Indholdsfortegnelse for November 2011 i Classic Boat

The wind it was, that died. And sometimes the only sound above the occasional lazy slap of a slop against a long, low counter was that of the photographers grinding their teeth. This year there was wind for the first two days of racing at Cannes’ Régates Royales and then some sporadic puffs all the way through the week and into the next: Les Voiles de Saint-Tropez. We jilled, we ghosted, we hobby-horsed on the trippy swell of many motor boats. We sat becalmed or glid in semi-stately circles on the oil-dark waters, searching their placid skin-like surface for any hint of moving air. This doesn’t really happen in England, dear reader, or any other place with much tide; eventually things get disturbed by the movement of water itself. So…

Fears are again mounting over the future of the City of Adelaide as the bid to transport the historic clipper ship to Australia appears in danger of stalling and a new deadline is imposed for her removal from the slipway in Irvine, reports Peter Willis. In a letter to Classic Boat (see p97), RESCUE, the British Archaeological Trust reveals, thanks to Freedom of Information requests, that a deadline of 24 March 2012 has been imposed on Australian group, Clipper Ship City of Adelaide Ltd (CSCoAL) to remove the ship. CSCoAL’s own timetable is already behind schedule, and it is still short of A$2million (£1.25m) needed to realise its transportation plans. State and Federal Governments have turned down requests for support and the proposed site in Adelaide is dependent on conditions…

Friday 23 September marked a century to the day that the Channel was first rowed – there and back in one – by the great, great uncle of CB’s own ad sales executive Edward Mannering. It was Guy Mannering of the Dover milling family who, in his 13-foot clinker-built rowing boat Helianthus, did it in 12 hours and 40 minutes. On his return, on Dover beach, he was met by a man from a lemonade company who offered him a sizeable sum to endorse his product but Guy replied that he hated the stuff – “I rowed there on beer and came back on brandy,” he said. That company was Shweppes.…

The 10th edition of the biennial Monaco Classic Week was vintage, by all reports. Nearly 100 craft attended including, for the first time in nearly a century, the world’s last remaining four 15-M yachts: Tuiga, Mariska, The Lady Anne and the recently-relaunched Hispania. Joining these were 23 classic runabouts from the likes of Riva, Chris-Craft and Hacker. Among the ‘great and good’ present were Sir Robin Knox-Johnston, Marie Tabarly and Prince Albert II, head of state and president of regatta organiser the Yacht Club de Monaco. On the water, winners in their classes were Arcadia (1968 bermudan sloop), Rowdy (Herreshoff NY40), Bona Fide (Charles Sibbick rater), Mariska (Fife III 15-M) and Mariquita (Fife III 19-M), which also took the Belle Classe restoration prize, unanimously voted by the panel from a…

There are pictures of them on the walls of every yacht club on Long Island Sound, writes Chris Museler. And the scene in September at the Larchmont (NY) Yacht Club was straight out of one of those 1920s sepia-toned images, with wooden Stars gliding across the waters they were designed to race. Larchmont hosted the North American Star Class Centenary Regatta, commemorating the start of the Francis Sweisguth design at the club, home of Star number one. There were 89 modern Stars racing, including one helmed by double Olympic gold medallist Mark Reynolds, but the nine wooden Stars and 13 classics built prior to hull No 7300 stole the show. Racing was close in the wooden fleet, with Andy Ivy’s No 4125 winning. Though centenary Star Class events have been…

Despite an overall downturn in visitors at the Southampton Boat Show this 16-25 September, the joint stand run by members of the wooden Boatbuilders Trade Association reports strong interest with at least three boats sold at the show, including Ian B Richardson’s Orkney Yole Eve. This year’s WBTA stand was bigger than last year’s and the association has been offered additional space at next year’s show. “The show is taking us as an organisation very seriously,” said Adrian Noyes of Craftsman Craft, Devon.…

A painting with a major omission was the surprise top seller at Bonhams’ most recent London maritime auction. Of more than 100 paintings in the 13 September auction, a large 63.5 x 127cm (25 x 50in) oil by a Victorian artist whose life is little known was the only artwork that had no vessel in it. Yet, with nothing but sea, sky and a few sea-birds, the painting, executed in 1898 by British artist David James, sold for £46,850. Although James produced sea paintings from 1881 to 1900, little is known of the Cornish-born artist, not even his birth and death dates. Although boats did appear in some of his works it was the sea that fascinated him most, and among his most highly regarded works are his views from…

These Veritas block planes, DX60 and NX60, designed with an unlimited budget, feature a corrosion-resistant nickel-resist ductile iron body, accuracy of machining to within 0.038mm, an A2 blade hardened to Rc60-62 and a velvet drawstring bag in which to keep it: not surprising with a little tool that costs over £200 (DX60) and £280 (NX60). Worth it? asks Adrian Morgan. Without doubt. Not a day goes by that my NX60, given to me by a good friend from Florida, is not taken from its velvet bag as the mere feel of it gives pleasure. Quite simply, it fits perfectly in hand, has a heft that is immensely satisfying and makes short work of bevelling planks, smoothing sheerlines and 101 other uses. With the blade ground to 25º, and honed to…

1 The cat boat Derived from the shell-fishing boats of the 19th century, the type has evolved little. Its combination of shoal draught, speed, stability and roominess make it a favourite today, as shown by the popularity of the 12ft 4in (3.76m) Beetle Cat and an increase in racing and restoring larger cats. Some 4,000 Beetle Cat owners have included John F Kennedy and Steven Spielberg. 2 The cruising yawl Affordable recreational sailing came to the USA after World War Two and Charles Raymond Hunt’s Concordia Yawl epitomised it. More than 100 were built, most of them 39ft 10in (12.1m), and 26 of them a foot longer. Simple and quick, with basic accommodation, this layout is still used today in small cruisers. 3 The Sharpie Probably derived from European craft,…

Only once did boatbuilder Seth Persson advertise his services. It was after Finisterre, a 38ft (11.6m) Sparkman & Stephens yawl, had won the first of her three consecutive Bermuda races, a record she still holds. A friend convinced him an advertisement would increase business. But the Finisterre commission, like all the others, had come to him by word of mouth. Seth’s craftsmanship always spoke for itself, which is why he had the opportunity to work with yachting’s pre-eminent designers. Born in 1909, Seth grew up in Brooklyn, New York, where sailing and boatbuilding were commonplace. Like his father Frans Emil Persson, who left home at 16 to crew on a Swedish brig, Seth developed an interest in things nautical at an early age. Frans had learned design and engineering by…

The start of the Fastnet Race is nuts. Over three hundred yachts dodge and weave in and out of each other waiting for the countdown over the VHF and jockeying for the best possible starboard-tack start. Aboard Edith Gray, (CB280) a transom-sterned 38ft (11.6m) pilot cutter completed just this spring by John Raymond Barker in Bristol’s Underfall Yard and built for speed, we had two goals. The first was to beat the other two comparable classic boats – Morwenna, a 45ft (13.7m) pilot cutter (also built by John), and Maybird, a 1937 gaff-rigged ketch that has just been handsomely restored. Our second goal was more audacious. The record for a pilot cutter had been set way back in 1925 by Jolie Brise in the very first Fastnet Race. It stood…

There’s more to James Dodds than the iconic portraits of clinker dinghies suspended in space that have become his trademark style. More even than his related artistic activities – the print-making, the linocuts, the books from his Jardine Press (named after his cast-iron ‘Jardine’ printing-press). For a start, there are his Essex origins and his boatbuilding – he worked at Walter Cook’s in Maldon, partnering David Patient, with whom he again worked later on, refitting Queen Galadriel and Xylonite, and recording it in linocuts. There is a dash of dyslexia – steadily overcome, but still apparent in an attraction to the brevity of poetry when it comes to illustrating a book. All of this and yet more is present in this large, rich, lavishly-illustrated (of course) book which is as…

Tomahawk is one of a very select lineage of 1930s Sparkman and Stephens yawls that started with the famous Dorade in 1930. Tomahawk was built eight years later and is a little shorter than Dorade – 48ft 3in (14.7m) LOA – and a little beamier. Her 2004-6 restoration by Brian Pope’s Ocean Yacht Company was endorsed by the great Olin Stephens himself. Since her restoration, Tomahawk has competed in numerous regattas and races, including a 16-day transat, and scored victories at all her UK appearances this year – in contrast to last year’s season which included breaking the mizzen mast, twice! In terms of accommodation, she has eight berths and an unusually large galley. £395,000, lying South Coast UK. Tel: +44 (0)1202 330077 www.sandemanyachtcompany.co.uk…

The day of CB’s visit to Spirit Yachts, at Ipswich’s Wet Dock, the yard was strangely quiet, yet several boats were clearly in build. This was because the main purpose of the day was to go sailing on the company’s new Deck House range of boats (CB277) and many yard staff were down at the Royal Harwich Yacht Club, getting the boats ready. I was impressed that Sean McMillan, who runs Spirit – he is Spirit Yachts really – might pass up a day’s production in this way. “Well, the guys work really hard and this is a way of reminding ourselves of what we are doing it for,” Sean said. “My own boat Flight of Ufford is crewed by people who all work for me. Normally there are 30…

The yard of Gannon & Benjamin, last featured in these pages a year ago with the launch of the 45ft (13.7m) sloop Elita, has been busy – enough to recruit a third partner, Brad Abbott, who has ‘broad and deep skills’ with engines, electrics, plumbing, hydraulics and refrigeration. And this summer saw the launch of the 21ft (6.5m) Bella Minnehaha. It is the seventh of Nat Benjamin’s Bella designs built by G&B since the yard’s inception in 1980. Another recent project was the 37ft 6in (11.4m) 1990 gaff ketch Encore – one of G&B’s own and repaired this summer after being driven ashore after a storm. The yard, which has saved a couple of large yachts from wreck and fire over the years, has recently rescued the 46ft (14m) Mylne…

In the USA, yards are ‘shops’, clinker is ‘lapstrake’, and yachts (sorry, ‘sailboats’) are more likely to have centre (or center) boards than their European long-keeled counterparts. Yacht designer and boatbuilder Brion Rieff – his Maine yard is 15 years old this year – clearly has not read the rulebook and is already building his fourth Alerion 26 to commission with a major design alteration: swapping the centreboard – as specified by the type’s designer Nat Herreshoff when he designed the boat for himself in 1912 – with a ‘proper’ keel, extending the draught by 14in (36cm) to give better sea-keeping and negate the need to winch the board up and down. Even less traditional, the recent Intuition 44 has a fin keel, carbon-fibre spade rudder and weighs just 8,500lbs…

When Koehler Kraft in California was founded in 1938 by Clarence Koehler Sr, it was to build custom mahogany barrel-back runabouts and custom wood sport fishing boats and cruisers that reached cult status by the end of the Second World War. Today in the shop, Clarence Jr (‘CF’) and his crew are working on their second KK28, a high-performance, custom express cruiser, with a teak deck and cabin house. Also in the shed (shown above) is Sally, a 1928 Starling Burgess-designed, Abeking and Rasmussen-built, 10-M sloop. It’s a full rebuild – by the time she is launched in spring 2012 only five per cent of the original hull will remain.…

Doing a top-down restoration was always going to provide the chance of a leak or two and that is exactly what we found. Maybe, on hindsight, I should have taken John Perryman’a advice and sailed the boat for a season first. “But she’s a garden, John!” I remember saying... “The mast is shot; we have no boom.” Well, such are the vagaries of old boat ownership; we’re not always doing it just for fun! Some leaks are just a matter of caulking, or tingles, but some – as in the case of the shaft log – are fiddly, dribbly so-and-so’s which require a dismantling and reassembly of the parts. Luckily for us, old boats are like grown-up Meccano and so with a little thought and a good hammer you can…

I’ve never thought of a boat as having an instinct for survival, but I am beginning to change my views after encountering the Herreshoff cruising yacht Neith and learning her history. Built in 1907, she’s been sunk, abandoned (several times), sailed across the Atlantic by hippy students with a Sea Scout manual and no experience, and weathered severe storms under various colourful owners. She’s heading into her 105th year probably in better shape than when she was built. “Few boats have been brought down so low and then brought back to where she is now,” admits her present owner, Van Brown. Neith was a one-off cruising boat from the famous Bristol, Rhode Island, yard of Nathanael G Herreshoff. At 53ft (16.2m) and with a very slender 10ft 6in (3.2m) beam,…

The 1911 pilot cutter Kindly Light was relaunched on 28 September after an 18-year restoration for owner Malcolm J McKeand by boatbuilder David Walkey at Gweek on Cornwall’s Helford River. Two days later, on her birthday, she was re-named at a ceremony at Falmouth’s maritime museum in the blistering sun and to a crowd of 300 well-wishers. The 53ft 6in (16.3m) working vessel was designed by William Stoba to beat her rival, the 1904-built Alpha. She was one of the fastest of her kind, and, at the pinnacle of the type’s evolution, built, as she was, near the end of the age of sail. Her purist’s restoration makes no use of engine or electrical systems.…

The yacht that Peter Ustinov bought at a cocktail party in Cannes has arrived in England by lorry in an eleventh-hour rescue, writes Andrew Rosthorn. My Nitchevo, a 58ft (17.8m) ketch built by G de Vries Lentsch in 1929, had been lying on the hard at Port Napoléon in the Rhône delta, her steel hull rusting away since the double Oscar-winner’s last sailing holiday in 2003, a year before his death. During the 1956 Suez crisis, just after Ustinov had starred with Bogart in We’re No Angels, the multilingual actor, author and director went for cocktails on the ketch, then named Christina and owned by a French industrialist. Ustinov heard she had belonged pre-war to a pharmaceutical mogul, was photographed by Lartigue and painted by Tamara Lempicka – and how…

The project to renovate and operate Africa’s oldest floating ship as a mobile clinic on Lake Malawi has received a €2 million boost. The steamer Chauncey Maples’ newest benefactor is the charitable arm of Mota-Engil, the Portuguese engineering firm that was recently granted a 30-year concession to run shipping services on the lake. Malawi is the world’s fifth poorest nation, with just 250 doctors to serve her population of 15 million. Mota-Engil will join forces with British insurance company Thomas Miller, the project’s first benefactor, and the Chauncey Maples Trust, to renovate the 1899 Glasgow-built steamer to provide a mobile health service along the shores of the lake.…

After 82 years in New York, Sparkman & Stephens has moved out of its office on Fifth Avenue. “We got fed up with the sky-high rent,” S&S boss Bruce Johnson told CB matter-of-factly: Fifth Avenue was recently ranked the world’s most expensive street. The new home for S&S, which complements an existing office in Newport, Rhode Island, is in the sailorly town of Greenwich, Connecticut, just 18 miles from Manhattan. “It also brings us closer to our clients,” added Bruce. Around a third of the S&S design archive has moved to Mystic Seaport, also in Connecticut. Mystic now holds the complete S&S paper archive of 2,600 boat designs in about 39,000 drawings.…

5-22 OCTOBER James Dodds Messum’s, 8 Cork Street, London. W1S 3LJ Tel: +44 (0)207 437 5545 www.messums.com See also pages 26, 70 and 84 12-23 OCTOBER Royal Society of Marine Artists Annual Exhibition Mall Galleries, London. SW1 Tel: +44 (0)207 930 6844 www.mallgalleries.co.uk 6-15 JANUARY 2012 London Boat Show Excel Exhibition Centre, London Docklands, Tel: +44 (0)871 230 7140 www.londonboatshow.com Featuring the Classic Boat stand 3 JUNE 2012 THAMES DIAMOND JUBILEE PAGEANT Register now! The Thames Diamond Jubilee Pageant is still looking for applications from historic boats. The deadline for registration is 31 October, after which selection based on merit will take place. The pageant, to celebrate 60 years of the Queen’s reign, will be the largest gathering on the Thames for 400 years. After the pageant, historic vessels will…

If the lines of this 1938 harbour launch look strangely familiar, that dagger may be because her form is that of a half-scale MTB with characteristic hard chines and semi-planing hull. Medusa was built of double diagonal mahogany on rock elm and oak by Groves & Gutteridge in East Cowes and powered by a Perkins S6M six-cylinder 7.35-litre diesel. Recently restored to trophy-winning standard, she sold, complete with trailer, for £28,750 at Bonhams’ 16 September classic car auction at the Goodwood Revival. One other boat, among £6.5m worth of classic cars, a freshly restored 25ft (7.6m) 1947 Andrews slipper launch, made just £23,000 – short of the expected £30-40,000.…

James Dodds’ huge, compelling, luminous, meticulous studies of clinkerbuilt traditional workboats have, over the last decade, become an East Coast institution and his exhibitions at Messums’ Cork Street gallery something to look forward to. The current show, until 22 October, spreads his geographical inspirations to include boats of Salcombe, St Ives, Shetland and this Orcadian Yole (oil on linen 56 x 48in, £16,500). New works also include triptychs, as well as ‘close-ups’ of parts of boats – often the bow, sometimes the stern. Limited-edition prints of harbours or boatyards (see p84), typically around £400, are also on show. See also Books, p70. www.jamesdodds.co.uk; www.messums.com…

I suspect that Halsey Herreshoff’s illustrious grandfather, Nathanael Greene Herreshoff, would have felt at home in the surroundings where we met for dinner last summer – the elegant dining room of a huge steam yacht at anchor in a bay in northeast New England. It suited his generation more than ours – we were enjoying a glimpse of a time long gone, when the wealthiest people in the United States used their privilege to buy beautiful yachts – and nobody could design and build them better than ‘Captain Nat’, alias the ‘Wizard of Bristol’ (Bristol, Rhode Island, USA of course). He was not only an MIT-trained naval architect but also a marine engineer of undoubted genius, and he would have taken a professional interest in the 126ft (38.4m) Cangarda, America’s…

As the National Museum of the Royal Navy draws up plans to save the First World War cruiser HMS Caroline, this seems a good moment to recall the even bigger challenge faced by those who prevented the destruction of HMS Belfast 40 years ago in 1971. Britain’s largest historic ship is now a lasting memorial to the powerful big-gun armoured warships that formed the backbone of the Royal Navy in the first half of the 20th Century. The remarkable tale of Belfast’s escape from the scrapman’s blowtorch began on 14 April 1967 when a four-man team from the Imperial War Museum visited HMS Gambia in Portsmouth Dockyard to inspect her main armament. The museum had previously preserved two 15in guns from the battleships Ramillies and Resolution as a reminder of…

Disasters come in triplicate. Caught out once and you know you’re due for another ‘doing’ before too long, and another... Self-fulfilling, perhaps? You steel yourself in the sure knowledge that doings do not (thank goodness) ever come in fours. OK, says the mind, let’s get this over and done with quickly. Not that these were disasters, doings or even mishaps; more the result of poor planning – a failure to get behind the curve, I think the expression is. Anticipate. The first was unforeseen and, frankly, I don’t reckon I could have expected the main halyard to fray at that moment, where it joined the wire loop, but it did, just before the start of the race – the last in the Royal Loch Broom’s keenly fought annual regatta. And…

In December 1956 Miles and Beryl Smeeton left Melbourne in Australia on their 46ft (14m) ketch Tzu Hang, bound for England. While deep in the Southern Ocean, still over 900 miles from Cape Horn, Tzu Hang was somersaulted by a freak wave. With the deck swept clean by the sea, and the boat half full of water, the situation at first looked hopeless, but they patched the vessel up, raised a jury rig and limped to Chile. Here Tzu Hang was refitted and Miles and Beryl set off on a second attempt to double the Horn, only to be capsized in a severe gale. This time the mainmast broke off at deck level, the mizzen above the spreaders and the coachroof was badly damaged. Again they made their way north…

The waterfront in Bristol, Rhode Island, is home to a new business – Herreshoff Yacht Sales, at 18 Burnside Street, the address of the Herreshoff Manufacturing Company from 1878 to 1945. HYS shares the building with Herreshoff Designs, led by Halsey Herreshoff and Adam Langerman. HYS is dedicated to sales of all Herreshoff-designed craft, including those by Nathanael, L. Francis, Sidney and Halsey Herreshoff. It also represents builders of Herreshoff designs, including Bristol Boat Companies’ Herreshoff 20, Brion Rieff’s Alerion 26, and Artisan Boatworks’ Herreshoff 12 ½ and 15-footers. HYS is headed by Peter K Sterrett (on the right above), lifelong sailor and formerly a director at the Herreshoff Marine Museum. See www.herreshoff yachtsales.com or Tel: +1 401 396 9931.…

This summer saw the launch of one of Maine’s most contemporary-looking offerings ever, the 75-footer (23m) Isobel, writes Chris Museler. With a plumb bow and wineglass overhanging stern, the Brooklin Boat Yard-built sloop has the profile of a late 19th-century racing cutter. Stephens Waring Yacht Design combined composites and wood, and a striking square-top mainsail, in their fourth design for this client. Halls Spars, makers of America’s Cup masts, built Isobel’s rig, and the interior is a comfortable combination of traditional yacht joinery and modern conveniences for shorthanded racing and cruising. “We started in August of 2010,” said yard business manager Frank Hull, “and we launched this July. The design wasn’t complete when we started so we had our hands full.” After several wins this summer, including the Eggemoggin Reach…

Richard Stanley, master boatbuilder at Great Harbor Boatworks in Southwest Harbor, Maine, this summer received a Traditional Arts Fellowship award from the Maine Arts Commission jury, with the commendation that: “Mastering a traditional art calls for an understanding of a particular style or choice of materials, as well as a deep connection to place and local practices.” Richard Stanley is now building a carvel 19ft (5.8m) daysailer sloop on spec with a local youth as a part-time apprentice, among other projects. The yard was founded more than 30 years ago by Richard’s father Ralph Stanley and now belongs to him and wife Lorraine.…

The small town of Wareham, Mass, calls itself ‘the gateway to Cape Cod’ – but its relevance to sailors is as home to the Beetle Boat Shop, founded in the mid-1800s to build whaleboats and now surely the longest-running production wooden boatbuilders in the western world. The shop is famous for its eponymous Beetle cat, the 12ft 4in (3.8m) gaff-rigged catboat designed by John Beetle in 1921 for his children. Since then, more than 4,000 have been built – and the yard is building 12 more this winter. The yard also takes on larger projects, most recently the restoration of the 32ft (9.8m) Noank schooner We’re Here, a traditional Connecticut fishing type, this summer.…

Yes we cam! There are the ones you just love to hold for their intrinsic beauty – and the ones that, scruffy and worn, have become indispensable. This cam clamp is a case in point. It is fair to say that I could not now build a clinker boat without it. Skilfully crafted by Colin Galloway, who generously gave it to me after he said he would be building no more clinker boats, it has found a place in my workshop (and heart) for its unflinching ability to hold together two bits of floppy wood aiming to become planks. Its real value, though, comes when hanging a plank, in squeezing the two planks together at the land, close by the rivet, which makes for a fag-paper fit when the rove…

A lad on Saunterer I was absolutely thrilled to read the article on Saunterer in your July issue, as a good school friend, Ken Lockerbie, and I were invited to sail with her then owner Major Pelham Kayll up the coast for a week in the summer of 1948. We were both Sunderland lads of 14 and 15 years old who sailed dinghies – myself a Cadet C139 and Ken a Wright Twinkle 12 lugsail dinghy in Beadnell in North Northumberland. So a trip on a ‘proper’ yacht was quite something for us. I seem to remember we stopped the first night at Blyth, the home of the RNYC. Then with a fine westerly we were sailing up the coast towards Holy Island (Lindisfarne). We eventually took the inner passage…

Hispania, the Fife III 15-M whose appearance was much anticipated at Les Voiles de Saint-Tropez late this September, did not race after one of her trustees died in a hunting accident two days before the regatta started. The other 15-Ms Tuiga, Mariska and The Lady Anne did race along with 115 other classics – a record at this event. Star of the event was surely Falmouth Working Boat Victory, trucked down to compete in her yellow livery – full story next month. ‘Best Boat’ was Griff Rhys Jones’ S&S yawl Argyll. Mariquita, the 19-M Fife III won her class in this, her centenary year. It was great to see The Lady Anne racing again after a decade’s hiatus with her schooner ‘tender’ Adix also sailing daily. CB also sailed the…

New guidance published by English Heritage this September encourages local authorities to recognise the value of any fixed, historic vessels they might have in their records – or on their land. “Every local authority has what’s known as a Historic Environment Record (HER),” explained English Heritage spokesman Mark Dunkley. “It’s a record of all the historically important sites in that authority’s jurisdiction, and it’s important because it’s used to help to decide planning applications – so if a site is proposed for a new development, the authority will know whether or not there’s a significant Roman archaeological site there, for instance.” This new guidance encourages recognition of fixed vessels among these artefacts, so that they can be protected nationally by one of three methods: as a protected wreck site (like…

The gunter-rigged Fowey River Class dinghy, clinkerbuilt and 15ft (4.6m) long, has seen a great resurgence of interest in the Cornish harbour town with which it shares its name. This year alone, half a dozen new boats have been built by three local boatbuilders, including Peter Williams, who built one this summer in a record six weeks. Another of the local builders, Marcus Lewis, built three last winter and has two more in his order book for this winter. He told CB: “It’s great when you have these resurgences, but it can be at the cost of making the older boats in the fleet redundant. So it’s good that this time, there’s also been a boost in the number of old boats being restored to race competitively with the new…

On the 10th anniversary of the 11 September attacks in New York, Rhode Island sailors received a big boost to their annual Red Cross fund-raiser, Sail for Pride. Started as a response to the attacks, community boating centre Sail Newport organised the first event, which raised more than $100,000 in and around Conanicut Island race last year. This 11 September, more than 300 boats helped raise over $80,000 for the Red Cross and Wounded Warriors Fund. This year’s mix of boats saw a stunning array of classics that live in Newport, including the newly-renovated Dorade and Robin, owned by legendary America’s Cup winner and sailmaker Ted Hood, a 1958 wooden sloop of his own design. Both raised big dollars for the charities and also scored a third place in their…

This year’s Albert Strange Association annual meet was “thrown open to interesting boats by any designer, in any material,” as organiser Dick Wynne explained. A plethora of craft was at Hamford Water in the Walton Backwaters, Essex, from 19 to 21 August, ranging from the 101-year-old 49ft (14.9m) Summers and Payne 1910 yacht Hardy to a horde of (mostly) lug-rigged dinghies including a sailing canoe and the George Holmes-inspired 13ft (4m) canoe yawl Ethel. A Harrison Butler Z 4-tonner, a Falmouth work boat and a clinker inshore fishing boat yacht also came. Albert Strange yachts included the 34ft 9in (10.6m) Firefly, the 33ft (10.1m) Charm (CB211), the unusual transom-sterned 26ft (8m) Galatea, and Constance, an 1899 Strange design built in clinker by Fabian Bush in 2006. The event’s success came…

NEW BUILD Sibbick’s Diamond He was a famous designer and builder in his day. Now one of Charles Sibbick’s fin-and-bulb Half Rater designs from 1897 has been built using the modern strip plank method RESTORATION New Zealand’s Rawhiti Bringing together the names of designer Arch Logan and master restorer Peter Brookes, the rebuild of the 1905 Rawhiti is a major classic yachting event – and not just in New Zealand EVENT Luggers at Looe This year’s Looe Luggers included a visit from the 60ft French lugger La Cancalaise... but it was a Cornish centenarian that scooped up the prizes PLUS Cockwell’s new Duchy 27 on test; America’s Castine Regatta; up-channel with Nereis, and the results of the National Historic Ships/Classic Boat photo competition DECEMBER ISSUE ON SALE 11 NOVEMBER PLEASE…

CHARLES MILLER: Ship off the old block Wavertree, built in Southampton in 1885, was one of the last large sailing ships constructed of wrought iron. The 279ft vessel has survived to this day, afloat at New York’s South Street Seaport Museum, and so too has the original 212cm (83.5in) builder’s half model, which is expected to fetch between £2,500 and £3,500 at Charles Miller Ltd’s next London maritime sale on 26 October. Its 250 lots of maritime collectibles, instruments and works of art include a private collection of scrimshaw with estimates ranging from £200-2000. (www.charlesmillerltd.com) CHRISTIE’S: Travel & vintage posters Great classic Art Deco liner and seaside resort images will feature in Christie’s next London sale of travel & vintage posters on 3 November. (www.christies.com)…

Restoring classic yachts is one of the core activities at GL Watson & Co. The office has a remarkable knowledge of most of the surviving fleet as well as those now lost. Our archives give us inspiration for what might be re-created, but the discovery of an intact classic of a type never yet seen offered an opportunity too exciting to be turned down. None of the lightly-built Raters of the 1890s, whose designs were so influential in the development of yacht design, has survived in anything like original condition. Successive rule changes saw the type banished from yachting, except for a brief comeback in the years just following World War I. One design of four identical boats launched in 1919 had long intrigued us to the extent that our…

It promised to be one for the history books: the two oldest working schooners in the United States racing each other between their home ports to commemorate their 140th anniversaries. The two vessels were both built in 1871, and the idea grew out of a conversation between their respective owners, who are good friends as well as friendly competitors. Captain Garth Wells and his wife Captain Jenny Tobin of the Lewis R French are based in Camden, Maine. Captain Noah Barnes and his wife Jane Barrett Barnes of the Stephen Taber sail out of Rockland. Technically, the Lewis R French is the older boat. She was launched in April 1871 at Christmas Cove, Maine, just six years after the assassination of President Lincoln, at a time when the United States…

A round ten years ago Nick Goldring decided that he wanted to try out electric boating for himself. Unhappy with the commercially available electrically powered craft at that time, he decided to set about creating his own vessel to meet his needs. It was obvious to Nick that the craft that would most suit the low-stress, silent and steady progress offered by electric power was one with which he was already familiar, the Canadian canoe. For a suitable design, Nick contacted renowned small boat and modern canoe designer Paul Fisher of Selway Fisher Designs, and all three of the electric canoes that he has developed subsequently have come from Paul’s board. With Silent Explorer, his most recent brief for Paul Fisher, Nick is happy that he’s come up with his…

Worse things happen at sea, so they say, and veteran yachting journalist Dick Durham has picked his favourite 60 sea stories, re-telling most, but leaving a few in the words of their protagonists. Here are stories expected (RKJ circles the world, Fastnet ‘79, family spends months in a rubber dinghy, etc); unexpected (a beautiful passage about the awful symphony of irritating noises made by a becalmed yacht written by Roger Taylor aboard his 20ft Corribee sloop); the canonised (passages from Richard McMullen, Maurice Griffiths and from this month’s Classic Bookshelf – see left). Or how about a surely unique eye-witness account of a sperm whale killing a giant squid? It’s all in these pages. This is easy, page-turning fun and I hardly dare say that each story takes about the…

At first glance, you might confuse this class with the Westmacott-designed X One-Design. The two classes share the same short overhangs, gentle sheer and performance under sail, but this design is older by one year. Designed in 1910 by Henry Longmore, the Yarmouth One-Design came about after a local sailor, Sir Arthur Cope, suggested that a new “local class of gentleman’s yachts for Yarmouth” was required. The Solent Yacht Club, formed in 1878, had an active racing programme, and sought a new class for its members to race. Longmore’s design fitted the bill. The class saw its first racing season in 1913, and soon 11 were on the water, built by Theo Smith, a Yarmouth-based boatbuilder later known for his West Wight Scow design of 1923. Construction was solid, with…

Vixen II was owned for a period by the Hollywood actor Warren Beatty, and friends who have been on board include Madonna, Barbara Streisand, Brigitte Bardot and Maria Callas. The yacht was commissioned under her original name Jessica in 1914 and built as one of the New York Yacht Club’s ‘Fighting Forties’ (59ft/18m LOD racing gaffers), of which only 13 were ever built. Later, she was converted to schooner rig, which makes her much easier to sail – the present owner singlehands her. She underwent an extensive renovation in 2006 and her condition is described by her broker as good but not concours, meaning she’s asking just €395,000. Lying near Amsterdam – see www.seaindependent.com or telephone +31 2292 79753 for more.…

Jeff Rutherford (left) is the man in charge of what could well be the world’s most important restoration, rebuilding the 1885 schooner Coronet, all 130ft (40m) of her, to her age-of-sail splendour. In terms of authenticity, it aims to set a new bar, with as-original trunnel fastenings, an oil-lit interior and no engine (who needs one when you have a powerful RIB, cynics might add…). He might also have the world’s longest commute, travelling monthly from his base, the Rutherford Boatshop in Richmond, California, to the International Yacht Restoration School in Rhode Island, where the work is taking place, a coast-to-coast commute of 2,700 miles! He and his team are at present replacing every frame apart from a very few individual futtocks.…

The Spaulding Wooden Boat Center in California, known for its ongoing restoration of the 1885 gaffer Freda, has re-engineered a design from its own past in the form of the Spaulding 16, writes Chris Museler. It was designed by Myron Spaulding in 1926, and last year notable modern cat rig designer Tom Wylie re-drew the boat for the yard’s Youth Boatbuilding and Sailing programme. Avatar was launched in August with a clinker ply hull and unstayed cat rig, built by 25 apprentices and six volunteer mentors.…

One of Maine’s main do-it-all yards, Rockport Marine will celebrate its 50th anniversary next year. Its countless builds and restorations over the years have encompassed everything from spirit of tradition yachts like the W Class, using modern wood-build techniques, to the boat pictured below: Trade Wind, a 62ft (19m) John Alden-designed motor-sailer built in 1938, restored over the last three years and re-launched this May. The yard is also halfway through restoring a piece of British treasure – the 83ft (25m) Fife schooner Adventuress.…

Before industrial methods were developed for casting the wide steel plate of handsaws familiar in recent times, a forged saw blade was long and narrow. Such a blade required a wooden frame to tension it and this gave birth to the frame saw, which has been an indispensable tool since Roman times. Over the years it has been used for sawing everything from logs to veneers. One type of frame saw still useful to the boatbuilder is the turning saw, typified by this beechwood example from the 1950s. The frame’s shaped arms are held apart by a stretcher fitted by loose mortise and tenon joints, with the blade on one side and a loop of cord spanning the other. The blade is tensioned by a toggle twisting the cord –…

Has there always been bad feeling between sailors and motor-boaters? There certainly was a century ago, according to two letters published in The Yachtsman in June 1911. “I am glad to see in last month’s issue that some of our American cousins are evidently fed up with marine tramcar drivers posing pathetically as sailors. I have never suggested that motor-boating doesn’t require skill. On the contrary I know very well that it requires a knowledge of engineering and seamanship. We are all aware that the engine department is run in a creditable manner, but as regards the seamanship necessary in coastal navigation the majority of motor-boatmen show a lamentable ignorance...” A second letter suggested that “yachtsmen and marine-motormen should have separate clubs and magazines”. Fifty years later, the situation wasn’t…