Innehållsförteckning för May 2018 från Classic Boat

It is hard to think of a sport that has left as big a paper trail as the sport of yachting. In addition to the records common to all sports (race results, rule changes, club histories and so on), yacht sailing carries an enormous data burden in terms of the boats themselves. Naval architects’ plans lie in garages, sitting rooms and maritime museums. Race records are scattered around the country and the internet. These days, what with a lot of sailing’s records being published online, then disappearing without ever being committed to paper (“born-digital material”) we are in an increasingly acute situation where information accessible today might not exist at all in 50 years’ time – or even next year. It is a situation that concerned Maldwin Drummond, maritime historian…

The story of Gelyce is, as with so many old boats, a slow-burning play of desire, abandonment and resurrection. In this case, the story is intertwined with the heyday of J-Class racing in the 1930s, a world at war, and possibly the early days of the British secret services. The sleek 1930s Camper and Nicholson commuter yacht has long been held as one of the great prizes left to restore, but for decades she sat rotting in a siding on the Upper Thames under one tenacious owner, while would-be buyers with their boatbuilders hovered, hopefully awaiting their turn at the monumental challenge of ownership. One hopeful partnership was Peter de Savary and Peter Freebody, but an attempted purchase in the late 1980s fell through and she floated in a corner…

There is a field in East Anglia where you can pick your own classic boat. Propped up in a few acres of maritime Suffolk sit the noble bones of hulls drawn by some of the greatest names in yacht design, including Fife, Payne and Anker. “You are looking at £100,000 to get a 6-Metre restored and back on the water, and upwards of that for larger craft,” says Matthew Lingley of Demon Yachts as we trudge through the rows of forgotten classic hulls, which squat in the grassy acres behind the sea wall at the Aldeburgh Boatyard. It might sound a lot of money, but just think what a potential buyer would end up with: a true classic, invariably a one-off, a vintage vessel to call your own. We stepped…

+44 (0)207 349 3758 Email: steffan@classicboat.co.uk GREENPORT, LONG ISLAND Make them last another 97 years, please, Donn Thirty five years ago, Donn Costanzo performed a complete restoration on the 1921 Fife gaff sloop Clio in Italy. Clio is similar to an 8-M in size (she’s 46ft/14m), but more heavily built and intended as a cruiser-racer for an amateur crew. Fife himself owned the yacht for six years. That rebuild was carried out in Italy, but today, Clio is in Donn’s Wooden Boatworks shop in Greenport, where a nor’easter was giving everything a good rattle when we phoned. “The stuff we did all those years ago is still good,” Donn was pleased to report, including the teak deck glued onto the ply subdeck (no screw holes to let water in to…

The set of a saw describes how the teeth lean alternately left and right. A degree of set ensures the teeth cut a kerf wider than the saw is thick, thereby reducing friction and clogging. Too little set and the saw judders to a halt like a Seagull with an oily spark plug; too much set and it cuts a kerf as wide as the Bristol Channel. The trick lies in getting the set just right, minimising both drag and timber lost in sawdust. Since handsaws were downgraded to throw-away tools, with hardpoint teeth that defy maintenance, most workers are obliged to use a saw with teeth set to the manufacturer’s idea of an acceptable compromise. But if you have a handsaw of the older quality carbon steel you can…

23 JUNE – 1 JULY SEAFAIR HAVEN A week of cruising and racing for yachts and other classics of all sizes, in the picturesque cruising ground of Milford Haven. This is the seventh edition of this great biennial raid/regatta, and this year promises to be particularly special with 10 vintage RNLI boats in attendance, which is one of the biggest such fleets ever gathered. Add to this dozens of Celtic longboats and a diverse fleet of yachts and Tall Ships and you have the makings of a great event. seafairhaven.org.uk 10-12 MAY LONDON ON-WATER Classic Boat readers can claim a special guest invitation to this annual show. The invitation gives you and up to four guests free access to London On-Water 2018, billed as ‘London’s spectacular floating festival and on-water…

For the first four months of the Second World War, a bookish, half-French schoolgirl lived aboard a 54ft Hillyard ketch on a deep water mooring in the River Arun in West Sussex. The bilingual 11-year-old would one day be described by Orson Welles as “the greatest actress in the world”. Jeanne Moreau, who died in Paris last year at 89, never forgot the ketch, Windswept, or the name of the little fishing boat, Wagtail, used by her English grandfather Granville Buckley as a tender to his yacht. Buckley was a former sailing trawler skipper. He had sold his own 58ft jigger smack Alicia FD60 at Fleetwood in 1905. In the summer and autumn of 1939 he sheltered Jeanne with her mother and her baby sister aboard the hefty boat that…

Much of my life has been spent in the pursuit and construction of design elegance: houses, home interiors, furniture, cabinetry, and small boats. I have owned and sailed wooden boats all my life. In my sixties, when I realized I had the time, I began to look for a suitable classic sailing vessel to build or restore. As a lifetime woodworker the boat had to be wood, it had to be elegant in form (probably from the 1930s or before) and it had to be unique. I thought about restoring a classic, and found several worthy candidates. But replacing tired wood was not nearly as appealing as fitting new. It was then that in Uffa Fox’s excellent Sailing, Seamanship and Yacht Construction I came across the lines of Crystal, a…

Brooke Parish, Chairman, Sparkman & Stephens How does it feel to have bought one of sailing's most iconic brands? Being a part of S&S is an incredible privilege for me. Was your ownership of the 1957 S&S Mermaid anything to do with it? There was a well-known TV advert for Remmington with the tagline: “I liked my shaver so much I bought the company”. I guess you could say the same thing about Mermaid and S&S. In a nutshell, what is Sparkman & Stephens in 2018? Our core business has remained the same since our founding.…yacht brokerage and naval architecture and design. Technology has had a huge impact on both brokerage and design and we have several initiatives underway in both areas that we hope to expand upon in 2018.…

BONHAMS Thornycroft’s past glories Poring over archive photos with a glass of wine makes me wish I was capable of time travel as I idle away evenings speculating what became of vessels depicted in their glory days and wonder whether they still exist today. One that certainly does is the once imposing 27m motor yacht Ra Marama, built by the Thornycroft Works for the Governor of Fiji in the 1950s. Not that she’s easy to recognise today from a black-and-white print that was probably taken on her sea trials in the 1950s. Still in Fiji and now trading as a trip boat, Ra Marama’s superstructure was removed in the 1990s and her topsides raised as she was converted into a brigantine. It was only zooming in to the factory photo…

Last week I was interviewed by Andy of 59° North for his sailing podcast. We had a grand hour or two giving ‘ships and men’ a good thrashing and ended up discussing whether it is feasible to educate others about seamanship. Is time on the water the only answer? Well, I thought, surely some aspects have to be taught. Essential ropework, for example, needs hands-on instruction. Anyone can learn the lubber’s rabbit-and-hole version of the bowline from a book, but there’s no way I’ve found of passing on the sailor’s flick of the wrist without a helping hand. And what about the three-strand eye splice? When it comes to that extra tuck in the first round, it would take a writer of Shakespearean skills to describe it. A tutor who…

NORTHEASTER DORY Start small with a scale model One of the many maxims of amateur boatbuilding is that you should build a model of it first. This is a test of your aptitude, patience, skill and so on, but it also serves forever more as a reminder of happy summer months as it sits on your mantelpiece all winter, your full-size boat (now built) under cover and gathering leaves. Chesapeake Light Craft (CLC) in Maryland USA (and represented in Britain by Fyne Boat Kits) have taken it a stage further and produced a 1:8 model of its popular Northeaster Dory. The real thing is 17ft long so the model is a little over 2ft. Build method is puzzle-jointed planks stitched and glued to the flat bottom; the method is almost…

Australian Ferdi Darley learned his trade in England. As a young man he travelled to the UK to work at Square Sail, the organisation that specialises in providing period vessels for film production, at that time in Bristol. There he stayed for 10 years, gaining a solid grounding in traditional rigging. In his early years there he worked with Tommi Nielsen, who then left to form his own boatbuilding and repair company in Gloucester. There came a time when Ferdi decided a land-based career would be a better option and he was keen to follow Tommi to serve an apprenticeship in shipwrighting and blacksmithing. “And I had to bribe him with my rigging skills to get him to agree,” Ferdi said. Six years later he returned to Square Sail for…

RATING RESPONSE SOME OF YOUR LETTERS AND EMAILS FOLLOWING THE ARTICLES IN THE MARCH AND APRIL ISSUES ON RATING SYSTEMS Trial certificates That ‘No handicap system can be perfect’ is an irrefutable statement in the ‘Rating Debate’ (CB 357 and 358) and an interesting test of KLR, JCH, CIM and IRC would be to run trial certificates for a diverse set of classic yachts to see how they are treated under each system. It’s not hard to spot anomalies in a rating list but nothing can be done if the numbers are set in stone and so it’s important to pick the right system for your regatta. Although IRC does not reward classic authenticity it has, despite some notable criticism, proved to be a reliable benchmark across a wide range…

GOLDEN GLOBE RACE 2018 The clock ticks loudly for the big race In 1968, nine men set off to become the first to sail around the world solo and non-stop, east-about and south of the great capes. Only Sir Robin Knox-Johnston returned. This summer, 20 men and one woman from 13 nations will try to recreate his triumph, on long-keeled boats and using only 1960s equipment. As we went to press, many of the participants were at sea, bound for Falmouth, where the town will hold pre-race celebrations and a historic parade of sail on 14 June. The race itself starts from Les Sables d’Olonne in France on 1 July. The newly appointed race director is well-known French sailor Patrice Carpentier (pictured), who has completed five circumnavigations, two in the…

RESTORATION OF THE YEAR OVER 40FT MAH JONG It’s been quite a comeback year for this ocean-going yawl, which after a three-year project at Gannon & Benjamin won a restoration award at Mystic Seaport and now, thanks to you, has a CB Award to her name too. Sixty-one years ago, her shakedown cruise was from Hong Kong to New England, demonstrating ably the class of her build, and now her voyaging continues, with a trip to Maine last year, and the Caribbean ahead. Designed S&S, built Cheoy Lee Shipyard, 1957, LOD 52ft 2in (15.9m), rig bermudan yawl ‘It was obvious the teak deck was finished, as was the deckhouse and hatches. The maststep was rusted out and the keel needed replacing. Virtually all her frames were broken. We decided on…

“What went well today do you think?” our skipper, Hugh Stewart of Mikara, asked us at the end of our day’s racing during the Classic Channel Regatta in Dartmouth. “Hmm,” I replied. “No dismasting, no close encounters, no disqualification for bad behaviour, and we weren’t last over the line, so really it wasn’t a bad day out.” My hosts, Hugh Stewart and his wife Wendy, who had squeezed me into Mikara, a Mistral Class 1974, at late notice, had the grace to laugh. Our other crew consisted of Steve Preston, musician extraordinaire, and friend Sandy Briggs. They made a comfortable crew of four until I showed up, having just sold my timber ¾ tonner, Polar Bear. Five in a 34-footer would require considerable tolerance. More about my sleeping quarters later.…

In the early 1930s, British explorer GEP Collins sailed to the Indonesian island of Sulawesi on a phinisi, a twin-masted, seven-sailed schooner used for cargo, fishing and raiding around the archipelago since the 16th century. It was slow, cumbersome and riddled with rats, but Collins became so enamoured with the grace and beauty of the high-sterned vessel copied from Portuguese ships that he decided to build a phinisi of his own. So he sailed on to Bira, a village on the tip of south Sulawesi, where the seafaring Bugis people have built phinisis on the beach using primitive construction techniques unchanged for hundreds of years. Collins’ layover in Bira was anything but smooth: he caught a volley of tropical diseases, was swindled at every turn and faced repeated delays. The…

DRAGON CLASS Distressed Dragons The Dragon class has been in existence since 1929, providing high-class, one-design keelboat racing worldwide in extremely elegant, 29ft (8.9m) boats. Originally the boats were carvel-planked in timber, and that remained the case until 1973, when the class switched to GRP. The wooden boats initially remained fully competitive but as they aged, most gradually dropped out of serious competition. They were, however, well built boats, capable of a long life if cared for. In Britain alone, more than 400 of these wooden Dragons have been registered to British owners over the last 89 years. The British Dragon Association tries to keep track of the boats but knows of the whereabouts of only about 50. Many were exported, some have undoubtedly come to the end of their…

Make a planing stop With a planing stop you can smooth or flatten the face of a board without intervention of a vice, holdfast or clamps. The edge of the board butts against it, and that’s it – plane one side, flip the board and plane the other, as quick as you like. A wooden stop has the advantage over a commercially made metal one in not risking damage to the plane’s blade, should the two come into contact. Of the various designs, this one is simple to make from offcuts and rock-solid in use. It’s essentially a wooden T with, in this case, a mahogany fence screwed and glued to a teak cross-piece with a 1in (25mm) hole, and a rough-cut hazel peg which anchors the stop to a…

CHIPS The story behind the saving of this rare P-Class designed by Starling Burgess in 1913, now a star on the Med scene HISTORIC FALMOUTH With Falmouth Classics running on 22-24 June, we recall the harbour’s rich history MARRIED TO THEIR BOAT How one couple went from a GRP cruiser to restoring a wooden classic PLUS… Donzi-style speedboat built at BBA by a former oil industry executive, insider’s guide to the Med circuit, affordable classic, Robbe & Berking heritage centre and much more… JUNE 2018 ON SALE Friday 4 May, 2018 (or why not subscribe!) OTHER SAILING MAGAZINES FROM THE PUBLISHERS OF CLASSIC BOAT IN THE LATEST ISSUE • Lagoon 40 tested and reviewed • Multihull special • Cruising Croatia: we explore the best spots to visit IN THE LATEST…