribbean to Cowes.

GLEN-MAEL

Designer Sparkman & Stephens, 1973, LOA 38ft (11.5m)

Inset from left: Marius Ferey,

Owner Jean-Philippe Gervais, of Burgundy, works in

Eric Gaiani, Jean-Philippe

the French wine industry and had stored something

Gervais, Maxime Thomas and

special in the bilges. “We have some very good

Guillaume Barbet

bottles of burgundy on board and every day we will open one good bottle,” he said. “We will have a daily tasting and try to compare the wine with a famous classic boat. For example, you could say Moonbeam is a Pétrus.” His crew was also high class, one being skipper of Pen Duick V, another of Pen Duick III. The others were friends who race on the boat in Marseilles. Her first name was Sumbra 2 and she was built in cold-moulded mahogany and western red cedar for Max Boyce, for the 1973 One-Ton Cup in Porto Cervo. Boyce came eighth and sold her to two yachtsmen in the Med, who combined their names to make Glen-Mael. JeanPhilippe had two sextants: “For the fun of it, for the joy of getting your position from the heavens.”

HILARIA Inset: Noel Racine

Designer Sparkman & Stephens, 1965, LOA 55ft (16.7m)

(left) and owner

With a beam of 14ft (4.2m) and a completely sheltered

Philippe

cockpit, this yawl built by Abeking & Rasmussen in

Thurneyssen

1966 is comfortable to sail on and to live on. Owner Philippe Thurneyssen had a scooter accident two months ago, snapping ligaments in his knee, so had a special leg cast made and underwent physiotherapy for two hours a day to be ready for the crossing. Has was sailing with old friend Noel Racine, 2013 winner of the Fastnet Race on his modern yacht Foggy Dew. Noel and Philippe trained together to be Merchant Navy seamen in France and have worked at sea ever since.

Also on board were Janette Danel, Alain Beaume, co-owner of the classic yacht Lulu, and Stefano Saccone, Marcel Vanni and Eve Benoest. Preparation for the voyage included extensive work to renew parts of the boat and buy safety kit. “Doing the race for us has been quite a big investment,” said Philippe.

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LYS

Designer Olin Stephens, 1955, LOA 54ft 3in (16.6m) Owner Philippe Monnet (pictured) is the former holder of the round-the-world sailing records eastabout and westabout, solo and crewed, and 40 years ago, as a teenager, helped restart Cannes Régates Royales. His boat today, Lys,

was built by Sangermani and is, by his own reckoning, “a good boat.” “We are here because my friends asked me to do it last September at Cannes!

They want the big adventure. I said ‘okay!’” he added.

Philippe has owned Lys for 20 years and before that she was in the same family for 40 years. The deck was new last year, but much else is original including all the interior. “I have done some racing but I love cruising,” Philippe said. “We’ll have three months in the Caribbean after the race. Then my project is to sail around the world next year. For 30 years I was racing around the world. Now I want to go slowly!”

STIREN

Designer Olin Stephens, 1963, LOA 48ft 6in (14.9m) Fresh from breaking the Hong-Kong to London Tea Clipper route in 36 days, on the MOD70 trimaran Maserati, was Spain’s most successful offshore sailor Alex Pella. For the Transat Classique, he was skipper of Stiren, not a 40-knotter like Maserati but still a fast Stephens design that won this event in 2008. It also won Panerai British Classic Week 2008, the Bailli de Suffren three times in recent years, took second at Les Voiles de Saint-Tropez and first at Monaco in recent years, success that saw owner Oren Nataf nominated for the Monaco YC's Yachtsman of the Year, a rare honour for a classic sailor.

With Oren were friends Clement Kerisel, Simon Lochet, Pascale Eueilleau and Gregore Asse, whose great uncle was the first owner of Stiren, which was built in Britanny in 1963. Watch dealer Oren said: “We have done what we can to prepare, but at sea, there are no favourites.”

XARIFA

Designer JM Soper, 1927, LOA 163ft 7in (49.9m) The 1927 schooner was the oldest and biggest boat in the race by some distance. She had nine crew, a full complement for charter, and a secret weapon: a new North assymetric headsail with a foiling system to be set in strong winds from the end of the bowsprit. Xarifa has been recorded at 17 knots, in 45-knot winds, but with a regular trade wind of 25 knots on the quarter, skipper Diego Massó (pictured inset left with first mate Andres Diaz) expected an average of 10 knots across to St Kitts.

But the big boat would need around 20 knots of wind to get going. “In good conditions we will steer the boat manually,” he said. “It is very pleasant, let me tell you! It’s a big boat so you don’t get the immediate feedback but it’s very intuitive. With wind, it is one of the best sailing boats I’ve known.” Xarifa’s owner is looking at changing the rig back to gaff for the boat’s centenary in 2027, to be celebrated in her launch place of Cowes (see p16).

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THE STARS OF

Antigua Is it the perfect place for a regatta?

Quite possibly, is our conclusion after a week of racing at Antigua Classic Yacht Regatta WORDS ROB PEAKE

1943 gaff ketch Vendia

100ft steel schooner Ruth, built

was a North Sea fishing

on a beach in Barbados in 2014,

boat for 30 years

leads the 1965 Bruce King 5.5-Metre Iris J

The staysail schooner Eros, built in Lowestoft in 1939

Ketch Petrana flies the Antiguan flag during the parade of sail in Nelson’s Dockyard

MAIN PHOTO: 1965 Alden ketch Petrana ahead, then from windward, the 1939 Bill Luders yawl Frolic, the 1946 George Kettenburg sloop Janley, and the 1957 S&S yawl Mah Jong

Carriacou sloop Free in St Barth

M Chronos and Rhea, two 157ft (48m) Klaus Röder staysail ketches owned by Sailing-Classics

otor out two minutes from the pontoons off the Antigua Yacht Club through the flat water of Falmouth Harbour, pass the twin headlands and – boom! Without warning you’re in amongst rolling ocean waves high enough to block out the horizon, flying fish zipping across their sides and the sun reflecting back an almost electric cobalt blue. To leeward, waves crash on a rocky promontory that houses Nelson’s old gun battery. To windward is the vast Atlantic, liberal dollops of it now shooting back at you from the bows. The wind is a steady 25 knots and overhead, needless to say, the sky is blue. Given that two minutes ago you were untying the bow and stern lines in total calm, the invigorating scene before you is enough to bring forth a lengthy whoop, even from the most hungover of sailors. It’s a stupendous sight, and that is before you add in the fleet of classic yachts getting ready for their start. Two Mylnes, The Blue Peter and Mariella, slide out through the waves. The replica Gloucester fishing schooner Columbia parts the seas like Moses and the Carriacou sloops, riding the big wave tops like corks, join the varied fleet, ready for a race between elderly boats off an island in the Caribbean. Antigua Classic Yacht Regatta has become known for its après-sail scene, the local flavour and the entertainment on stage each night – and that’s pretty good – but one taste of the local waters and you understand that the reason to come here is the sailing. These magnificent ocean conditions, literally on your doorstep in Falmouth Harbour, are worth it 10 times over.

Overleaf – sailing on three classics at Antigua CLASSIC YACHTS 2021

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ANTIGUA

Happy days on Mah Jong Do I get wet? Well, there is a moment I find myself lying on the foredeck as if in a warm bath. In fact, I have had colder baths at home. To be slapped across the face or back by these tropical seas is a childish thrill that elicits a grin from everyone, every time they get dunked. However, my foredeck mates have spent their winter caring for Mah Jong in the Grenadines and – I kid you not – are shivering with cold. Me? I feel as though I’ll be sick from the heat.

Coming from Britain’s most dismal ever winter into Antiguan sunshine is enough to make you feel very pallid, very English. So the foredeck dousings are welcome, but even in these lumpy conditions, never once does Mah Jong slam. The S&S hull, designed as an ocean cruiser and and built as such by Cheoy Lee Shipyards in Hong Kong in 1957, gives the proverbial magic carpet ride.

The full story of Mah Jong’s rebirth is a true man-fallsin-love-with-wreck epic. To know that four years ago she was lying dried out on a Caribbean beach, and to see her eating up these big seas in such fine fettle today, is to marvel at yet another amazing classic yacht restoration story. At the wheel is the man behind it, Pat Ilderton, a look of steely determination on his face, while at his side sways his other great ‘find’, the young Alex Goldhill who grew up in Carriacou and is now Mah Jong’s skipper. Also with us is Brad Abbott, partner at Gannon & Benjamin, where Mah Jong was restored, and Brooke Parish, the man who recently bought Sparkman & Stephens. “Well at least you don’t get to write the headline: ‘New S&S chairman takes a dive off S&S boat and boat sails off without him,’” he remarks later.

“Going to get some real sailing today!” yells one of my foredeck mates with no little exuberance as another big swell lifts the boat high. “You got that right,” says filmmaker and environmentalist Barbara Pyle, who is here, not strictly on doctor’s orders, with a fractured wrist. How she hangs on I don’t know. The boat is fizzing along on her beam ends at times. It’s a job climbing up to the high side. The trades are 25 knots all day, the sky is blue and the sea is bluer. (“You never tire of that colour,” regatta co-chair Jane Coombs tells me later, managing to do so without any hint of smugness.)

We have a good battle with Jonathan, another S&S, sailed by a Dutch couple, and we enjoy a grandstand view of the rest of the fleet as we pass each other on a reach.

We drop sails in the startling calm of Falmouth Harbour and once tied up it’s rotis and beers all round. We sit munching the delicious local curry pasties as our shirts and shorts drip salt onto the teak seats. Suddenly I could go straight to sleep. It’s been a great day on the water.

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Enjoying the best of Antiguan conditions on Mah Jong with skipper Alex Goldhill (to leeward), owner Pat Ilderton (to windward aft) and crew including Barbara Pyle (in yellow jacket)

ANTIGUA

TIM WRIGHT PHOTOACTION.COM

A win on Aschanti IV She was the biggest German sailing yacht of her time, she acted as the unofficial German state yacht post-war and hosted the German president Heinrich Lübke in the 1960s at Kiel Week. She’s been around the world via Cape Horn and now she’s going around again.

Well-known at regattas worldwide, this 1954 Henry Gruber two-masted schooner has some miles under her keel. She was built by the Burmester yard in Bremen in riveted steel with a teak deck and superstructure, her spars in Canadian spruce, 115ft (35m) LOA, 74ft (23m) on the water. She has some modern hydraulic winches to enable short-handed cruising offshore, but for the large part, on deck, is kept in her 1950s state.

On board today we have around 18 crew, all of us busy. Hard to believe that skipper Karl-Peter Ebner manned the boat himself in the regatta’s single-handed race two days previously. We’re told our man Karl-Peter ended the race quite red in the face. Given the heat and the 4,950sq ft (460m²) upwind sail area, he could have been forgiven for passing out. But as the boat’s owner said at the regatta prize-giving, Karl-Peter is not just the skipper, he’s the spirit of Aschanti IV, having been at the wheel since 2001. She is a wellsailed boat, getting the run on the opposition today at the start and the international core crew seeing her round the cans with minimal fuss and many laughs.

There is delight as we cross the line first and in an unusual touch the owner comes round to thank everyone on board personally. The custodian of a veritable fleet of classics, he ROB PEAKE

also makes a point of leading a cheer at the prize-giving for the regatta’s ‘chairman emeritus’ Kenny Coombs. It was around Aschanti IV’s saloon table that Kenny, who died in 2013, and others first proposed the regatta 31 years ago.

How do you spot the Englishman who’s never been to FROM TOP: 1954 Henry Gruber design in long-standing ownership; chance for a rest upwind; crewman Olaf Schmidt puts his back into it. INSET: rail down!

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Antigua before? He’s the one asking about the weather forecast. “Breezy and sunny,” comes the reply with a laugh from one of my crewmates. I’ll leave the wet weather gear at home tomorrow then.

ANTIGUA

ABOVE: The rig is as it was in the original boat’s working days. BELOW: Robbie Fabre calls sail trim from his perch on the bowsprit

Go Columbia!

Tom Cunliffe, introducing Columbia in the regatta’s parade of sail,

Eastern Shipbuilding in Panama City, Florida. The D’Isernias built

calls her “one the greatest work boats afloat”. It’s hard to think of a

Columbia partly as their family boat and care deeply about the

vessel like this as a work boat at all, but the original Columbia and the

heritage. Daisy steps forward after skipper Seth’s easy-going

other “racing fishermen” of her brief era would stay out in the Grand

welcome to exhort us all to remember those who perished as the

Banks for weeks on end, their crews going out in dories to fish. To see

original Columbia went down with all hands off Sable Island in 1927.

the replica Columbia crashing through the waves in a yacht race off

“Go Columbia!” she roars, punching the air as she honours the fated

Antigua is one thing, but to think of her doing the same through

seamen and original skipper Ben Pine. It’s a thought-provoking and

angry seas off Nova Scotia 90 years ago, her hull loaded with fresh

fairly bone-rattling performance.

fish and her colossal sail area bulging with the ferocity of a north

Meanwhile, Seth is a schooner man born and bred and very much

Atlantic gale… an image worthy of loud profanities at least. In

on top of his 142ft (43m) charge today. He’s joined by the equally

Caribbean seas, she is a breathtaking sight, her bowman Robbie

experienced Nathaniel Wilson as tactician, who when he’s not playing

Fabre spending most of each race perched right out on the bowsprit

nautical chess with Aschanti IV, runs forward to join the crew in sail

– who wouldn’t? – in turns being lifted high, suspended forever above

changes and other manoeuvres. Also on board we have Jake Stevens,

a trough, before plunging down and almost disappearing as sheets of

who oversaw Columbia’s build, prominent island sailmaker Franklyn

white spray rocket skywards. It’s a display of power and grace to

Braithwaite and designer Sam Chamberlin of Rockport Marine in

keep you entertained all afternoon. On our day aboard, the crew, most of them newly assembled before the regatta, are well-drilled enough to hoist the fisherman. Up it

Maine. Everybody wants to sail on Columbia and not just because of her story. The spirit among the crew is palpable and the approach is seamanlike.

goes on a reach, the smoothness of the operation

As we near the finish the Caribbean shows its other face

greeted with high-fives and hoots of enjoyment from

and a black squall rolls overhead, bringing wind and

all. Cheerleader in these moments – if I dare call her

lashing rain. True to form, the big schooner loves it. We

a cheerleader – is Daisy D’Isernia, daughter of Columbia’s owner and builder, Brian D’Isernia, of

certainly don’t reduce sail, she simply ploughs on, as solid and powerful as her namesake 91 years ago.

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WEEKEND WARRIOR

Classic designs still influence the modernday market, as exemplified by the successful PTS26 motor launch, inspired by the 100-year-old designs of CG Pettersson WORDS STEFFAN MEYRIC HUGHES PHOTOGRAPHS KATHY MANSFIELD

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INSET: An original Pettersson launch shows the lineage clearly

PTS26

I

t’s often been said that boats are like people; seldom, if ever, are they compared to talking bears. But this one, a shiny new PTS26 belonging to British designer Andrew Winch, is named after Baloo from the Jungle Book. The bear – at least the Disney version – is like the charming, naughty uncle who teaches you to steal apples and fight, so you might expect a vessel named after him to be similarly overpowering and rough around the edges. Thankfully, the PTS26 – even with the over specc’d 190bhp diesel this one has – is nothing like the singing bear and more like Bagheera, the reliable, well-mannered black panther: dad. But that name is already taken by the owner’s other boat – an 18ft Tofinou daysailer that comes out to sail in company on test day. And what a day that was, with just enough wind for Baloo to send spray flying, and for Andrew’s brother-in-law David to fill the sails on Bagheera. The warm, unbroken sun made it feel like the last summer’s day of 2020, stolen from autumn’s grasp.

First impressions of the boat quayside are very favourable indeed. The PTS26 is 24-carat elegant, and unusual in the sense that it’s not aping the Riva look, which in turn aped the American runabout look of the first half of the 20th century. The runabout appeal is beyond question, as history has proved, and has accordingly been much imitated – done to death, some might say. But here is a completely different shape: gone is the swoopy tumblehome, straight sheer, raked bow and stained mahogany. In their place is a nearly plumb bow, a modest transom, dark blue painted (GRP) hull and, joy of joys, a stepped sheerline with little portholes in the bow sections. If Riva evokes thoughts of Brigitte Bardot and Italian playboys, then this is the boat from the war

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film that approaches the boarding ladder of a destroyer under way, carrying a uniformed senior officer standing up straight as a flagstaff, one hand on the windshield.

In practical terms, the Riva comparison doesn’t stack up: a deep-vee, planing, twin-engined, open boat is very different from a semi-displacement, single-engined cabin fast cruiser like this. But owners choose boats like this as much for style as practicality, and in style terms, the likes of CG Pettersson and Riva (and let’s not forget Alan Burnard too) are bearers of a very rare distinction: these are the few designers who have managed to create craft that are practical but, without sacrificing any clarity of purpose in their appearance, so instantly recognisable that they can only be described as icons.

ON BOARD

BELOW: Plenty of space for tea in the huge cockpit

First impressions on board are of space, space and more space. You could probably go out as a group of ten on this, certainly on inland waters, and this has been the principal aspect of the PTS26’s success. It’s a simple boat: the huge self-draining cockpit is home to U-shaped seating and a central table that rises up from the sole and, if clothed in cushions, becomes either a lounging area – or, with canopy, a large double outdoor berth. Aft of it is a generously sized mahogany swim platform.

Forward of it, and with no step to trip over, are the helm’s and passenger seats, on swivelling pedestals. Two footsteps take you down to the small, functional cabin.

The look down here is clean: white two-pack paint and honest, high-quality plywood with exposed edges.

You get a heads with sit-down shower, a small galley, and a vee-berth, leaving the cockpit lockers free for external stowage. Andrew has no intention of sleeping

MAIN: Owner at the helm – note davits ABOVE LEFT: Electric windlass and anchor – most PTS26s don’t have anchors RIGHT: Console with joystick bowthruster

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PTS26 on Baloo, but it’s a reasonable proposition, with the potential of two more in that palatial cockpit. The boat was, in fact, conceived as a weekender.

Soon we are underway, and leaving Northney Marina is a very relaxed affair on a calm day – although Baloo has a bowthruster for those days when the wind is blowing you on. Thanks to the full-length cockpit lockers, stowing the fenders and warps is a doddle. The whole departure could not have been easier.

AT SPEED Once underway in the harbour at the eight-knot speed limit, we head for lunch in Itchenor, opening the throttle for some hig-speed runs out in the Solent.

The feeling at slow speeds is much as you’d expect.

At higher speed, the boat quickly settles onto a gentle plane, in the manner you’d expect from her hull type, being a semi-displacement boat with a rounded hull.

We fall somewhat short of the boat’s expected top speed of 22 knots, but these are just teething issues: it is, in fact, the first time Andrew has given it the beans, and he lets me do the same, accelerating to the top whack of (on the day) about 18 knots and throwing the boat into full-lock turns to make runs past the stationary camera RIB. All the qualities of the semi-displacement type come through: the easy visibility, with the boat almost flat on the (semi) plane; the better fuel economy; the increased torque - the 190hp diesel is turning a big propeller, which provides plenty of torque to keep the whole party going as the boat works her way through the small waves; and the amazing, nearly totally flat, cornering.

This is a supremely unintimidating boat to handle, even at full capacity, and with the additional canopy in place, we enjoy a completely dry ride. “Hold on – wash coming,” I mutter to Andrew, as we head full-bore for the wake of the chase boat, but the PTS26 just rides gently through. That raised foredeck is not just a pretty face, or additional accommodation: combined with the full transom stern, it gives plenty of buoyancy at the ends to reduce pitching motion. It’s only afterwards, looking at the dramatic photos of splashing water, that we realise there was a bit of chop out there that day.

The driving position offers almost uninhibited view all around, and, as Andrew notes, takes on a very different feel with canopy up or down. The ride in the

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PETTERSSON 26 DESIGNED

Vripak, 2008 BUILDER

Statement Marine LOA

26ft 4in (8m) LWL

23ft 10in (7.3m) BEAM

8ft 6in (2.6m) DRAFT

2ft 6in (0.8m) AIR DRAUGHT

5ft 10in (1.8m) DISP

c2.6 tonnes PROPULSION

190bhp diesel

BELOW LEFT TO RIGHT: Simple galley in high-spec plywood; Esthec decking and deck shower; much detailing, including the

stern seating area is similarly relaxed, and close to the water. That the PTS26 is such a capable seaboat comes as something of a surprise, given that most of them are used on rivers and lakes – in fact, most tie up to withies in their native Holland, so Andrew had to specify the anchor. Although the PTS is a capable sea boat, there is one niggle: the (quite narrow) side decks are hard to access from the cockpit, other than by stepping on the soft settee. As Andrew points out, one generally goes up on deck in calm waters, when approaching the dock – and the anchor is deployed electrically by a push-button windlass controlled from the helm, making visits to the foredeck unnecessary at sea. If we weren’t doing a photo shoot, we could have left the bow line on its cleat, led back to the cockpit, eliminating the issue. These are semi-bespoke boats (see right), so if you need a stepdown from side deck to cockpit, the builders will give you one – although doing without is how you get that enormous living space.

“The boat has been a hugely successful venture for us” says UK broker Gillian Nahum of Henley Sales and Charter. “It met a need in the market for a well-built, stylish, weekender, with the classic look but in GRP. Everyone on the Thames wants a heads and the ability to seat 10 people.” It’s a tall order, but get it right, and the boat that does it becomes that incredibly rare thing: the overnight spirit-of-tradition success story. In fact, Gillian has sold no fewer than a dozen in just three years, with three more in the pipeline, including a 31 for the Caribbean. There is no other model of boat that Gillian has sold more of. “It’s well built, too, which is great for the broker as well as the owner, as we don’t have to deal with problems!” she adds.

For British buyers, the boat is available from £79,700, although the semi-bespoke nature and options list mean that a realistic price for a new PTS26 will be more like £100,000 or less for a river spec model with a 65bhp diesel; electric and hybrid are also available. Those after a seagoing trim will generally choose the 140bhp or more diesel and will pay more like £135,000. There are mass-produced cuddy cruisers out there for less, and similar boats in timber for more, but at this price point, there’s probably nothing quite like it.

companionway step, is in mahogany

For more on the PTS26, 22 and 31, see statementmarine.nl or British agent Henley Sales and Charter, hscboats.co.uk

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129

PARTING SHOTS

MAIN PICTURE: Sails of all shapes and sizes fill the sky at the museum seaport

Wooden boats at Mystic There are not many dedicated boat shows for lovers of wooden and classic boats worldwide. The Thames Traditional Boat Festival at Henley is one of largest in the UK, while in continental Europe there are fabulous events in France and Scandinavia. Down under the Aussies do it in style in Tasmania every two years. The WoodenBoat Show at Mystic Seaport, Connecticut, is one not to be missed. Taking place every June normally in blazing New England heat, the varnish is guaranteed to be gleaming on a staggering selection of craft, from immaculate 14ft amateur kit builds through to the most glamorous wooden yachts of our time. While boat builders and restorers are showing off their handiwork afloat, you can wander around the fascinating museum village and buy timber, vintage nautical books, chat with historians and craftsmen, and eat crab and drink cool beer. There is even a three-day boatbuilding challenge for families to enter. They end up

CLOCKWISE FROM ABOVE: Definitely not a modern boat show! Designs by

having built their own wooden boat. The show overall is a

Herreshoff and others line the quay at Mystic; Herreshoff Buzzard’s Bay 25 Mink,

stupendous way to spend a few days. See you at a

built in 1914, shows off her new cotton sails; bronze fittings by Seven Star Marine

wooden boat show somewhere soon!

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CLASSIC YACHTS 2021

on Santana, which famously was once by Humphrey Bogart

VENTIS

T h e C l a s s i c Ya c h t S h i p y a r d

info@ventis.nl +31 228 312 542 Vlakwater 7, 1601 EV Enkhuizen, The Netherlands

RESTORATION

NEW-BUILD

WOODEN SPARS

S/Y NYALA

VENTIS

The 57’ Sparkman & Stephens design yawl S/Y Nyala was completed by Ventis in 2018. Since her launch she has successfully completed two Trans-Atlantic passages and many nautical miles in the Caribbean. A 2019 Classic Boat Awards Winner SY Nyala is the definition of Ventis craftsmanship.

Moonbeam of Fife III William Fife Jr | 1903/2017 30m/98ft | 4 guests | €1.495m

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