Innehållsförteckning för September 2019 från Classic Boat

PANERAI BCYC REGATTA Curtain call for Panerai Fifty-three yachts entered this year’s regatta in Cowes, the last to be sponsored by the Italian watch maker which has done so much to promote classic sailing since 2005. Fifty-three yachts entered this year’s regatta in Cowes, the last to be sponsored by the Italian watch maker which has done so much to promote classic sailing since 2005. This year, there was a greater focus on authenticity. An independent judging panel made up of CB’s Rob Peake and Steff an Meyric Hughes, naval architect Paul Spooner, NHS UK director Hannah Cunliffe, author and CB contributor Nigel Sharp, and Cowes boatbuilder and CB publishing consultant Martin Nott, viewed every boat in the regatta. The BCYC asked the panel to name the most authentic boats…

Lord Henry William Forster was appointed Governor General of Australia in 1920. During his five-year term he wasn’t as involved in the country’s politics as his predecessors had been, but he was particularly keen on sport, especially cricket, horse racing and sailing. He was, himself, a keen sailor and he was eager to encourage greater participation across Australian society. One day not long after his arrival in Australia, Forster was in Melbourne’s Government House, from the top of which there was a reasonable view across Port Phillip Bay. A few small vessels were sailing back from a regatta in Geelong in a gale of wind and Forster noticed through his powerful field glasses that one of them seemed to be coping particularly well with the conditions. The boat was heading…

A tender to Ariel II was also constructed from the original Herreshoff plans during her restoration. According to preliminary research into Ariel II before her restoration began, it was believed that this model had not previously been built. However, photographs of Ariel II found recently show Ariel II clearly has a dinghy nestled aboard during her launch in 1931. At some point in the past the tender was lost, and no evidence of her existance remained on board Ariel II when the work began at Ballentine’s Boat Shop. Using the tender’s plans from Hart Nautical Collections List at the MIT Museum, BBS constructed Calaban and her unique storage and davit system. While Calaban looks identical to the original hull, the new boat was constructed with the knowledge she would spend…

My vulnerability brings me both joy and fear. The uncontrollable, unpredictable environment that surrounds me forces my focus into the present. This is how it feels to truly be alive. At the age of 21, I’m alone with Flying Cloud, my 22ft carvel sloop, somewhere along the trade wind conveyor belt between Africa and the Caribbean. Mismatched sails and spinnaker poles form my makeshift trade wind rig, and a home-made wind vane does the hard work for me. The trades are steady, the fish are biting – and the busy human world is an obscure memory to me. Within 200 miles of the Caribbean, I set myself on fire. Half a litre of meths explodes in my hand as I attempt to light my paraffin stove. Within a second, my…

GAFFERS AND LUGGERS The open boats Sam Heard’s company Gaffers and Luggers – based at the top of Mylor Creek near Falmouth, Cornwall – currently has a range of 13 traditional GRP boats, many of which were originally built by his late grandfather Terry and father Martin. Firstly, there are the rowing punts, which come in three sizes. The first was the 14-footer (4.3m), built by Terry in 1987 when he took a mould off a late 19th-century boat built by Frank Hitchens. Smaller boats of the same pedigree subsequently formed the starting point for 12ft (3.7m) and 10ft (3m) versions. Almost 100 of these have now been built. Sam’s range also includes the 20ft (6.1m) Tosher. Martin took the first of these to Douarnanez, Brittany, in 1988 and immediately…

Sixteen students graduated at the Boat Building Academy in Lyme Regis on 12 June and, in doing so, they launched six of the seven boats they had been building. As ever, although all the students worked on all of the boats, each boat was sponsored by an individual student. First to hit the water was Sam Manners’ slightly stretched – 9ft 4in from 7ft 11in – Iain Oughtred-designed Auk, built of glued clinker ply with a sapele centreline structure, varnished khaya trim and a standing lug rig. She was closely followed by the only other sailing boat, Andy Musgrove’s Vivier-designed Ilur, another glued clinker boat but with steamed oak ribs for effect and varnished oak gunwales. She also had a standing lug mainsail but with a jib set on the…

1-3 AUGUST WOODEN BOAT MAINE SERIES Castine – Egemoggin, USA This comprises the Castine Classic Yacht Race, the Camden Classic Regatta and the Egemoggin Reach Regatta, on consecutive days from 1 August. camdenyachtclub.org 1-9 AUGUST 6-METRE WORLDS Hanko, Finland This time, it falls to Finland to host the biennial Worlds of the most popular metre class in the world. 6mrworlds2019.com 5-17 AUGUST MENAI STRAITS REGATTAS Wales Running since the 1830s, this encompasses everything from dinghies to yachts, including the 120-year-old Hoylake SC Opera Class. menaistraitregattas.org.uk 25 AUGUST – 1 SEPTEMBER CORSICA CLASSIC Celebrating its 10th year, with a new route of 170 miles between Bonifacio and Saint-Florent, stopping in six Corsican ports. Corsica-classic.com…

MAGYAR Think of Saunders Roe, and you might think of hovercraft, flying boats, even buses. But they also built lovely, traditional teak motor yachts like this one, restored to the highest possible standard at Harbour Marine Services in Suffolk. CLASSIC DESIGN Our series continues with the husky ooe lugger Guide Me. HELENA He dreamed of her for 40 years. He spent 12 years building her. Now, one man’s dream has come true, in the form of a new 60ft Ed Burnett yacht. PLUS… Gometra, the Alfred Mylne-designed yacht that helped save Norway’s gold reserves in 1940 after Nazi invasion; sailing through land in north Norfolk; Tom Cunliffe on proper halyards; and more OCTOBER 2019 ON SALE DATE Friday 6 September (or why not subscribe!) OTHER SAILING MAGAZINES FROM THE PUBLISHERS…

The big old wooden boat looked an unpromising sight as I peered down at her, as she was lying alongside Penryn town quay, on the south coast of Cornwall. Her deck was cluttered with ropes and chain lying in seemingly random piles, and a pair of boat’s legs and a water-filled canoe were scattered to one side. For a few minutes, I wondered if I was wasting my time. This formerly mighty Cornish lugger was said to be the last surviving Lowestoft drifter, rescued from almost certain destruction in Germany, dismantled and transported in parts back to Cornwall, and then painstakingly reassembled on a beach in Penryn. But, I mused, standing there on the quay, perhaps all that was nothing more than a romantic story; perhaps she was more wreck…

XII PUIG VELA CLASSICA The 12-M duel that took 90 years to stage The 12th Puig Vela Clàssica hosted by Real Club Náutico de Barcelona last month featured an intriguing head-to-head as two pre-war Italian 12m yachts – built ostensibly as period rivals – met on a race course for the very first time. La Spina was the first Italian yacht built under the International 12-M Class Rule. She was built for the Marquis Franco Spinola by Cantieri Baglietto in Genoa and launched in 1929. Her rival at Puig Vela Clàssica was Emilia, Italy’s second 12m yacht, and constructed by Baglietto’s local rival Cantieri Costaguta. Emilia was commissioned by a friend of the marquis – Giovanni Agnelli of Fiat fame – as a gift for his son-in-law Carlo Nasi, and…

GUERNSEY’S Winnie’s Wee Winn wins again Winnifred Sutton was a winner and so was her controversial half-rater, appropriately named Wee Winn. Though derided as “scarcely dignified,” the forward-thinking Nat Herreshoff design and the lady racer became the talk of the Solent in 1892 with a tally of 20 wins out of 21 races. The extraordinarily modern fin-keel design from the board of the legendary naval architect who went on to pen five America’s Cup winners prompted tutors and students at the International Yacht Restoration School to create a meticulous replica of the 23ft 10in keel boat from original plans. Completed earlier this year, the Wee Winn replica was auctioned at the Rhode Island school on 20 July with an estimate of $50,000-70,000. This time benevolence is the winner, as all…

Because so many of the boats built in the early part of the 20th century were designed to different rules on opposite sides of the Atlantic, Nathanael Herreshoff’s rivalry with his British counterparts was mostly in the America’s Cup. It is highly likely that William Fife would have met Herreshoff when he first went to America with George Lennox Watson for the 1887 Cup. The pair definitely met 12 years later – Fife was ill, but Herreshoff called on him at his New York hotel to pay his respects. They met again in 1903, when Reliance and Shamrock III were in a dry dock being scrutinised by Charles Mower, the New York Yacht Club’s official measurer. The New York Times reported: “Designer Nat Herreshoff, of whose genius Reliance is a…

“It all started here” says Andrea Tagliapietra. We are in an enormous hall in the basement of the Palazzo Fortuny, a gothic palazzo from the 16th century located in the middle of central Venice, that nowadays houses a museum. A small canal along the premises gives out onto the renowned Canal Grande. “My father Dino opened a wharf here in 1967 where gondolas were made and restored. He had been taught the techniques by my grandfather, who worked for a gondola builder in the Castello quarter and later for the famous Cantiere Navale Celli. It was just a matter of course that my brother Luca and I would continue the business. But very soon we wanted more and we applied ourselves to the construction of water taxis. After that it…

GUIDING LIGHT 12 ton Guantlet in need of care The 12-Ton Gauntlet class yacht Guiding Light is one of the few boats that have totally cleared up at Antigua Classic Yacht Regatta. Owner Roy Boughton found and restored the yacht, then sailed her solo across the Atlantic to race in 2010, winning her class, not to mention the concours – and the prize for the best story of the event, for his crossing. She was built by Berthon in 1936 to an HG May design and was until the unexplained death of Roy Boughton, who went missing at sea in the Caribbean in November 2018, in tip top condition. Since then there has been some ingress of water through the keel, and Guiding Light now, according to his sister Lynne,…

MCN Shipwrights, small though it is, is as international a company as one can imagine, both in terms of its personnel and its current projects. Proprietor Marco Scuderi was born in Sicily in 1974 and joined the Italian navy at the age of 15. In 2002 he married a Kiwi and, after completing a PhD in Maryland he stayed in the USA to enrol at Alexandria Seaport Foundation to start a boatbuilding apprenticeship which he subsequently finished at Salthouse Boatbuilders in New Zealand. It was in 2008 that he started his own company in Helensville just north of Auckland: “exactly the opposite corner of the world” to his birthplace. He works mostly alone but he does have one part-time employee. Originally from Japan, Jiro Tabaru spent time working in Paraguay…

Just like your average teenager tweeting a selfie, I’m careful to show my best side – but it’s my half-lap joints and tenons I’m concerned about, not my puppy dog eyes and pouting lips. When you work wood by hand, minor irregularities are inevitable – something I regard as character, although wood machinists might call them flaws. Still, a lot can be done to improve the look and fit of a hand-cut joint using a sharp, finely set shoulder plane. Superficially, a shoulder plane is similar to the simplest of rebate (rabbet) planes, the key differences being that the blade is bedded at a much lower angle, with the bevel facing up instead of down, and fitted perpendicular to the stock, not skewed. The low angle is designed for trimming…

“What is zee point to sail round zee globe just to end oop where you starteed.” So said Bernard Moitessier, or words to that effect. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not comparing myself with the paté-loving French vegetarian mystic who, “to save his soul,” abandoned the Golden Globe race with victory in his grasp. I’m not a vegetarian. Neither can I sit in the lotus position, nor prise myself out of it without the help of a power winch attached to a Land Rover anchored to a sturdy tree stump. Other than that, we’re not too dissimilar, me and my mystic choom, except that I disagree with him. For all voyages are a homecoming that starts the moment you step aboard and feel your boat tremble alive beneath your feet,…

Every year, from the middle of October until the end of December, millions of herring gathered in the North Sea in shoals about 14km (eight miles) long and 6km (three miles) wide. The drifters set their nets just below the surface of the sea, when the herring came up to feed at night, and simply ‘drifted’ with the current. By morning, they’d pull the nets in and sort through the catch. One lucky haul could bring in up to 250,000 fish, and it wasn’t unknown for fishermen to have to throw thousands back into the sea for fear of sinking their boat. By the early 1800s, the type had developed into a three-masted and, later, a two-masted lugger with lute stern, rounded forefoot and clinker-built hulls. The 1870s, when Gleaner…

The decade after the American market crash of 1929 was undoubtedly tough on the yachting industry. Even the venerable Herreshoff Manufacturing Company (HMCo) in Bristol, Rhode Island, saw a sharp decline in new orders. With a few notable exceptions, the construction of new sailboats continued sluggishly, the majority of contracts being 12½s, S-Boats, and smaller racing dinghies. In comparison, the building of new power yachts ceased almost completely, with less than two dozen built throughout the 1930s; many of those smaller launches. One of the few motor yachts built during this period was Ariel II, a 46ft (14m) power cruiser style yacht for William E Woodard of New York in 1931. Woodard (1873-1942) was an accomplished mechanical engineer who specialised in steam engine technology. Throughout his career, Woodard established more…

Tagliapietra is specialised in the construction of water taxis made of wood or fiberglass. In addition to this, they manufacture wooden boats and tenders for a more international clientele, of which the design is made in consultation with the client. They also restore and do maintenance for the boats of numerous (inter)national clients. Owners of boats can also use the facilities at the wharf should they wish to restore or maintain their boats themselves. More information on www.venetianwoodenboat.com…

+44 (0)207 349 3758 Email: steffan@classicboat.co.uk NORYEMA II On a sunny 8 July, one of England’s well-known post-war racing yachts rose into the air above a canopy of thick Cornish forest. She’s Noryema II, named backwards after her famous skipper Ron Amey. She was one of the three British yachts on the winning Admiral’s Cup team of 1963, the heyday of the race, and a year in which Noryema II and her fellow fleet members (Outlaw and Clarion of Wight), beat off America, Holland, France, Sweden and Germany to take the glory home. The 44ft 10in (13.7m), traditionally planked bermudan sloop was designed by Alan Buchanan in 1962, and bears all the designer’s hallmarks, and was built by William King of Burnham on Crouch. For new owner Gary West, Noryema…

Since growing up between Kingley Vale, Europe’s finest yew wood, and a Sussex creek of old wooden boats, yew and boats have remained inextricably linked in my affections. A teenage attempt at using the timber on board, replacing the dinghy’s rowlocks with yew thole pins, was not a success, but that was down to my clumsy oarsmanship. Practically, there could hardly have been a better timber for the job. Although saddled with the label ‘softwood’, yew is in no sense soft. It’s considerably harder than English oak, with similar weight, lower shrinkage and consequently better stability than our benchmark native ‘hardwood’. The fiery colours in a fresh-split log are breathtaking, ranging through orange, scarlet and even purple. When planed, the lustrous, blood-red heartwood is as intriguing as the muscular and…

Traditional Tool I do not own a boat, nor do I know how to sail. However I have had a subscription to Classic Boat for years and absolutely love it. One can always dream. However, I am a cabinet and furniture maker and boatbuilding is something I am very interested in. Your Boatbuilder’s Notes and Traditional Tool sections are of particular interest to me and I’m sure others. I wondered whether you have ever considered publishing this section as a book – a bit like Adrian Morgan has done with his “The trouble with old boats”. Jim Bennett, by email We’ve always thought so too! - Ed More on the 8-M If In his piece in the August edition of Classic Boat, Jack Gifford skips lightly over If’s career on the…

SEPTEMBER 1989 CB16 In the September 1989 issue of the magazine we featured the “graceful gulets” of Turkey. That’s a generous description of these vessels, now popular for charter, that mostly ‘sail’ everywhere by engine, with decorative masts, but the way they are built, in great number, still in wood, and on beaches, is still quite amazing. We reported also on the third British Wooden Boat Show, held in sunshine on the grounds of the Greenwich Maritime Museum, the show that became the wonderful Beale Park Boat Show, which sadly announced its cessation early this year. And in the first of an occasional series called ‘Affordable Classics’, Mark Fishwick wrote about Kim Holman’s tough, fast, 28ft GRP sloop, the Twister. When we started the current Affordable Classic series (p76 in…