Innehållsförteckning för April 2018 från Classic Boat

A friend outside the boat world asked me recently if the ‘cult’ of classics was doing okay. I should have shown him the eight pages in this issue that makes up our annual events guide. In all, we list 121 classic boat regattas, rallies, festivals and shows, most taking place between now and October. Roughly four per weekend and hardly a cult. The Classic Boat team will be out sailing at many of the events we list, starting with Antigua Classic Yacht Regatta in April and the new Cowes Spring Classics in May. From then on, the diary is packed and our desks in London are not that sadly forgotten. If you spot us on the pontoons somewhere, please do come and say hello. If, however, sailing for you is…

PACIFIC NORTHWEST Morecambe Bay Prawner Ziska in Race to Alaska The Morecambe Bay Prawner Ziska, restored many moons ago by Ashley Butler and now nearing the end of a refit in Port Townsend (Yard News, last month), has entered this year’s Race to Alaska (R2AK). This 750-mile race from Port Townsend, Washington, up the inside passage to Alaska, allows no motors and no support. It is nevertheless undertaken by entrants stretching to SUPs, kayaks, beach cats and pedal-powered craft. First over the line takes $10,000 (c£7,200). True to the event's zany style, the runner-up gets a set of steak knives. The website describes Ziska’s chances of winning as akin to “Civil War re-enactors starting a street gang”, a write-up the boat's crew declare themselves thrilled with. In terms of the…

DOCKAN LOA 28ft 7in (8.7m) LWL 27ft 1in (8.25m) BEAM 6ft 11in (2.1m) DRAUGHT 5ft 7in (1.7m) DISPLACEMENT 4 tonnes SAIL AREA 570sq ft (53m²) BUILT 1891 DESIGNER KH Smith When Dockan was launched 126 years ago, the two centres of the yacht design universe seemed to be New England in the USA and the Clyde in Scotland. But Sweden, too, was endowed with talented yacht designers. At the World Exposition in Chicago in 1893, a Swedish designer with the Englishsounding name KH Smith was the recipient of the gold medal for best boat model. The model was of a modest yacht called Dockan that he’d designed two years earlier. She had been commissioned by one CA Hellstrand, a keen sailor and a small ship broker. As such he had…

Around the coast The British regatta scene is growing, especially in the Solent, with Hamble Classics inaugurated two years ago, and a new event starting this May, Cowes Spring Classics. The scene remains as vibrant as ever on the east coast, which is always strong on barge and smack racing, but also for yachts, while on the west coast, there are pilot cutters, luggers, yachts and more. These days, wooden boat events are to be found around the coast throughout the summer. SOUTH COAST 11-13 MAY NEW Cowes Spring Classics Cowes, cowesspringclassics.com New event for wooden classics 31 MAY – 3 JUNE Yarmouth Old Gaffers Festival yarmoutholdga?ersfestival.co.uk Flagship OGA bash 7 JULY Round the Island Race Isle of Wight, roundtheisland.org.uk The world’s most popular yacht race 14–21 JULY Panerai British Classic…

UNITED STATES 9 JUNE Great San Francisco Schooner Race San Francisco Bay, sfyc.org 15 JUNE Newport-Bermuda Race bermudarace.com/2018-race Classic race won by Dorade in recent years 5-6 JULY Great Schooner Race greatschoonerrace.com Islesboro – Rockland Harbor, Maine, with some 20 vessels in the most evocative rig of them all 13-15 JULY Vineyard Cup Martha’s Vineyard, Mass sailmv.org/vineyard-cup Foiling kiteboards; classic yachts JULY (DATE TBC) Stuart Knockabout Regatta Megansett Harbor, Mass stuartknockaboutllc.com Regatta for LF Herresho. dayboats 26–28 JULY Camden Classics Cup Camden, Maine camdenclassicscup.com Great racing in a lovely location, back for its hattrick year 4 AUGUST Eggemoggin Reach Regatta Rockport, Maine erregatta.com 125+ boats, hosted by Brooklin Boatyard and Rockport Marine 11-12 AUGUST Corinthian Classic Regatta Marblehead, Mass corinthianclassic.org Two days of racing in this Panerai-sponsored event 17-18 AUGUST…

The great Maurice Griffiths used to change his yacht every year or two. Many of my pals do the same, but not me. I like to hang on to mine for long enough to get over the honeymoon period and find out about their vices. Some of these have been fixable. Others have proved chronic and, while learning to live with them isn’t always a barrel of laughs, it has at least enlarged my ability to endure what cannot be cured. The worst of these nasty habits was featured by an otherwise sound antique yacht that carried me far and wide. Any wooden boat sailor gets used to a few drips and dribbles, but it must be said that going below to see the galley floorboards floating round the saloon…

LARCH OAK YELLOW CEDAR OPEPE TEAK SITKA SPRUCE Last month we considered the timber species that might be used in hull construction, both traditional plank-on-frame hulls and more modern glued hulls. In this article we talk to experienced builders to find out what woods they use for decking, brightwork and interiors. A boatbuilder 80 or 100 years ago would have had a huge choice of woods readily available. Today things have become more restricted but there is still considerable variation in what yards favour, as we’ll discover. DECK STRUCTURES For the beam shelf, carlins and deck beams, oak, Douglas fir, larch and spruce are all suitable. Just as for hull frames and stems, oak can be sourced in shapes to suit a deck’s camber. Mevagissey boatbuilder Peter Moor did just…

My day began with wet weather gear, and that’s how it carried on as I stepped aboard Dr Peter Ruland’s 30SqM Jollenkreuzer Süderelv for a day’s sailing. In fact, it was only half a day’s sailing. Our early start was to move the boat from her pontoon berth among the dripping reeds at Haseldorf on the River Elbe, Germany, before the ebb tide could settle her comfortably in the mud. Once out of the marshes, we simply anchored in the shallows and waited for the rest of the fleet to join us around midday. Peter and his son Georg took turns to tell me about the steel-hulled boat’s restoration at a nowdefunct local yard of Paul Böhling. The entire coachroof had been removed and rebuilt from mahogany, while skilled welders…

GLEAM NORTHERN LIGHT The famous antique 12-M yachts Gleam and Northern Light are both up for sale by the same owner, Elizabeth Tiedemann, whom we interviewed in October 2012 (“Queen of the 12s” – on our website now). If you read that, you’ll know why these two boats are special. Elizabeth’s late husband Bob Tiedemann was the original Rhode Island conservator, known particularly for reviving the 12-M class. He restored Gleam in the mid- 1970s, a decade before the high-profile, big-yacht restorations of the mid-late 1980s, like Altair and Endeavour, and put her to work chartering. Northern Light followed, after a more thorough restoration, in 1986, and they chartered together, providing guests with an America’s Cup match-racing experience, recreating one of the most famous yachting photographs ever taken – Stanley…

John Anderson’s boatbuilding career is quite an inspirational story, though doubtless it didn’t feel like that all of the time. Certainly not at the beginning when John saw no clear path in Liverpool in the era of Margaret Thatcher – but then he did something about it. He headed for the Mediterranean back in the 1980s; at least it was sunnier, and having always liked boats, he took the chance to sail across the Atlantic in a Maxi. He worked his way from the Caribbean up to Maine, boats now his focus, and returned to England briefly in order to do a course at Lowestoft’s International Boatbuilding Training College. His work steadily grew. Last October I met him at Les Voiles de Saint-Tropez, where he was invited to sail his…

Take an early morning flight from London to JFK, drive north east for an hour to Oyster Bay in Long Island and you can have the mainsail up on a brand new wooden 8-Metre before most people in the UK have had their first cup of afternoon tea. It’s a journey between different worlds that provokes a discombobulated shake of the head – the grey of Heathrow and the tranquility of Long Island’s north shore, separated by little more than a transatlantic snooze. But it’s worth it. Oyster Bay is home to Billy Joel, the Seawanhaka Yacht Club and more recently an extraordinary private collection of classic boats. There are Herreshoffs, Fifes and others, all kept in immaculate condition by a dedicated team, racing several times a week through the…

The case for KLR Iain McAllister responds to our CIM vs IRC debate last month Amidst recent animated debate on the pros and cons of the handicaps used at most classic yacht regattas in the Mediterranean [see last month's issue], and some in England, it's worth noting that one system, originated in Germany but increasingly used elsewhere in Europe, has gone about its business quietly, e_ ciently and simply for almost 25 years: Klassiker-Rennwertformel, better known as KLR. Devised by Lübeck-based classic yacht owner, enthusiast and keen racing sailor Enno Thyen, KLR has amassed a database of over 1,000 yachts as its use spread beyond its original German Baltic waters base. A version has been in operation in Norway for many years; in Scotland on the Clyde it's been the…

Classic sailing epicentre If you want to see, or sail in, the biggest fleet of classic yachts on earth, this is where you come. The Voiles d’Antibes, though not the first regatta of the summer, has long been seen as the season opener for the big-money boats, then they disperse into the Med summer to arrive back at the season closer, the mother of all classic sailing regattas, the Voiles de Saint-Tropez. For some owners and crews, it’s one huge party that lasts all summer in some of the most glamorous locations on earth. Many more will simply bring their boat to one regatta, to celebrate the end of a long restoration. At the front of the pack, the racing gets more competitive every year and despite a debate over…

One of the best things about sailing – for me anyway – is that the more one does, the more one wants to do. Fairly early during our circumnavigation my husband Seth and I started discussing other potential voyages. These weren’t serious discussions, more like musings, because of course we were focused on the journey at hand. But the seed of an idea was there, and over the rest of the voyage that idea became reality. It was back in 2013 that Seth and I made a test cruise of our new-to-us cold-molded cutter Celeste in my childhood waters of British Columbia. (We’d sold our previous boat, a GRP copy of Finisterre, upon completing our circumnavigation in 2010.) Although Celeste was fit and sound for temperate waters, we decided to…

Boat building can be a precarious business, affected by all kinds of hazards from the political to the economic. The Corsier-Port boatyard, which takes its name from the Swiss village on Lake Geneva where it started more than a century ago, has not been exempt from this universal rule, even if its position near the cosmopolitan and neutral Geneva gave it access to a wealthy and international clientele. The first boat building activity began on the site in 1909 under the name of Chantier Mégevet. Owner Charles-Jules Mégevet was a Genevan entrepreneur keen to jump on the fast-accelerating bandwagon of automobile locomotion, both on the ground and on the water. The young company, among whose partners are engine-manufacturers Charles and Lucien Picker, was soon winning prizes in pre-World War I…

Variations in timber quality can make buying it much less straightforward a process compared with other materials. As an example, American white oak and European oak are similar in durability, but the latter is more expensive and the former, according to Robbins Timber MD Richard Bagnall, has a “straighter, more consistent grain, but is less attractive”. Similarly, timber supplier Somerscales brings in oak from northern France and Belgium (no further afield because of transport implications) but most of the oak it sells is British. “But there is good and bad oak grown in all localities,” says Stuart Somerscales, “and you have to take into account the soil it’s grown in and the culture employed in the growing”. Occasionally one hears stories of larch planking not lasting very long. “They say…

Email: steffan@classicboat.co.uk CORNWALL New ownership at Gweek Quay The picturesque Gweek Quay, a hub of classic boatbuilding and restoration activity over the years, has come into new ownership. The new owners are Malcolm Beaton, a farmer and entrepreneur; and Mark Aichroth, a local sailor who grew up on the Helford River nearby. “We want to see it coming back as a proper, classic boatyard,” Mark told us. The yard was in need of some renovation last year when Malcolm Beaton visited by chance, phoned Mark immediately and said: “Let’s buy it.” Five days later, that’s exactly what they did. The first big job was to clear the ground of rubbish. Meanwhile the entrance to the creek has been cleared of floating debris, the chandlers has been refitted and restocked and…

Surform revival The perforated blade of a Surform, used to shape and fair curved surfaces, is described by the manufacturer as disposable, replaced in a trice by loosening a screw clamp at one end of the tool. Out of curiosity, I tried sharpening a dull blade on a diamond plate and found its hundreds of cutting edges were revived after just a few strokes. All you need for this is a plywood backing piece to rigidify the flexible blade and protect fingertips. Work the blade in the opposite direction to that used when cutting, and the previously blunt edges will soon catch the light like ripples on a lake, yielding shavings as flu.y as grated parmesan. Glueing oily wood The natural oils which make teak such a durable boatbuilding timber,…

23 MARCH – 30 SEPTEMBER Art and Photography at the Maritime Museum The National Maritime Museum is holding an exhibition of photos titled The Great British Seaside, spanning the 1960s to now, with new work by Martin Parr. At the Queen’s House, the huge mural by Alan Sorrell, titled ‘Working Boats from around the British Coast’, is on show. See rmg.co.uk for details of these and more. BOAT JUMBLES The spring boat jumble season returns. The jewel in this market’s calendar has always been Beaulieu. Never mind if you don’t buy or sell anything – the £9.80 ticket (U-12s free) gives entry to the National Motor Museum, World of Top Gear, Palace House, Beaulieu Abbey and more. Also coming up: Su£ olk (18 March), Craignish (24 March), Dorset (24 March),…

“I always had a few more boats than I needed, but then it got ridiculous.” Bryan Hunt Lawrence, 75, and known as ‘Hunt’, doesn’t often do interviews, so when he nudges the nose of his RIB against the side of Defender and offers a tour of his collection of classic yachts, I jump aboard promptly. “I’ve developed an interest in bringing back iconic race boats,” he says with some understatement as we motor o?. “I like boats with a function. Most classic yachts were built to race but beauty has a function too.” “I bid on this boat at least five times,” he remarks as we pass a lovely Hinckley sailing yacht, Sophia. Motoring on, he continues: “This is Arcadia, commissioned by Bob Stone, just before he became NYYC commodore,…

How many wooden masts do you make each year? At our busiest we have made up to six per week but typically a big job takes around six months to complete so it depends on the size and how quickly the customer wants it. What size of boats do you build for? Every type of boat from small punts up to tall ships like the Lord Nelson. At the moment we have orders for top masts for the SS Great Britain, a large schooner being restored in Japan and around half a dozen UK customers ranging from Falmouth work boats to a Wharram multihull. The biggest mast you’ve made? The longest was 116ft (35m) and was floated across the Bristol Channel to Cardi.. The biggest diameter was 60cm (24in), used…

Visiting yachtsmen welcome... In the 1968/9 Golden Globe Race, won by Sir Robin Knox-Johnston, only one of the nine who set out to be first around the world non-stop and solo returned. This year, 30 solo sailors will take on the same challenge, with the same vintage kit and in oldfashioned, long-keel yachts. They will sail from Les Sables-d’Olonne on 1 July to retrace history. For those with other engagements, there is the chance to join the excitement in Falmouth on 14 June, at the Suhaili 50 Parade of Sail. Sir Robin will be there aboard Suhaili, as will other round-the-world yachts Gipsy Moth IV, Joshua and Lively Lady. Visiting yachtsmen are welcome to this once-in-a-lifetime date with history. goldengloberace.com Classic Boat o€cial media partnerships and other associated events…

SWEDEN AND FINLAND BALTIC CLASSIC CIRCUIT The Baltic circuit for classic yachts, offcially titled the Baltic Classic Master Cup, has grown over the last few years to produce an alternative northern European circuit to the one in the Mediterranean, with a rich array of boats. This year’s events are listed below. For further details, visit the Scandivanian Classic Yacht Trust at sailtrust.org 1-4 JULY ÅF Offshore Classic Race (Around Gotland Offshore Race) Stockholm-Visby-Sandhamn, Sweden; 220nm passage race 26-28 JULY Airisto Classic Regatta Abo Batvarf, Turku, Finland 3-4 AUGUST Helsinki Champagne Regatta HSS Ski.erholmen Island Helsinki, Finland 9-11 AUGUST Sandhamnsregatten by Bluewater KSSS, Sandhamn, Sweden FRENCH AND SPANISH ATLANTIC The main Breton event this year is the biennial giant of the DOUARNENEZ FESTIVAL from 22-28 May (tempsfete.com), a huge regatta for…

The conservation of archives might have been easier in a country untouched by two world wars, but in reality such care and preservation is always the work of a few men and women with a vision for the future. In small businesses, the lack of time and the lack of space often means nothing of the past is kept, but fortunately at Corsier-Port nobody made this error. Photos and original plans abound at the boatyard’s archives, a timeline of lakeside and wider marine industry developments through the decades. The researcher will meet Olympic sailing champions (the national teams in the 5.5-Metre class from France, Switzerland, Italy, Germany and Spain had all their boats built at Corsier-Port for the Olympic Games in Naples in 1960) as well as aristocratic families and…

BRUCE 22 Attractively styled runabout The Bruce 22 has something of the early Chris-Craft to its gentle reverse sheer, windshield and tumblehome. But instead of solid mahogany and V8 petrol power, we are looking at an attractive runabout built in GRP and powered by battery. The ‘Open Utility’ specc’d launch will nevertheless press you back into your seat with a top speed of 41mph (66km/h), courtesy of its 100kW, 400V Powerphase Pro motor, giving a theoretical run time of 45 minutes at full power with the standard lithium battery pack (there are options for more batteries). The boat, which will seat eight, is also available in a much cheaper version, the ‘Model T’ which is powered by lead acid batteries to two Torqeedo pod motors, but the boat doesn’t live…

SILVER LEAF The owner of the Silvers-built Silver Leaf (midcentury, twin-screw cabin motor yacht), wanted an outdoor helming position, a popular request among owners of such vessels. HMS owner John Buckley’s solution was based around a ‘Brooklands windshield’, so called for the cars that raced until 1939 at the now-disused Brooklands race track. LISETA Liseta, 1959, designed by WGS Penman and built by Itchenor Shipyard, is a twin-screw motor yacht 46ft (14m) long, of a traditional and very attractive design given her late build date, originally built for Wing Commander Briggs of African mahogany planking on a backbone of American rock elm and oak timbers. A contemporary report in the yachting press described her as “suitable for Channel cruising” which had been Briggs’ initial intention. She’s received new coachroofs, shaft…

The plane is the most highly diversified of hand tools, with blade and sole configured to cut an infinite variety of grooves, rebates, chamfers, hollows and rounds, via huge variety in the subsidiary mechanics controlling its action. Even at its simplest, with a blade wedged into a flatsoled wooden block, the quality of its cut ranges from the wolf’s bite of a scrub plane preparing hewn boards to the tissuepeeling delicacy of a shoulder plane fettling a tenon. Even so, the bollow, with its ballooning doublecurves, appears cartoonish at first glance, perhaps a nonsense tool dreamed up by Edward Lear. The owl and the pussycat could have used such a plane to build their pea green boat, or at least a pair of 'runcible' spoonbladed oars. The bollow is, in…

“Really! To wake up in the morning to find the boat surrounded by a deputation (in their underpants) waist deep in the sea, from a community of 600 convicted murderers, proffering bouquets of carnations.” We had anchored our small open boat, Crab, in a shallow bay in the lee of the Turkish island of Imrali in the Sea of Marmora, sheltering from a rising wind. It was 25 June, 1958, and the description is from a letter home by my father, avid sailor and author Richard Hughes. Luckily he was with us, aged 58 with an imposing beard and bulk, or the adventure might have ended differently. The other crew were myself, skipper Sally Hinchliff and Mags Whitehead, all in our early 20s, brown from the sun and often wearing…