Innehållsförteckning för August 2015 från Classic Boat

Follow the Classic Boat team on Twitter and Facebook ARGENTARIO SAILING WEEK MOB followed by victory! It was a week of thunder and lightning as well as some perfect conditions at the beautiful Tuscan hill town of Porto Santo Stefano, for the 16th Argentario Sailing Week that ended on 21 June. There was also some excitement as the 72-year-old Swedish sailing star Goran Rutgerson fell overboard from the S&S yawl Manitou, sheet in hand, and pulled himself on board, losing less than 15 seconds. In fact, Manitou went on to win her class (Vintage) and a Panerai watch into the bargain. The other winners were Sagittarius (Classic) and Mida (Spirit of Tradition). Goran’s comment, after drying himself off, was simply that “sh*t happens”. 2018 GOLDEN GLOBE RKJ race sparks global…

ON A HOT SUMMER’S DAY in Helsinki Harbour, I’m on a motorboat with the HSS Yacht Club harbourmaster Mikael Westerlund to observe the Finnish Hai Nationals up close. After we drop off some flags with the committee boat, Mikael flashes a cheeky grin and guns the engine. The motorboat pounds against each wave as we scan the harbour for the competing Hai class. With the winds steadily increasing, I ask if the race could be postponed due to high winds. “In bad weather, when bigger yachts come in, the Hais go out,” says Mikael, “they are built for it.” Suddenly, we see a line of white sharkfin sails sitting on the horizon. Mikael slows the engine and we cruise forward carefully to wait by the first mark. In 1930, the…

Charts You will want a full set of charts for the Thames Estuary as the banks change regularly, especially the mouth of the River Crouch in Essex and also the shingle bars at both the rivers Deben and Ore in Suffolk. There have been a lot of changes over recent years: turbines added to offshore shoals, which by the way act as useful aids to navigation, and a major dredging programme from Harwich to Sea Reach in the Thames to accommodate the world’s biggest container ships at the new port of London Gateway on the Thames at Stanford-Le-Hope in Essex. I use the Admiralty Leisure Folios for the Thames and the East Coast, but Imray covers the same ground with awardwinning cartography. Pilot guides East Coast Rivers by Janet Harber…

Produced and written as part of the Royal Yacht Squadron’s celebrations to mark its 200th anniversary, this 212-page hardback volume looks at the early history of the exclusive club from its origins in St James’s and encompassing its development through the 19th century. There are around 160 images and compiler Julian Reid has certainly done his research, with plenty of juicy detail on the original members, not many of whom didn’t carry a title of some sort. Reid’s account of their colourful ups and downs serves as a snapshot of an era as much as it tells the fascinating story of how saltwater sailing developed in British waters. Central to the story is the development of what became the America’s Cup, originally the Great Exhibition Round the Island Race of…

The Italians, while inventing Vermouth didn’t think to themselves “this is going to go really well with gin” and yet nowadays we see many of the finest aperitifs as merely a secondary ingredient in a cocktail. In this, we are wrong. Both the Italians and the French have come up with some of the finest aperitifs that only do themselves justice when drunk on their own. In 1786, Antonio Benedetto Carpano invented modern Vermouth in Turin, made from white wine added to an infusion of herbs and spices, in more than 30 varieties. It was sweetened with spirit, which he thought would be a more suitable beverage for young ladies than the rough local red wines. Vermouth proved so popular that very soon his shop had to be open 24…

Lovers of classic yachts won’t know which way to turn this summer. After the Falmouth Classic weekend in early June, three mighty J-Class yachts were set to do battle off Falmouth later the same month. Meanwhile on the East Coast, a fleet of around 50 classic yachts was expected for the Suffolk Yacht Harbour Classic Regatta. Then events move to the Solent, where the Westward Cup was to run again for the biggest of the classics fleet. The JP Morgan Asset Management Round the Island Race was set to feature two classics classes on 27 June. Panerai British Classics Week takes place from 18-25 July. This will see the fleet of the British Classic YC take on the best of the Med and USA classic fleets in Solent waters. CB’s…

The Maserati 150S engine seems to have inspired quite different reactions from drivers of cars and of boats. Stirling Moss said, “The 150S was sweet-handling and predictable but overbodied and gutless.” Its sturdy chassis is reassuring when pushing the car near to its limit for road handling and the 1.5 litre engine, revving high, gives an exciting sound, but it lacks torque exiting bends. The same applies to the experience on the water, as the present owner of Maria Luisa IV, a powerboater, says: “You have to remember that there is no clutch. The drive is direct from the engine to the propshaft. The 150S is a small engine so you have to search for the torque in the high revs zones, between 4500rpm and 9000rpm, as you badly need…

Forget… just for a heartbeat or two… James Dodds’s long career in art. Forget that he is one of the few marine artists to have broken free of the marine niche into the wider art world. And set aside the fact that he is the de facto artist laureate of Britain’s littoral working craft, perhaps even Britain’s leading living marine artist. Instead, shut the door on the present, and hang a sign on it that says... Gone paddlin’. Well, what else would we do? James has a new toy that he has taught himself to use – a tandem sit-on-top kayak – and he’s dug a channel through the narrow stretch of mud between his studio and the River Colne so he can launch it in situ. The tide’s up,…

ATALANTE Adding the finishing touches The ‘Truly Classic 127’ cutter Atalante has left her construction hall at Claasen Shipyards in Holland. She’s the largest to date of the popular ‘Truly Classic’ range of spirit-of-tradition yachts from Dutch designer Andre Hoek – a range that includes the admirably stout TC51, one of which was shortlisted for a CB award. Atalante is of all-aluminium build, and in accordance with MCA LY2 regulations, enabling her to cruise and race with paying charter guests. “One of the main visual characteristics of this graceful superyacht is apparent in the form of her deck layout. This includes both a private owner’s cockpit aft and a guest cockpit and deckhouse amidships, which is an instantly recognisable Hoek Design feature,” said a Claasen spokesman. As we went to…

Written by regular CB contributor Nigel Sharp in time for this year’s Dunkirk Return, this is essentially a spotter’s companion to the active fleet members of today, although the book also refers to some vessels that took part in Operation Dynamo but that have since been lost. It’s written in a photo-by-photo format, each with a long caption that tells the story of the vessel, but there is a chronology (relating back to 1940) that also, if the captions are read consecutively, tell much more about Dynamo than the brief introduction allows for. There are, today, more than 120 Dunkirkers still in commission, with hundreds of others thought to be surviving after a fashion, somewhere. This book shows clearly the diversity of craft (large and small!) that went to rescue…

With their distinctive black, high-peaked gaff sails, it is not difficult to identify a Norfolk trading wherry. There are only two now in existence, but in their heyday over 300 plied the inland waterways of East Anglia, transporting cargo from Great Yarmouth to Lowestoft and Norwich, as well as many of the villages in between, and back again. The design evolved in the late 1700s, as a development of the Norfolk keel – a clinker-hulled, square-rigged craft, which for more than 800 years transported cargo along the Norfolk and Suffolk rivers. Unlike the Norfolk keel, however, the trading wherries were larger, and were also rigged with a single gaff sail, stepped well forwards in the bow, which allowed them to point higher and consequently sail faster. The double-ended craft were…

LETTER OF THE MONTH SUPPORTED BY OLD PULTENEY WHISKY Leo for Yachtsman of the Year I am writing to congratulate the remarkable Leo Goolden, whose voyage in his Folkboat you reported on in your July issue. To take a small boat solo across Lyme Bay and make safe landfall on the other side is a big achievement in today’s cushioned world – even with GPS it requires nerve. To take a boat across Biscay, then across the Atlantic, on star sights alone, is truly remarkable and I hope this young skipper is recognised in the YJA Yachtsman of the Year awards. That he then raced against some of the big classics on the scene in Antigua and came out with silverware is simply the icing on the cake. Mike Smith,…

Leading traditional yacht designer Ed Burnett has died, aged 43. An inquest into his death was opened after his body was found at his home in Totnes, Devon, on 26 May. Ed was born in Ashford in Kent, and his earliest experiences of sailing were out of Burnham-on-Crouch on the 28ft (8.5m) Buchanan Reprise, with a carry cot strung in the focsle. In 1975 the family moved to Falmouth to run West Country Chandlers and owned a succession of classic yachts – sailing dominated everything. Aged six, Ed became joint owner of his first boat, Harriet, a wooden Optimist, which he sailed with steadfast confidence and total imperviousness to advice. Aged seven he displayed early talent and ambition, drawing an A1-sized design of a modest 54ft gaff ketch called Beethoven…

1914-18 When war clouds gathered to fight their blackballed member Kaiser Wilhelm II and his German army, most RYS yachts were already armed with six and 12-pound guns ostensibly for saluting purposes. Many were large enough to take a modern four-inch gun and were pressed into patrol and escort duties, often with their owners in command. The Squadron’s clubhouse at Cowes became a rest place for convalescing o. cers. The 116-ton auxiliary schooner Lisette owned by Eric Chaplin was used as a ‘Q’ ship to lure U-boats to their destruction, and Cazarina, owned by Lord Brassey’s brother Albert, was turned into a merchant ship. She was torpedoed and sunk in the Bay of Biscay. The Earl of Dunraven’s 439-ton steam yacht Grainaig was turned into a hospital ship and used…

MÜHLE-GLASHÜTTE WATCH The family firm behind this simple, elegant timepiece has been making watches for five generations, with a reputation for accuracy and reliability. It’s no surprise that they’re favoured by navigators, on the sea and in the air. Watch aficionados will tell you the interesting feature of this chronograph is the inner hour-marker track and the minute track at the outer edge. The watch has 38 hours of power reserve and is 5-bar water resistant (good for swimming but not diving). £1,180 muehle-glashuette.de WOODEN JEWELLERY Jeweller Justin Duance, who lives in a net loft in Newlyn, Cornwall, combines wood with metal to make his distinctive narrative jewellery to order. The ring pictured above, for instance, features wood from the 1906 lugger The Happy Return. Prices from around £100 upwards.…

Fine-stripe fire-orange T-shirt When the traditional blue-and-white nautical stripes don’t suit, try… fire-orange. This T-shirt from Musto features a button-down pocket for essentials and is made of good-quality cotton that didn’t bobble after being worn beneath a fleece (the sworn enemy of cotton T-shirts). £39.99 musto.com Helly Hansen Kordel leather footwear The function-versus-style dilemma in ship-to-shore footwear is fraught with problems but Helly Hansen have got it just right here. The uppers are all good-looking, thick soft leather and the soles gripped to the teak deck when we took them out on the water. £85 hellyhansen.com The speedy stitcher The Speedy Stitcher is e. ectively a manual sewing machine, which forms a lock stitch as it goes. Suitable for a variety of materials, including canvas, leather, sailcloth and webbing, the…

In the early 1970s, around 50 traditional Arab sailing dhows (of a fleet that once numbered nearer to 700) still clung on to their trading routes, in a world that was becoming more containerised and in more of a hurry. British journalist Marion Kaplan, then living in Kenya, shipped aboard two working dhows in 1974 for a National Geographic story. Despite being a woman in a male-dominated world, she started as passenger and ended as crew. Her story, published in 1974 and again here, must be the last of its kind. It’s a singular story with photos to match. SHMH Pub Moho Books, 2015, paperback, 85pp, £15.99…

Enthusiastic crowds gathered on Lyme Regis harbour slipway in June to cheer the launch of seven boats, at the end of the Boat Building Academy’s latest 38-week course. In terms of their types and their construction techniques, the boats were as disparate as ever, as were the students who built them. Former Nimrod pilot Gary Hunt chose a boat that would be relatively quick to build – an 18ft (5.5m) strip-planked Night Heron kayak – to ensure he would have time to contribute to the construction of all the other boats. By contrast, before the course tutors agreed that Lee Ulyat (previously a bodyguard to the Japanese ambassador) should go ahead with his much more challenging Seabird Half Rater, he had to convince them that he and other students would…

1 DRESS It has been rightly said, if you want to get ahead, get a yachting cap. These are available from Gieves and Hawkes, and are worn with a white top in summer. You may well be mistaken for a milkman or bus conductor. Grin and bear it. The nether limbs should be clad in white duck, the torso and arms in blue blazer. The shirt should be white, the tie that of your club – yachting or lap dancing, makes no diff. 2 ARRIVAL The tender will take you to the yacht. Cultivate informality while maintaining distinctions of class – ‘My good man’ is a form of address that seldom fails to impress. Tipping helps. The skipper may be on £1.5m a year, but he is a working man.…