Indholdsfortegnelse for June 2017 i Classic Boat

RUNNER-UP Classic Boat Awards 2017 There’s a moment in most episodes of the Great Pottery Throw Down (a spin-off of the hugely popular television show Great British Bake Off) when judge Brymer Jones is so overwhelmed by the successful execution of some piece of pottery that he can’t stop himself shedding a tear. It’s become his trademark ‘tick’ and the ultimate, sought-after seal of approval for all the show’s contestants. I had my own Brymer Jones moment on the Carrick Roads recently. I had already been on board Jon Bray’s new cutter Unity and been duly impressed by the high standard of construction and the understated, airy interior. I had seen building photos of the boat online and discussed her provenance with her builder and others. So I knew what…

The creator of the most desirable motorboats of all time died on 10 April, in his home town of Sarnico on the shores of Lake Iseo, where the Riva family established its first boatyard in 1842. Carlo became the fourth generation of Riva boatbuilders after reading mechanical engineering at the Technical Industrial Institute in Cremona. Like many young Italians after the war, Carlo was captivated by the pizzazz and wealth of the New World, and would read and re-read American yachting magazines. One thing in particular caught his eye – the mahogany barrelback runabouts built en masse by the venerable American firm of Chris Craft. Carlo’s father Serafino was a strict traditionalist, and father and son acted out the struggle of Italy’s new generation emerging to challenge its traditional past…

It was the sincerest form of flattery, but it didn’t take a genius to work out that by basing their new boatyard at Sarnico in 1961, next door to one Carlo Riva, the young Scarani brothers, Luigi, Carlo and Francesco, came to challenge, as well as praise. Riva’s domination of the small world of the luxury mahogany runabout was complete, or was it? It was the economic boom, the so-called ‘Italian miracle’, as the country clocked record growth year after year. It was an era of free time, in which yachting became a tantalising reward for the most successful. The choice of Sarnico for their business base was dictated for the Scarani brothers by more than the sense of challenge, or perhaps of provocation. For a long time, Lake Iseo,…

We’ve never had it so good, we classic boat nuts. We live in a golden era. I spend a certain proportion of my time reading old copies of Yachting Monthly (from the stack in the outside loo, I’ve reached the 1930s) and it doesn’t take long to realise the number of yearly chores we have been excused from. Take the best example: sailcloth. When Britannia’s last mainsail was made by Ratsey’s, a bermudan monster with a luff higher than Nelson’s column, they had to make allowance for several feet of stretch, and, once bent and set, the crew would have nursed the sail like they would running in a new Sunbeam or a Riley Nine. And even when the sail had been ‘run in’ and stretched, it would be unbent…

With beautiful boats at every turn, it takes something special to draw the crowds at the WoodenBoat Show at Mystic Seaport. A complete restoration of a Buzzards Bay 25, however, wasn’t just drawing admirers, it was drawing gasps of astonishment as the team behind the project described to passers-by the lengths to which they’d gone in the name of authenticity. Most owners, when they say they want an ‘authentic’ rebuild, at some point draw a line. Period-correct ropes or sails, for example, can be unwieldy compared to their modern counterparts. Not the owner of Mink, the Buzzards Bay 25 at Mystic. He asked Andy Giblin and Ed McClave of boatbuilders MP&G to bring back Mink to her warts-and-all 1914 condition, even insisting that where they found a mis-drilled rivet hole…

‘ Roger, aged seven, and no longer the youngest of the family, ran in wide zigzags, to and fro, across the steep field that sloped up from the lake… ‘The wind was against him, and he was tacking. He could not run straight against the wind because he was a sailing vessel.’ Arthur Ransome wrote those lines for the opening chapter of Swallows and Amazons, his most famous children’s book. Eighty-six years later it was wide zigzags Wooden Spoon was making as we tacked up Southampton Water against a northerly Force 4 wind. As the 24th Peter Duck ketch to have been built following the original ordered by the author, as a ‘marine bath-chair’ for old age, her owner, like Ransome, does not expect Wooden Spoon to be close-winded. “She sails…

Email: steffan@classicboat.co.uk Yard News PENPOL, CORNWALL All go at Butler & Co “It feels like it’s been non-stop since we moved to the new yard in Penpol,” says Holly Latham of Butler & Co. It certainly looks that way right now, with both the Butler-built Mayflower 50s in (Martha Primrose and Bonaventure), a Fife II yacht (Paul Goss’s Ayrshire Lass), our coverboat last month the Fife III yacht Rosemary III, in for minor finishing works, an Alexander Robertson, a Harrison Butler, a Folkboat, an Itchen ferry, a Mounts Bay lugger and a classic launch! Elrhuna, a 1904, 28ft (8.5m) Alexander Robertson yacht, has spent her life on Scotland’s west coast, but after a summer of sailing in Cornwall, she’ll undergo some investigation and remedial work. The 1934, Dutch-built, Harrison Butler…

LogbookOut and about SUPPORTED BY 1 Classic Boat partnered with the Gstaad Yacht Club to launch a new award for Centenarian of the Year; pictured from left are CB editor Rob Peake, skipper Toby Marris of trophy winner Jolie Brise, Gstaad YC manager Cindy Shönrich and the club’s rear commodore Manrico Iachia; Toby and Cindy hold the trophies, a silver bowl and goblet made by Robbe & Berking 2 More than 100 guests including the Royal Thames YC vice commodore Bernard Kinchin gathered at the Knightsbridge club for the announcement of the winners 3 The Yachtsman of the Year trophy went to Oliver Berking (left), pictured with Jonathan Dyke, of the evening’s lead sponsor Classic Marine 4 Kit Rogers (left), MD of Jeremy Rogers Ltd, whose Contessa 32 was shortlisted…

There is a photo taken of my great-uncle Jac in Norway, in 1918, which really shows the man. He is at the wheel of a motorboat, which he designed and built with his own hands, and he is in home waters. Sitting behind are his mother, his wife, Signe, plus other close family members. He exudes confidence and authority as someone in complete control of his world. Yet eight years later this world had been almost annihilated: Jac’s business had been lost along with his financial credibility, his home, and even his beloved Norway. The family were now living in Gothenburg, Sweden, and Jac was employed at Carl H Moberg’s yard on Hisingen Island. They were just about making ends meet, but the heavy physical work was gradually eroding his…

As the morning fog lifted off the waters of Gilkey Harbor in Islesboro, Maine, I sat perched on the deck of the schooner American Eagle and watched our 15 competitor schooners appear one-by-one through the haze. A light rain sprinkled on the foul-weather tarp and a woodsy heat filtered up the galley chimney, filling the deck with the scent of French toast and coffee. The Great Schooner Race day had arrived. Traditional schooners have been gathering in Penobscot Bay every summer since 1977 to participate in this race, hosted by the Maine Windjammer Association. But racing has been part of schooner history for longer than that. These boats have battling each other to market to ensure the best price for their cargo for more than a century. I’d arrived in…

IPSWICH, SUFFOLK Spirit Yachts – make it a large one Spirit Yachts has received an order for a new, wooden 111ft (34m) sloop from an overseas buyer. The superyacht is set to be the largest build from Spirit Yachts to date, and sees the yard’s first partnership with yacht design agency Rhoades Young. The Spirit 111 was designed by Spirit boss and head designer Sean McMillan, while Rhoades Young is working on the interior design. The owner has appointed superyacht project manager Jens Cornelsen, of Cornelsen & Partner, to liaise with Spirit Yachts throughout the project. Planned to launch in summer 2019, the Spirit 111 was due to start construction as we went to press. Commissioned for an experienced yachtsman, who plans to attend the superyacht regattas in the Mediterranean,…

Displayed high on a wall in Portsmouth City Museum is a window sash from the wreck of HMS Royal George, a 100-gun first-rate ship that turned over and sank while taking on supplies at Spithead in 1782, with the loss of more than 800 lives. Looking into that mud-grey frame stirs a vision of the terror behind it on that fateful day. When launched in 1756 she was not only the largest ship in the fleet but one of the most complex wooden structures in existence, incorporating styles and techniques of joinery that had reached their apogee in the Georgian period. Among these was the very practical sash window admitting light to aft cabins through the extravagantly decorated stern. Today the ovolo moulding facing the interior and glazing rabbet (or…

Novelist W Somerset Maugham engaged in espionage during the First World War, and to do so he travelled to Geneva, Switzerland, conveniently on a lake bordering France. Maugham could board a boat in Geneva, disembark at Evian, make his reconnaissance, and re-embark for Lausanne in neutral Switzerland. When he returned to Geneva, it appeared he had merely visited Lausanne. Today, anyone may do the same (minus the spying): the steamers on which Maugham travelled still traverse the lake. There are eight of them, all paddle-wheel boats with curving sheers, fine entries, and gilt-worked prows. Montreux, 1904, is the oldest of a fleet operated for over 100 years by La Compagnie Générale de Navigation (CGN). Montreux’s cruises were so popular with Gilded Age travellers that CGN went on a building spree,…

Built for an undergraduate in the 1880s, by Salter’s of Oxford, this 22ft mahogany Thames double-sculling half-rigged gig was discovered in an almost irredeemable state in the rafters of the Marquess of Aberdeen’s sawmill at Haddo. For a split second or two I was of a mind to suggest consigning it to the flames, but the decision was made to restore it to as close to its former state as possible after a century or so of rot, mildew, chicken poo and neglect. Opinion differs and debate rages among old boat enthusiasts about what constitutes a restoration as opposed to a rebuild, and to what extent a rebuild requires what proportion of the original to avoid being simply a replica. A portion of the stern framing, as in the J-Class…

PUFFIN Handy canoe yawl We’ve gone for a couple of 25-footers in this month’s Getting Afloat, about the smallest size of boat that will allow a typical family of four to cruise for extended periods, but also a size where the gear is still relatively light and singlehanding relatively painless. This Sea Otter is breathtaking with her double-ended hull form and big gaff yawl rig. She’s one of the Sea Otter series built by David Moss, who’s widely regarded as second to none for the quality and attention to detail of his boats. She’s strip-planked on an iroko basket, and features sitting headroom and three berths below, with a cockpit that looks pretty ‘snug’ – the prices you pay for the outrageous good looks, and that slippery, seaworthy double-ended hull…

BOATBUILDER’S SECRET Hew to width When working with wood there are usually several ways to achieve the same result and it’s often down to personal preference which is best. A case in point is reducing a board to width when the piece to be removed is in the range of about 0.25-0.5in (6–12mm). This can seem too little to justify the sweat and concentration of using a rip saw, but too wide to warrant labouring with a hand plane. Even using a coarsely set jack plane removing about 0.005in (0.13mm) with each pass would take 100 passes to remove 0.5in. Meanwhile resorting to the noise and fuss of a table saw for such a trifling amount seems like overkill. By far the most user-friendly method is to use a carpenter’s…

I had been racing over to Le Havre on Lutine, the Lloyd’s Yacht Club’s Nicholson 55, a truly wonderful boat, much loved by all who knew her. This particular race took place at the end of the Spithead Review of 1977, held to mark the Queen’s Silver Jubilee. There were seven Nicholson 55s taking part, alongside many other yachts, both British and French. The race lasted, as I recall, three days and finished off Le Havre. Even when going racing, the crew of Lutine often had not met each other beforehand. On this particular crossing I think it is fair to say that Port Watch did not find Starboard Watch entirely congenial. So it was that by the end of the race, and after much laughter, Port Watch had welded…