Indholdsfortegnelse for March 2018 i Classic Boat

“No one sets out to chase a storm, unless they are in pursuit of a sailing record” Have you ever suffered from storm-envy? What a psychologist might describe as a wish to have encountered seriously bad weather or faced a life-threatening near-disaster in a small yacht, and survived? A sense of inadequacy as well as admiration descends whenever I read one of Tom Cunliffe’s tales, the most modest of which makes my hairiest seem like a voyage across the Round Pond in London, where I learned to sail model boats. Yet there’s surely no shame in never having streamed a sea anchor, set the deepest reef, or had to bale for your life as bilge water lapped your ankles. Those who set out to climb high mountains do not seek…

Boatbuilders may choose to source timber for strip planking in the form of sawn boards and machine it themselves, but they can also buy it machined and ready to use. Whereas with traditional hull construction planks are tapered at their ends to reflect the smaller girth of a boat at bow and stern, with strip planking the planks are nearly always parallel so that they simply ‘run out’ at the sheer and/or at the centreline. Robbins Timber is one company that provides strip planking ready machined in two different formats: ‘rapid strip’, and ‘bead and cove’, both of which are designed to increase the gluing surfaces between planks. The rapid strip is essentially a loose-fitting tongue and groove. Each plank is fitted with the groove in the upper edge so…

Many years ago I found myself down on my luck in Mystic, Connecticut. The boat was laid up in the Seaport Museum and I was running low on funds. Just along the way was a hefty gaff schooner working as a ‘head boat’, which meant she returned to her berth every night with customers who’d paid their dollars for a day trip. It wasn’t glamorous, but she was making an honest living. Word was she was short of a hand, so I hopped aboard one evening full of hope. The mate greeted me kindly but was obliged to give me the no-go. Some dockside loafer had been handed the job that morning, but I was a strong lad in those days and would have looked like handy peak halyard fodder.…

The British Classic Yacht Club is investigating the possibility of launching an offshoot of the IRC rating system for classic yachts. Commodore David Murrin said: “With the mass of data that the BCYC has compiled over our 17-year history of racing classic yachts under IRC, and the recognition that classic yachts are a small and unique sub-set of the IRC database, most of which have high displacement/length ratios, we are researching the development of our own handicap system that will have a slight modification to a base IRC certificate. “The additional variables will be based on sailcloths and a factor related to sail area upwind and downwind, waterline length and displacement. This would remove some of the small anomalies that IRC does not deal with when heavy classics are concerned,…

SORCERESS Early Victorian gaff cutter for sale The Victorian gaff cutter yacht Sorceress has unexpectedly come up for sale, representing an opportunity to finish a project that has already had a lot of work carried out. The end result will be a stunning, rare, early Victorian yacht that could rate well under CIM. She was built in 1878 in Gosport, to a design by AE Payne and measures around 60ft (18m) LOD. Built as she was for an RYS member, the construction is quality: Burma teak planks bronzefastened to oak frames with a slim, external lead keel and much internal ballast to bring her up to her c50 tonne displacement. Her hull is copper fastened and the deck, which needs some refastening work, is in kauri. Current owner Christopher Dean,…

The use of a mitre box A mitre box is a useful aid to cutting 45 degree ends for mitre joints, and also for sawing ends square, bypassing the need for marking out with bevel or try-square. Look for a solid hardwood box, usually beech, with thick walls and base, so that it has both the mass to remain stable on the bench and guides, which are long enough to prevent sideways wobble in the saw blade. Check that walls are perpendicular, and that the guides are at a true 45 or 90 degrees, as appropriate. A mitre box is generally used for small stu., such as stuck-on mouldings. It's usual to clamp the work tight with the free hand while sawing, but you could also use packing pieces or…

3-4 MARCH RYA Dinghy Show presented by Suzuki Alexandra Palace, London Media-partnered by Yachts & Yachting, this annual dinghy show is held in the spectacular 1863-built Alexandra Palace with views over London, and always seems to pack in quite a bit of classic interest besides the modern, high-performance dinghies. Tel: +44 (0)20 8365 2121, alexandrapalace.com 16-18 FEBRUARY Trillian Trust Classic Yacht Regatta Auckland, New Zealand The main annual event in New Zealand’s classic yacht racing scene. It includes a parade of classic motor launches. Visiting yachtsmen welcome from all nations. classicyacht.org.nz 10-12 MARCH Geelong Wooden Boat Festival nr Melbourne, Australia This March will see the eighth Geelong Wooden Boat Festival. It’s a big event, with more than 150 vessels and 12,000 visitors expected. Couta boats, yachts and workboats. woodenboatfestivalgeelong.com.au…

Classic Boat 2018 Awards NOMINATED It’s a windy day in 1936 and three friends are out sailing an Anker 10-Metre yacht in the Åland archipelago between Sweden and Finland. The gusts between the islands here can be strong, nothing that your average Anker 10-M couldn’t handle, but today the boat’s owner is unhappy. Holger Nilsson, aged 55, is a personable character who runs one of Sweden’s biggest companies. With him is good friend and business colleague Sven Salén, a medallist at the Berlin Olympic games and one of Sweden’s best-known sailors. The third member of the party is Tore Holm, talented yacht designer, introspective nice guy and also an Olympic sailor. Quite a trio, and a group of people who’d have enjoyed having a good-natured dig at the Norwegian living…

David Knight of the Classic Motor Boat Association The Classic Motor Boat Association is 20 years old. Is interest in vintage vessels on the increase? Yes it is and not necessarily purely for the CMBA. The Thames Vintage Boat Club, too, is seeing many boats being restored. This is the affordable end; for not much more than £1,500, you can get on the water in a classic boat with like-minded people. We have a membership of 250-300 people, many with more than one boat. What does the Association do? Our mantra is the preservation and use of classic boats. Like a classic car club, we want to keep these old boats alive. We have events all round the country, from Falmouth to Loch Lomond. The boats are trailerable and that’s…

BONHAMS Parisian power This prodigious record-breaking marine missile powered by a monstrous 800hp 36-litre V12 engine should keep even the most ardent speed-freaks happy. Built in Paris in 1934 for French industrialist Emile Picquerez, who was also a keen racing yachtsman, Rafale V is quite simply the most powerful single-engined, front-engined French hydroplane of them all. Designed for both endurance and speed, the 28ft double-stepped hydroplane competed in the ‘unlimited’ class in an age when thrilling races such as the Lyons-Marseilles-Cannes often combined inland waters and open sea. With a highly tuned Hispano-Suiza aero engine mounted on a beautifully crafted double-diagonal mahogany hull, Rafale V claimed several records, notching up 212kph (131mph) on Lake Evian in 1938, before being hidden in a barge on the Seine for the duration of…

Classic Boat 2018 Awards NOMINATED Sunlight penetrated through the gaps in the planking, each seam projecting golden bows of light over the dark mahogany interior. Brittle flakes of paint, warped and cracked by time, curled into waves revealing the pale, dehydrated skin of the wooden surfaces. Outside, I sat on a wooden block and inspected my latest purchase. A pretty little carvel bermudan sloop–characteristic of her time–with a mahogany coachroof, coamings, and some rather distinctive Perspex caravan windows. She had a long keel and a shallow draught–with a full midship section, fine ends and a raked transom. Five years on legs had nudged one of the topside planks out of line–and cracks in the oak deadwood opened up like deep river valleys. There was no rot and the hull was…

Things move on so fast that today’s young sailors may have to ask what the Admiral’s Cup was all about, but for half a century it was known as the unofficial world championship of offshore racing. While interest in the Cup may have waned, a regatta in Sydney Harbour in December brought back the great excitement of the Cup, with a magnificent gathering of 21 boats that competed in or were associated with the event over the years. Sailing in the regatta and taking part in the activities ashore was a reminder of how great the Admiral’s Cup was and how significant its influence on yacht design and racing has been. The Admiral’s Cup was held on 23 occasions, each time based in Cowes, between 1957 and 2003, biennially apart…

This is the brace that launched a thousand ships, and more–the perfected form of a tool that has been a mainstay of the shipwright’s kit for more than half a millennium. In essence the brace has changed very little. The carpenter aboard Henry VIII’s flagship, Mary Rose, who lost his brace, and much else besides, in 1545, would find the cranked shape, drill bit and rotating pad of his wooden-bodied tool exactly mirrored in a brace manufactured today. In the 1890s the wooden body gave way to iron, and then the socket fitting for square-shanked bits was replaced by a more adaptable chuck with expanding jaws. The most successful chuck was patented in 1864 by William Barber of Greenfield, Massachusetts, and is a feature of this brace made by Millers…

Last year we ran an article about timber for restorations (CB350), focusing on suitable replacements for species which are no longer available. This article will consider timber for new builds, a very different subject. The choice is sometimes limited by class rules–in the case of one-design classes there may be no choice at all, while timbers used in Metre boats built to the International Rule have to comply with defined weight/density requirements. Otherwise there is always a choice with regard to the timber to use for every application on a new boat, and the decisions will be based on availability in the right sizes, durability, strength, cost, appearance–or simply the personal preference of the owner, designer or boatbuilder. Hull building can be considered in two parts–traditional plank-on-frame (carvel and clinker)…

There is little trace of a common purpose today, but yachting and wildfowling were entwined for more than a century. As yacht racing became increasingly fashionable through the 1800s, The Sporting Magazine (1793-1870) introduced seafaring scuttlebutt alongside the hunting, shooting and fishing bulletins. All the news that might interest the ‘man of pleasure, enterprise, and spirit’ now included yachting. Hunt’s Yachting Magazine, the first specialist sailing periodical, appeared in 1852. But The Field, established the following year, was equally popular with yachtsmen. It offered a smorgasbord of country sports and maritime recreations, reflecting the rich seasonal calendar of leisure pursuits to which a gentleman of means might aspire. Brooke Heckstall-Smith, yachting editor of The Field, also served as the Yacht Racing Association secretary for almost 50 years from 1896. Henry…

Bruno Troublé has sparked a heated debate on the future of CIM as a rating system governing classic yacht racing in the Mediterranean. The former America’s Cup helm, who has become a central figure in the classic scene, has surveyed members of the French Association of Classic Yachts (L’AYFT), backed by association president Frederic Berthoz, on a range of topics including the hiring of professional helms, the optimisation of yachts and the handicap or rating system. The Med circuit has raced under the rules of CIM–the Comité International de la Méditerranée–for more than 20 years. Broadly speaking, CIM is distinguished from other systems in that it adjusts a yacht’s handicap according to how ‘authentic’ that boat is, so an old boat with modern sails and fittings should receive a less…

To see Shamrock gliding gracefully, and silently, across Lake Windermere is to enjoy a glimpse into how the elegant Edwardians enjoyed their pastimes. What is not so obvious, at least to the uninitiated, is the enormous amount of effort and skill entailed in keeping such a beautiful, 46ft, 112-yearold lady in peak condition over four decades. Ask Roger Mallinson. Since he bought Shamrock 40 years ago, to prevent her being broken up for firewood, he has poured his life and his considerable engineering skills into every bit of her. Shamrock was built for a Lancashire cotton magnate, WH Birtwistle, in 1906 by Shepherd boat builders in Bowness. After 20 years Birtwistle sold her to his boatman. By 1948 the steam engine and boiler had been replaced by a “modern” diesel…

IBTC LOWESTOFT Herreshoff Columbian We spotted this at the London Boat Show on IBTC Lowestoft’s stand. She’s a sprit-sailed catboat dinghy, built in larch on oak, with a laminated tiller, kick-up rudder and daggerboard. She was built by students at the school to the Columbian dinghy design by NG Herreshoff. Herreshoff designed her in the late 1800s as a lifeboat type to be carried aboard the grand America’s Cup yacht Columbia and the design informed all his later dinghies. She’s 11ft 6in (3.5m) long, with a 4ft (1.2m) beam and draught of 6ft (1.8m) or 1ft 5in (43cm) with the daggerboard up. She carries 60sq ft (5.6m2) of sail area. Price: £7,000 + VAT. Lying Lowestoft, Su. olk Tel: +44 (0)1502 569663, ibtc.co.uk HIGHLANDER BOATS Highlander Arran dinghy Highlander Boats…

CANTIERE FRANCESCO DEL CARLO Bambino! That was pretty much the only comprehensible word, to this English-only correspondent, that Guido del Carlo spoke during my visit to his Viareggio boatyard, but luckily we were accompanied by Enrico Zaccagni–yachting historian and experienced restoration project manager–who expertly translated for us. Guido’s exclamation, I learned, referred to himself when he first started working at the yard, in school holidays and at weekends, at the age of just eight! The yard was founded in 1963 by Guido’s father Francesco, who had previously worked as a shipwright at a much bigger local yard, Codecasa. Initially his focus was on building new wooden fishing boats but once Guido became established at the yard around 30 years ago, he was keen to move in the direction of classic…

“Watching us sail in was a young mother, who turned the pram to face the water so baby could watch too” Felixstowe was the first container port in the country when it opened half a century ago and yet, as the great cranes were being built, I was aboard the vessel delivering the port’s last freight under sail. Standing on the mast-deck of the 91ft Thames Sailing Barge Cambria, as the narrow dock entrance neared, was the 18-year-old mate, myself, anxiously awaiting the order to stow sail. At the wheel was the 63-year-old skipper, Bob Roberts, carefully judging the ebb which was running across the mouth of the dock entrance. And with a glistening nose poked through the rigging deadeyes was Penny the Border Collie, as alert as I was,…