Indholdsfortegnelse for May 2016 i Classic Boat

GREAT BRITAIN WATCH Visitors to the London Boat Show in January may have seen Roger Smith’s exclusive watches exhibited. This is the Isle of Man-based watch designer and builder’s most patriotic offering, hand-engraved platinum with a sterling silver dial. Build time 10 months, £180,000 Tel: 01624 897943. rwsmithwatches.com TOOL KIT A hand-made 24-piece tool kit from Swiss manufacturer WohnGeist. The handles of the chisels, screwdrivers, hammers and files are made of Swiss pear, a wood that resists warping and splintering in moist environments. A magnetic case, also made of pear wood, with leather handles, keeps everything in its place. The price tag is fairly eye-watering but being able to put your hand directly on the tool you need, and not having to root around in a black plastic box, is…

TOP TIPS Pick a spot where the beach shelves gently, but not too steeply Survey the beach at LW for boulders, soft patches etc. Then identify the exact spot using transits Make sure your legs have large pads One leg can be made slightly longer than the other, so the boat takes a gentle list HW springs, the best time to dry out, are different UK coastwise. In Ullapool LW spring is conveniently around midday, leaving plenty of daylight to work Do your sums! Don’t go on at dead HW if the tides are going off. Aim for an hour after HW Don’t wait for the tide. Wear a dry suit, and start scrubbing as soon as she is aground. By the time she is dried out, you will have…

Spirit of Tradition on show Superyachts used to be the big draw at boot Düsseldorf, in January, but this year it was the event’s classics section and smattering of Spirit of Tradition yachts that attracted the crowds. The biggest boat may have been a 30m (98ft 4in) motorboat, but the most photographed boat was a 28ft (8.5m) wooden yacht (see below). SWEDE 68 Classic Swedish Yachts, whose designs are based on the Swedish Skerry Cruisers, is offering a concept flagship 68. Drawn by Scandinavian yacht designer Håkan Södergren to be built using a vacuuminjected sandwich construction, she’ll come with carbon spars and mahogany superstructure and finishing. LOA is 67ft 6in (20.6m) and beam 12ft 5in (3.8m). She displaces 17.6 tonnes (38,808lb). Electric winches reduce the need for a big crew.…

Which boat to jump aboard for a race during Antigua’s classic regatta? The growing entry list held vessels as varied as snowflakes. I wanted to go fast, sure, but I also wanted to stay dry and sail with a captivating crew. Were there parameters, I wondered, that would help narrow the playing field of my quest for the perfect ride? I began my shortlist with the newest boat in the regatta, the 2012 Klaus Roder ketch, Chronos. She’d possibly be the most comfortable and at 179ft LOD she was the biggest. I opted not to ask for a place aboard the smallest entrant, a 25ft Folkboat, not wishing to take up precious deck space. Size matters. Age matters, too, so I added to my shortlist the 80ft Coral of Cowes,…

In July of 2015 Wooden Boatworks Inc, of Greenport New York, launched a new plank-on-frame William Fife III 8-M. The yacht is named Invader, commissioned by Brian Hunt Lawrence of New York City and Oyster Bay, New York. Invader is 48ft 2in on deck. She carries a 30ft 8in waterline, an 8ft 6in beam, and a 6ft 6in draft, well representing a class with great international appeal in the first part of the last century. 8-Metres were, and still are, a competitive racing class and they formed an Olympic class from 1908 to 1936. This contemporary Invader was constructed as a historical new-build of a 1930s era 8-Metre called Invader II, which match-raced for the Canadian team in the 1932 Canada’s Cup. This competition was the freshwater equivalent of the…

Why is there so little protection afforded to our most famous yachts, writes Barry Pickthall, most notably Sir Robin Knox-Johnston’s Suhaili? Three famous yachts: Gipsy Moth IV, the 54ft (16.5m) ketch in which Sir Francis Chichester became the first to complete a solo circumnavigation in 1966/67 with just one stop; Lively Lady, the 36ft (11m) cutter in which Sir Alec Rose did much the same in 1967/68; and Suhaili, the 32ft 5in (9.9m) double-ended ketch in which Sir Robin Knox-Johnston became the first to sail around the world solo without stopping, winning the Golden Globe Race in 1968/69. Only two of those three are on Britain's principal list of historic vessels, the National Historic Ships Register, leaving Suhaili with unprotected status. This is because Suhaili, while big enough to breast…

Born in 1907 in Dorset and grew up on small boats sailing from Poole. He ran away to sea aboard the barquentine Waterwitch, the last square-rigged vessel to trade under the red ensign: history was already chasing him! He made two transatlantic passages in yachts, the first aboard Thelma, an engineless 27ft, gaff-rigged Looe smack which was wrecked on Cocos Island in the Pacific after transitting the Panama Canal. The second was aboard the last Ramsgate sailing trawler, the ketch-rigged Quartette. He also had spells ashore working as a sports sub-editor on, firstly the Daily Mail and latterly the East Anglian Daily Times. When he started barging, it was firstly as mate aboard the sailing barges, Audrey, Oceanic, and Oxygen and then as master in the Hambrook, Northdown, Martinet –…

Fairey enthusiast and experienced sailor Peter Morton has just completed the transformation of an aft cabin Fairey 31 into a 31 Sport version, producing an elegantly handsome fast weekend cruiser for two. Peter explains, “I was born in Jersey in the Channel Isles and I’ve been sailing all my life, I cannot recall a time when there wasn’t a boat around. My father was a keen sailor and did a lot of racing when I was little. He was a coach builder by profession and when I was growing up he and I built every boat I ever sailed including an Optimist and a couple of Fireballs.” During his sailing career Peter has competed in nine Admiral’s Cups for Great Britain and won a number of world championships. “My interest…

SVEA Nobel’s R-Class We mentioned before in Yard News (CB333) that 1914 R-Class yacht Svea that once belonged to Alfred Nobel (yes, that Nobel) is up for grabs. Her owner Jan Rautawaara got back in touch with us to supply these photos. She’s got a sound mahogany hull, with a new keelson and some new stainless-steel frames. Given that Jan is willing to give her away to the right owner, this seems like an extraordinary opportunity to get hold of a Universal Class yacht with some really interesting historical provenance. Universal boats are enjoying the beginnings of a resurgence in interest, as attested to by two boats we recently covered – Jour de Fête and Olympia. Perhaps even more attractively, they seem to be the boats to have if you…

In a less machine-driven age the small boatbuilder converted locally grown logs into timber using a froe and maul. The froe works by riving, that is splitting a log along the natural planes of weakness where medullary ray radiates through it like spokes in a wheel. The L-shaped froe, with blunt knife edge, is started by resting it across the diameter at a spot where it can get stuck into rays on both sides of the pith and is then struck hard with the maul – a heavy rough-hewn mallet. A short log will soon split in two but a longer one will require the froe to be repeatedly twisted by its handle to open and ease the split forward. This yields halves which are further split into quarters, eighths…

YVONNE GREEN Principal of the Boat Building Academy How many BBA graduates are now working shipwrights? We’ve run a graduates’ network since 2008 that has 225 members, most of whom are working in the marine or related industries. Some are on classic yachts, some started their own businesses, many are with big-name yards, based all over the world. Why the furniture courses; are fewer people interested in boat building? People were so enthusiastic about the woodworking part of the 38 week course that it seemed crazy not to put a course on for people who didn’t want to go the whole boat building hog (or so they thought). Once a student, always a student? Students are valued in the community for their skills and often become part of the gig…

By all accounts James Gordon Bennett Jr (right) was not a very good boy at all, but nevertheless he still received a pretty wonderful toy for his 16th birthday in 1857 in the shape of a brand-new 77-ton 72-foot yacht, which probably did not come gift-wrapped. The American sportsman, playboy and newspaper owner, whose exploits were so extravagant and scandalous his name has become an expression of utter astonishment, was among other things a super-keen yachtsman (see Saleroom April issue). In fact in his 16th year he soon got a chance to show off his new toy with the big boys when he was elected as the youngest member of the New York Yacht Club. Rebecca, depicted here off New York, was a centreboard sloop designed by William Tooker and…

“He says I must always mention the ‘team’, but it’s clear Røvik has been key to the scheme” Geir Røvik is a man used to working in Johan Anker’s shadow; he set up his first wooden boat repair business by renting the site of the great designer’s yard at Vollen, and has always been fiercely proud of that connection. He himself started, as the best shipwrights often do, by dragging his long-suffering mother down to the waterside as a small child, fascinated by the sounds and smells of the construction and repair of wooden boats. Later, aged just 16, he bought a “terrible rotten 54ft (16.4m) wooden fishing vessel”. But disaster struck. After a jolting lorry journey in a slip wagon she was badly damaged, “looked curved like a banana”,…

SPECIFICATIONS LOA 17ft 6in (5.4m) LWL 16ft 7in (5.1m) BEAM 5ft 9in (1.8m) DRAUGHT PU: 7in (18cm) PD: 4ft 6in (1.4m) SAIL AREA 150sq ft (13.9m2) DISPLACEMENT 295lb (133.3kg) “The Osprey is in many ways the antithesis of the Flying Dutchman,” wrote Ian Proctor in the 1955 Yachting World Annual. “She was designed on the principle that a two-man centreboard boat should be powered by sails that can be handled by two men of normal strength without many devices to assist them; it seemed that this sail area was about 150sq ft, roughly that of the International 14 class, and 35sq ft less than that of the Flying Dutchman.” Ian Proctor designed the prototype Osprey dinghy – Osprey – in 1952 in response to the International Yacht Racing Union’s (IYRU)…

The combination set of square head, centre head, protractor and rule is an essential of the engineer’s tool chest, adaptable to a great many uses. With its accurately ground reference faces it is also a favourite of the yacht joiner and is unusual in crossing the metalwork-woodwork divide. This example from the 1930s was made by Brown & Sharpe in America, a company that made clocks before turning to small machinists’ tools and workshop machinery such as lathes and milling machines. Its first machine, made around 1850, was a dividing engine for setting out the graduations on a steel rule such as the one shown here. The rule or blade is the backbone of the set and was available in metric and ‘English’ (as Brown & Sharpe termed Imperial) sizes…