Innehållsförteckning för December 2017 från Classic Boat

A huge fire broke out at the Iron Wharf Boatyard at 1.30am on 14 September. Eight boats have been destroyed, as well as three temporary cabin buildings and a workshop. Six fire engines and other vehicles attended the fire. Dan Salter from the nearby shop Creekside Vinyl was on hand to snap this picture on his phone, after being awoken by the fire engines. “I was moved on by police due to fears of exploding gas bottles,” he said. “The fire was still raging when I left at 3am.” The cause of the fire is still unknown, but Kent Police have since arrested a man in his 30s on suspicion of arson. Iron Wharf Boatyard is home to what must be one of the greatest concentrations of traditional wooden boats…

As we went to press, the 1873 engineless ketch Nordlys was en route for the port of Newhaven, to deliver 1,000 litres of premium Portuguese olive oil, from where it will be taken by bicycle courier to the doors of consumers in Brighton and Hove, as well as to collection points in London. It’s the latest in a growing trend for smallscale transport by sail. This cargo has been put together by The Sail Cargo South East partnership, with Recharge Cargo bike couriers, and New Dawn Traders and Fair Transport NL, who sail Nordlys. Nordlys is a c70ft (22m) ketch built of timber on the Isle of Wight in 1873. She’s thought to be the oldest operating sailing cargo ship in the world, and sails with three fulltime crew members…

The grim and bloody trade that inspired sailors to fashion art from death also claimed the young life of its most celebrated practitioner, Edward Burdett. In 1833, at the tender age of 28, the Nantucket seaman met a grizzly end when he became entangled in a line and was dragged to his death by a whale. Nearly 200 years on in a Massachusetts saleroom a masterpiece fashioned by Burdett on his penultimate voyage achieved what’s believed to be the highest price ever paid for a piece of scrimshaw. Bidding at Eldred’s commenced at $100,000, sped to $200,000, then settled down to a tense battle between two bidders, both in the room. To a burst of applause the 8in tooth was knocked down for $456,000 (£351,120), well over twice its pre-sale…

A TRUE CLASSIC CATEGORY WINNER Haul Together, by Sophie Hunt from London. SKILLS IN ACTION CATEGORY WINNER Artist in Action, by Paul Lenz from Offenbach, Germany. OUR HISTORIC VESSELS CATEGORY WINNER Butty boat Ilford breaks the September Dawn, by Teresa Fuller from Stone, Staffordshire. 2017 Overall winner WISH YOU WERE HERE CATEGORY WINNER Lines, by Niels Koornstra, from Harlingen, Netherlands. MARITIME HERITAGE IN MOTION (FILM CLIP CATEGORY) WINNER Spartan and Carola, by Alan Kempster from Kilmarnock, East Ayrshire.…

The restoration of the magnificent steam launch Preana has taken more than 17 years. She was launched in 1896 for William Gibson, a wealthy Tasmanian flour miller and parliamentarian, by Hobart shipwright Robert Inches to his own design, as a commuting steam launch. She’s 55ft (17m) long with a Huon pine hull, blue gum keel and Tasmanian oak ribs. The slender (13ft/4m) hull led to her name: an Aboriginal word for ‘spear’. She was powered by a 60hp triple-expansion steam engine made by Simpson Strickland and Co of Dartmouth, Devon, giving her 12 knots, with reputedly no wake. After Gibson, she su.ered a period of decline, with the addition of a flybridge to convert her to leisure fishing. Jim Butterworth came upon her in 1992, derelict on her side among…

Edited by Steffan Meyric Hughes: +44 (0)207 349 3758 Email: steffan@classicboat.co.uk The newest job on now at the No 1 Covered Slip in Plymouth (home to Stirling and Son) is The Second Snark, a 75ft (22.9m) metal-hulled motor yacht built in 1938 by Denny Bros, better known for building the Cutty Sark. Her original role was as an estuary tug and yard tender. In the summer the shipyard owners used her for family picnics and local excursions. The delivery trip from Glasgow to Plymouth, conducted by Will Stirling with a submarine commander called Tim and a Mevagissey fisherman called Ted, was full of incident (“hit solenoid with a hammer and port engine starts”) and the 80-tonne vessel is now ready for a keel-up rebuild to see her back in service…

The big job on now at Bristol Classic Boat Company is structural work to the 42ft (12.8m) 1921, Cornish-built boat Jenny Wren (right). Despite her beamy, workboat appearance, she was built as a yacht, with a gaff cutter rig. The present owner bought her five years ago in Portugal and brought her home to the west country. Work so far has included eight new frames, some replanking, a new sternpost and keelbolts, and a paint and varnish job. Below right is the recently restored 1904 Thames rowing ski.. In the same way that so many old classic yachts are unsympathetically re-rigged, Elizabeth had sliding seats fitted, which were reverted to fixed, along with new, traditional oarlocks. Eighteen new frames and a refinish in and out with oil and varnish, and…

PERMANENT DISPLAY QEI portrait restored and on show again This portrait of Elizabeth I, thought to be by George Gower or Nicholase Hilliard, is one of the most recognisable images in the collective English memory. It commemorates the most famous conflict of her reign; the failed 1588 invasion by the Spanish Armada. After a £10 million fundraising drive, it has been saved for the nation, restored and put on permanent display in the Queen’s House. Royal Museums Greenwich, London, rmg.co.uk 24 NOVEMBER Vanishing Sail The acclaimed film about Carriacou boatbuilding will be shown at Falmouth’s The Poly. Introduction by boatbuilder Ben Harris. Q&A with producer Justin Sihera. thepoly.org 10-14 JANUARY 2018 London Boat Show The world’s first boat show has changed again and this year will run for just 5…

On an April day in 2005, Jordi Cabau drew back a plastic tarpaulin on a makeshift wooden hangar among the Mallorcan pine trees, to see what lay inside. The forested interior of the largest island in the Balearic archipelago must have veiled many secrets over the years, but this one was extraordinary. Inside was the 1937 masthead sloop Sonata, drawn by Carl Alberg of the Alden design office. It was enough of a find in itself, but what made it doubly interesting was the similarity to the yacht Jordi and wife Heidi had found on the same island, where they live, five years earlier. That yacht was Mercury, designed by Sam Crocker (a fellow disciple of the Alden office) and built in 1938, to the same construction method and with…

The Sonderklass yacht Tilly XV has won the Centenary Trophy, organised annually by the Gstaad Yacht Club at Les Voiles de Saint-Tropez, which took place in October. The race is for boats a century or more in age and is run with a staggered start, with the aim of a group finish. Tilly XV has had an exciting season, having raced at Antigua Classic Yacht Regatta in April, where she lost her mast on day one. Woodstock Boatbuilders worked day and night to get her a rig back and she was racing again on day four. After Antigua, Tilly XV’s season continued as she was transported to the Med, where she has been causing cameras to click wildly as photographers spot her unusual dimensions – 19ft (5.8m) on the water,…

The restored Tamar barge Lynher has moved from Mashford Boatyard in Plymouth, where she has been for the last 13 years, to a new home in neighbouring Cornwall. Insworke Mill Quay is a historic 16th-century site, recently restored in keeping with its Grade II listing. Lynher owners Dominic and Barbara Bridgman describe it as a “paradise for historic vessels”. As reported previously, Lynher was re-launched in May, after a long, chequered history that includes 37 years abandoned on the mud and another previous restoration. The boat is now nearly finished, but work to her interior, the second phase, has now begun, to ready her for a programme of sail-training and events next year. Lynher is a rare surviving example of a Tamar barge, a sailing cargo ship that took cargoes…

The Swede 55 has siblings! Have you been able to reproduce the magic? Yes, I think so. In the 1970s I worked as a lawyer and sailing was my hobby. I wanted a good family cruiser but couldn’t find one. We developed the Swede 55 and it turned out 40 were built without any marketing. The newer designs for Classic Swedish Yachts – the 41, 52 and 68 – are in principle the same boat, giving the same feedback and the feeling of speed, the same fun, the same strong build, but today with sophisticated sandwich construction and a modern underbody and rig. You drew on the Skerry Cruisers as inspiration for the 55. What were the influences for the new yachts? Their beautiful sleek lines, long waterlines, tall rigs…

The final round of Panerai's north American series incorporated the Herreshoff Classic Yacht Regatta to create a four-day series of regattas in Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island, in August. Presented by the International Yacht Restoration School (IYRS), the 38th annual Panerai Newport Classic Yacht Regatta (PNCYR) served as the final race of the 2017 Panerai North American Classic Yachts Challenge, a series of five regattas held throughout New England. The Herreshoff Regatta, based at the Herreshoff Marine Museum, is open to Herreshoff designs and all classics. “For the first time, we collaborated with the Herreshoff Classic Yacht Regatta and added a distance race from Bristol to Newport to link the two events,” said Newport Classic Yacht Regatta co-chair Carol O’Malley. “We look forward to building on this foundation to continue to…

There was an upset in the Couta Boat Championships in Australia, as a Sydney team sailing at home in Sydney took victory. Don Telford’s Tenacity claimed victory after the four-race series held in Pittwater, in October. It was not only the first time the annual race, hosted this year by the Avalon Sailing Club, was held outside the state of Victoria, but the first time it has been won by a non-Victorian team. A second New South Wales boat, Larry Eastwood’s Sylvia, finished in second place. “To take it to the Victorians was absolutely magnificent,” said winner Don Telford after the race. Long-time team mate and tactician John ‘Steamer’ Stanley, aged 70 added: “We just worked out you had to be in the top 10 in every race.” Speaking on…

British artist Charles Edward Dixon (1872-1934) had friends in high places. He was chums with Sir Thomas Lipton and travelled with him on each of his five America’s Cup challenges. Nonetheless he’s best known for his port scenes, particularly the Thames. Barge fans with a penchant for the grimy glory of the twilight of working sail should seek him out. This 1904 watercolour, The Pool of London, was estimated at £1,500-£2,500, but fetched an impressive £4,000 at Bonhams’ latest London marine sale.…

Do you deserve her? Hard-standing and wooden boats don’t go together The squalls became more frequent, the seas steeper until, a mile or so into the short, but increasingly windy, stretch of exposed water between Isle Ristol and Rhu Coigach – the turning point towards Lochinver, sailing alone – I began to wonder what would happen if Sally’s keel fell off. She was 80 this year, after all and the last time the keel bolts had been checked was soon after I bought her, over 20 years ago. Davey Elliott of the Elephant Yard in Bursledon had held one of the old ones suspended on a length of string, and it had looked fine until tapped with a hammer. The dull clink of bronze was all he needed to know.…

Fife cutter Cambria of 1928 has chrome-plated Lewmar winches, in keeping with the chrome/stainless steel theme she has had all her life. Why? “You would have to ask either Mr Fife or the original owner Lord Camrose,” says skipper Chris Barkham. “Maybe they wanted to have ‘the look’, or maybe they wanted to assist the crew by not having bronze winches to polish so often!” J-Class Shamrock V of 1930 had five ungeared capstans at launch and today has Lewmar winches. Twenty of them were fitted in 2000, all PVD coated. Simon Lacey, Shamrock V’s captain, says the coating has lasted extremely well, but warns that the “one drawback is that it is very di.cult to get a colour match as new hardware is added over the years”. 12-Metre Sovereign…

WINNER Classic Boat AWARD Jenny Morgan RSMA The winner of the Classic Boat Award at the Royal Society of Marine Arists exhibition, at the Mall Galleries in London in October, was Jenny Morgan (above right), with her depiction in oil of one of the celebrated duels between the Herreshoff cutter Navahoe and GL Watson’s Britannia, in 1893, the year Britannia was launched. The work is called They Raced in an Easterly Gale. RSMA president Liz Smith (above left) presented Jenny the trophy, hand-made by Astins Sailing Sculptures.…

“One of those boats that is so sweet on the eye it is di.cult to pass comment and pick out one element that makes her so special,” says broker Barney Sandeman of this spectacular 33ft 6in (10.2m) bermudan cutter. Susanna was built by Kings of Burnham-on-Crouch in 1936 to a Norman Dallimore design and has cruised extensively since then, including a Biscay crossing in 1957. She’s just as happy on the racecourse and is often sailed singlehanded, although has four berths in her cosy interior. Sails and covers are all 2013-2016, and a new Bukh 24hp diesel was fitted in 2009. She’s well equipped, in good nick, and ready to go. Asking £69,500, lying Guernsey, tel: +44 (0)1202 330077, sandemanyachtcompany.co.uk…

Restoration of a former RN picket boat Maid of Honour is complete. The 55ft (16.7m) wooden vessel has joined the Rahmi M Koç Museum’s huge collection of historic craft. She was built in East Cowes, at J Samuel White in 1927 as one of the first RN ‘bell funnel’, twin-screw diesel barges and is believed to have served HMS Rodney, Nelson and Hood, surviving Hood’s sinking by the Bismarck in 1941. After being sold by the Admiralty, Maid of Honour escorted the 12-M Sceptre to Rhode Island for the 1958 America’s Cup. In 2014 the Turkish tycoon and philanthropist Rahmi M Koç bought her as a wreck. British shipwright Michael Summers led the restoration, assisted by a Turkish team of four, building a new hull on the original keel. A 1950s cabin was replaced with something matching the original. At sea trials, she…

One hundred years ago German U-boat attacks on British shipping reached their First World War climax. Germany’s policy of unrestricted submarine warfare left 875,000 tonnes of shipping on the seabed. Aside from the human suffering and loss of life, there would be scores of extra classic vessels still sailing today were it not for this escalation, because targets included coasting schooners, barquentines, ketches, smacks and luggers. Admiral Sir Lewis Bayly said: “Perhaps one of the most dreadful sights in the war was the arrival on shore of women and children saved from a ship torpedoed by an enemy submarine. Half-clothed, wet and cold, many of the women did not know whether their children were saved or not, and many had lost all they possessed.” Even hospital ships, loaded with war…

The New England classic fleet gathered in Maine in August for the annual WoodenBoat Series, which is made up of the Castine Classic Yacht Race on Thursday, the Camden Classic Yacht Regatta (the feeder race from Camden to Brooklin) on Friday, and the Eggemoggin Reach Regatta on Saturday. This year, the 30th anniversary of the Camden Classic, the sailors were treated to some misty conditions and light winds, not that that dampened events shoreside, especially the famed Eggemoggin barbecue. The fleet ranged in size from 25ft to 90ft with a wide variety of boats, from classes like the NY32s, NY30s and Concordia Yawls to one-of-a-kind designs. The series was preceded by a symposium at Maine Maritime Academy on the career of Danish designer Aage Nielsen. An historic Nielsen fleet assembled…

The winners of the 2017 Panerai Classic Yachts Challenge were announced at Régates Royales de Cannes in September. The event is the final regatta in the Panerai European series and the overall winners take home a muchcoveted Panerai watch. This year, five races were held in light breezes, and the eventual winners were Hallowe’en in the Big Boats, Linnet in Vintage and Ganbare in the Classic class. Victory was especially sweet for the crew of the 1926 bermudan cutter Hallowe’en, as she finally took the top step on the podium for the first time in her 10th year in the Panerai Classic Yachts Challenge. Designed and built by Wm Fife III and launched in 1926, she set a record for the Fastnet Race in 1927 that stood for 12 years…

In TV’s Auction Hunters, locked storage units are bought sight unseen, in the hope that valuable treasures lie within. Jane Shaddick (below), the Morgan Giles family archivist, did just this, bidding for 10 large box files at the recent EISCA auction: the catalogue just showed a couple of Exeter Maritime Museum brochures but she took a £35 gamble and bought the heavy, numbered dark-blue files. Among the 300 items in the 10 boxes was a mixed hoard of booklets, leaflets, monographs and magazines – Boatman, Mariner’s Mirror, and early Classic Boat. There were detailed brochures for museums and exhibitions in Britain, the USA, Australia and Norway. At least 30 dusty National Maritime Museum technical monographs appeared, along with the OGA’s 1980 Register of Gaff Rigged Boats and the bicentenary publication…

Nearly 100 delegates and speakers met in Hull in October for the annual UK Maritime Heritage Forum, run by National Historic Ships, reports Clare McComb. They represented national and local museums, local authorities, the Heritage Lottery Fund, archives, universities, private and public boat preservation organisations and more. The forum opened with a trio of assessments of the potential maritime heritage impact of City/Capital of Culture schemes, past present and future (Liverpool 2008, Hull 2017 and Belfast and Derry, which have applied for 2023). Later talks described successful outreach and HLF training schemes nationwide; and there was an inspiring account of local plans to bring Hull’s surviving steam trawler and World War One fighting ship back to her home port from South Georgia, near the Falkland Islands, followed by a wonderful…

Fifty-three classic yachts took part in the 13th Vele Storiche Viareggio from 12-15 October, reports Nigel Sharp. For many, it is the event that marks the end of the Mediterranean classic regatta season and crews enjoyed beautiful weather, albeit with very light winds. On every one of the three days the conditions forced the race o.cer to postpone the start to allow some breeze to fill in, but once it did, the breeze held steady and allowed all boats to finish. In three of the classes the overall winners won all three races. The 1913 Sonderklasse Tilly XV won class 1, followed by two newly restored boats, the 1937 Jensen 10-Metre Kipawa and the 1925 Mylne-designed Gometra. In class 2 the 1937 Dickies-built Vistona won, with Oneone, owned by Enrico…

The name of a boat can say much. It can say something about the owner’s sense of humour, or perhaps about their sense of history. In this case, a touch of both is present, as although giving a 20ft wooden daysailer a name that might befit a battleship could be seen as somewhat tongue-incheek, it has in fact more to do with Sir John Franklin’s ill-fated expedition to transit the Northwest Passage in 1845. Whereas Franklin’s Terror met an unhappy end in the ice, eventually sinking, the same fate is unlikely to befall her modernday namesake. “The last time I enquired,” says her builder Jonathan Lloyd-Davies, “it was not possible to become icebound off Dorset.” Jon built her at the Lyme Regis Boat Building Academy, Dorset, after 30 years in…

Piercing screams, then a roar of dismay, echo up the companionway. “Are the galley crew revolting?” wonders helm Bill Blain. The gaff cutter Thalia, which in her 129th year is playing host to a raucous children’s card game in the middle of the first race at Hamble Classics, heels with the breeze and sails on. Owners David Aisher and Kristi Roger have invited me to join their family outing on the boat, one of the oldest and finest classic yachts in British waters. We’re lucky to have her – she was saved from the axe, literally, by 11th hour reprieves in 1969 and then 1997, when previous owner Ivan Jeffries undertook a restoration that we celebrated back in CB165. David bought her in 2010 and gave her a new mast,…

The Loch Long fleet at Aldeburgh is well travelled, but the idea of marking the One Design’s 80th anniversary with a private regatta on Lake Como was greeted with a few raised eyebrows. Perhaps a 1,600-mile round trip, trailing boats across the Swiss Alps and organising an event from a distance with an unknown club was somewhat crazy. But 16 boats went and the trip surpassed all of our previous expeditions, demonstrating what can be achieved by a classic keelboat class with enthusiasm, camaraderie and good organisation. Initially we flew out to meet Walter Ghezzi, regatta director for AVAL-CDV, the Gravedona sailing club, who was won over by our proposal to hold a Scottish evening for the local community. Then two great ideas cemented support for the trip. First, a…

The dory is among the best known of any small boat type ever, famed for its seaworthiness, huge load capacity and distinctive crescent moon sheer style and high ends. These were the boats chosen by the impossibly tough men of the cod schooners that put out from north America’s shores into the wild north Atlantic in great numbers in the 19th and early 20th centuries. A 20ft (6m) open dory was the first craft ever to take a solo sailor across the Atlantic – Alfred Johnson in Centennial, in 1876. If that weren’t enough, the dory type can add extreme stability, low draught and very low cost to its list of virtues. Moreover it can be sailed, rowed or motored. In Lunenburg on Canada’s east coast, the aptly named Dory…

We’ve covered the story of David Moss’s biggest-ever boat – the 31ft (9.4m) Polly, since the beginning of the build five years ago, and at our last mention in the May 2017 issue, she was nearly ready for launch. She’s as traditional as you like: gaff cutter rig, carvel planking on steamed oak timbers, solid teak deck caulked and payed in pitch, Oregon pine masts and hand-spliced galvanised wire standing rigging set up on deadeyes. After having followed her with such interest, it would seem criminal not to show the end product, particularly when she looks as good as she does in this photo, which shows her during her launch. She now lives at Elephant Boatyard on the Solent. We hope to visit soon.…

In an old industrial unit off a main road by Lake Constance, boatbuilder Stefan Züst has carved out a successful yard. Like many others, he freely admits that most of his income is from the storage and light maintenance of more than 100 local boats during the long Swiss winter. But he also has some bigger projects on the go. Close to restoration is a unique ‘Segner’ fishing punt native to the waters off Ermatingen, Lake Constance. Originally built in 1947, she measures just over 46ft (14m) LOA, with a beam of 7ft 11in (2.4m). Stefan leads a team from the Bodensee Fishing Museum in the restoration, which has seen the total replacement of the bottom planking with a double layer of 20mm (13/16in) Douglas fir. Then the partly rotted…

Frame and panel construction is a mainstay of the yacht interior, as firmly a part of the traditional style as white piping on a blue settee cushion, but its origins lie in the answer to an engineering problem in wood rather than aesthetics. If the solid timber boards of a structure are fastened to a framework, unable to move as they lose moisture, a build-up of tension causes them to split. But if the structure is of smaller panels resting unfastened in the grooved edges of vertical muntins and horizontal rails, the panels are free to expand or contract, tension is avoided and splits don’t happen. By the 16th century the frame and panel was an established technique for building domestic interiors, ready to line cabins and frame doors from…