Innehållsförteckning för July 2021 från Classic Boat

It is mid-April in Antigua, when Falmouth Harbour would usually be bustling with classics for its annual regatta. Instead, on a calm afternoon, I sit quietly with Gerald Rainer, in the beautifully-varnished cockpit of this very special schooner, to talk about all the lives that crossed and brought him to this point. Gerald grew up near Lake Traunsee in Austria. It was a small house for the size of family so the rivers, pastures and mountains became his playground. Forbidding the young children to play at the lake, his parents didn’t find out until many years later that he had been learning to sail there instead of studying with school friends as he’d told them. But by then, he was converted…and this early passion would transform his life. Nearly a…

It could have been a metal mast, but Sally’s is wooden, built in Bristol by Noble in the 1980s. That early morning, at anchor in, luckily, a sea loch we had almost to ourselves, it would not have mattered what the mast had been made of, it would still have struck anyone watching as odd to see a semi-naked man cocking his leg against it. Bran, our pointer and companion for just a day under 15 years, a master on the hill, was not a natural sea dog; or rather he was happiest curled up in the cockpit, or better still, bleaching his tan on deck. He would take a keen interest in sea life, birds, dolphins, seals; especially seals which we are told are closely related to dogs. He…

No one could have failed to notice the rise and rise of the so-called ‘spirit of tradition’ sailing yachts. These are simply new yachts, in GRP, modern-timber construction or metal, with the appeal of an older design. From the Cornish Shrimper to Spirit’s new 111 superyacht, the formula has been established for half a century. The movement, under different names and guises, has been replicated around the world. Even Apple products bear clear similarities to Braun electrical goods of the 50s and 60s, and numerous road vehicles from the FIAT 500 to the London bus have followed suit. Motorboats have been no exception to the rule, with seemingly every other boat at a boat show sporting teak swept decks, classic transoms or a spot of tumblehome, albeit often compromised by…

The decision by Cynara’s owner, Riviera chairman Mr Noboru Watanabe, to restore her in Japan was a particularly brave one as no such work had ever been carried out there before. In total, sixteen skilled European boatbuilders – in addition to the teams from Centreline Marine and Stirling & Son – worked on the project. Typically there were half a dozen of them at a time (and never more than nine) with various people coming in and out for three-month periods. The first of these were Paul Harvey and Ben Hobbs – both British but long-term Palma-based – who started work in May 2017. They later discovered that their Japanese visas were the first ever to show “shipwright” as an occupation. The restoration was carried out at Riviera Seabornia Marina…

Chisel knife The Hultafors square-ended chisel knife is rather more knife than chisel, because the edge is bevelled on both sides, but it’s nonetheless a useful hybrid of both kinds of tool worth keeping to hand in a cockpit locker or attached to your belt by its plastic sheath. The carbon steel blade is 70mm long, a sturdy 3mm thick and ground flat on one edge – well up to driving with a hammer, as you might do when splitting kindling for a barbecue. The meaty handle likewise withstands a heavy blow so you might use this tool for rough tasks where you’d hesitate to deploy a more valued chisel, yet it’s also precise enough for more critical work like cutting a hinge mortise. The fact of the handle being…

If there was a formula to measure the performance of a boat relative to its ease of construction, then the American sharpie would have to be one of the highest scoring designs. Originating as a workboat on the south coast of Connecticut, USA, its single-chine construction made it quick to build, while its shallow draught meant it could negotiate mud banks and its unstayed cat ketch or yawl rig made it incredibly easy to handle. What’s more it was fast and seaworthy, and there are countless stories of sharpies sailing through storms which by rights should have swallowed them up. Little wonder, then, that when the up-and-coming British designer Iain Oughtred stumbled across an archive relating to Ralph M ‘Commodore’ Munroe and his sharpie Egret while on sabbatical in the…

CHARLES MILLER LTD Sailor king’s favourite mistress Though Charles II, the sailor king, is generally credited with inventing yachting, it wasn’t the only sport he was interested in. In rather less woke times there was barely a murmur when in 1674 he named his new royal yacht Portsmouth after his favourite mistress of the time, the Duchess of Portsmouth. Years earlier his passion – for yachts, that is – had first been sparked in 1660 when the City of Amsterdam gave him what would be the first of many royal yachts, the Mary, and in the following year he took part in the first organised regatta, when he won a 40-mile race on the Thames against the Duke of York, who apparently did not protest the outcome – another yachting…

Ever since I first sailed to the Tuamotu archipelago 15 years ago, I’ve wanted to dive the famous South Pass of Fakarava atoll. At that time, I was still fairly new to ocean sailing, and certainly to scuba diving. My partner Seth and I had sailed Heretic, our primitive 38ft (11.6m) sloop copy of the S&S yawl Finisterre, about 10,000 sea miles from Maine, going through the Panama Canal and across the Pacific to French Polynesia. Before the voyage we had both been small-boat sailors and racers and those 10,000 miles were our first offshore. As for scuba diving, we were complete novices: we had breathed underwater for the first time in the British West Indies en route to Panama. In the Galapagos, we had earned our advanced dive certification;…

Most spars for classic boats are, of course, made of timber of which there are really only two acceptable species: Sitka spruce and Douglas fir. Both grow on the North American Pacific coast, Sitka spruce between northern California and central Alaska, and Douglas fir (also known as Oregon pine and Columbian pine) between central California and central British Columbia. Of the two, spruce is lighter (approximately 13.5kg per cubic foot compared to fir’s 16.5kg), more flexible and has a better strength/weight ratio (in fact, better than any other timber in the world); while fir is more durable and harder wearing. In cost terms, spar builders need to pay more for either than users in other applications, as it is essential that only old-growth, quarter-sawn timber is used so the tight…

Keel and wheels Here is Andrew Gilmour’s 1959, Tucker Brown-built Stella Timoa about to be towed away from Suffolk Yacht Harbour by his 1959 Austin A35. Hang on, I hear you say! That’s a 34hp car and a 2.7-tonne yacht. Not to worry – it’s a joke photo – no towing took place! Andrew bought his first A35 as a penniless student for £15, made it roadworthy, welded an angle iron to the back bumper, and used it to trail his OK dinghy to races. The boat, too, has a story. It belonged to Andrew’s father in the 1960s and he remembers racing it on the east coast before the family sold it in the mid-1970s. Andrew found it neglected in a boatyard in Looe 12 years ago, bought it…

RARE NAUTICAL BOOKS The Peter Harrington Rare Books 2021 Travel and Exploration catalogue, newly published, features plenty for yachting historians and lovers of sailing memorabilia, for example an unpublished set of journals kept by a Royal Navy midshipman during a tour of the Gulf in 1930-33, including an account of a visit to Dubai and an on-board reception for the Trucial Sheikhs, part of a broader British policy of ‘courting’ local rulers. Also available is a complete set of Cook’s accounts of his three voyages, nine volumnes dating from 1773-4. Trucial Sheiks £125,000 Cook £60,000. peterharrington.co.uk ENDURANCE LOGBOOK BY TOM CUNLIFFE Designed with Classic Boat columnist Tom, who is also, among other things, a Fellow of the Royal Institute for Navigation, the Endurance is bound in tough royal blue English…

The finest finishing tool known to woodwork is a flat piece of steel: the card scraper. On hardwoods, and especially those with confused or curly grain, it takes over where the plane leaves off, and may be shaped to work all manner of curved surfaces. Tempered high-carbon steel from a hand saw is of ideal hardness and thickness. It’s hard enough to hold a durable edge but not too hard to file by hand, while also being sufficiently flexible that you can bow the edge as you push or pull the scraper along. The cutting edge is unique, neither bevelled like a plane or chisel, nor toothed like a saw, but shaped into a continuous hook or burr. Preparing a new hook requires that the remnants of the old one…

SUVRETTA HG May’s tough but elegant 35ft West Solent One Design class has always been revered as a thoroughbred among yachts; this one belongs to the chairman of the RYA. 100 NOT OUT New Zealand’s mullet boats have reached 100 years of racing and neither Corona nor World War Two has stopped them missing a single year. THE NEXT GENERATION The Shipshape Network, National Historic Ship UK’s programme to train up the next generation of conservators, reaches its first decade. PLUS… Meet the new boss at Riva; the forgotten story of the stormy ’57 Fastnet; a visit to classic chandlers Davey & Co; and much more AUGUST 2021 ON SALE Friday 16 July, 2021 Available online. Or why not subscribe? 30 YEARS AGO July 1991, CB37 Another interesting cover from…