Innehållsförteckning för September 2021 från Classic Boat

Cowes Classics Week, held from 5-9 July, continued the post-lockdown trend for big turnouts, with a record entry of 214 yachts. Good, consistent breezes most of the week enabled the race committees to run a full schedule of races for most of the 17 classes on the four race circuits, sponsored by marine insurer GJW Direct and the shore line by Robert Oatley Wines. Racing was cancelled on Tuesday due to too much wind but that enabled competitors and visitors to Cowes to enjoy the spectacle of Cowes Classics Day, in which classic cars and classic power boats joined the classic yachts on and around The Parade in Cowes. Sir Robin Knox-Johnston’s Suhaili and a WWII Motor Gun Boat were the top attractions on the water, while a 1924 Bentley…

Taking part in Cowes Classics Week was the 1907 Halluf, a Seaview Mermaid, designed, as all the Mermaids were then, by GU Laws. Sail number U3 and prominent with her green topsides, Halluf is one of only two 1907 designs at Seaview Yacht Club on the Isle of Wight. It is believed that there were eight yachts built between 1907 and 1910 at the Woodnutts yard. Halluf has a distinguished racing record, so much so that she was banned from racing against the east coast gaff-rigged fleet in the 1970s. Forced to race against the bermudan-rigged classics, she trounced them too.…

CHARLES MILLER LTD How clippers lost the race against time The survival of the Cutty Sark is all the more remarkable when you consider that most clippers had short, precarious careers often ending in calamity. Such was the price to pay for prioritising speed over cargo capacity, as with their massive spread of canvas, clippers were driven hard and often over-pressed in efforts to secure best market price for their precious freights. The average life of the six clipper ships represented in Charles Miller Ltd’s most recent marine sale was just 31 years. Three of the six were lost at sea, but the overall average active working life is much reduced when you consider that those that survived into obsolescence spent years, even decades, languishing as hulks before being broken…

Every new experience brings anxieties that lighten the stomach and clutter the brain. My first adventure aboard the schooner Charlotte in 2015 provoked more than a fair share of these. A course of anti-malaria pills and a pre-dawn departure from JFK that ended in the trash-choked, shoulder-to-shoulder bustling streets of Port au Prince was just the start. By the time my travel companion and I left our security escort and shook off the salt spray from a six-mile skiff ride to Isle a Vache, I could have kissed Charlotte’s wide, hourglass transom in relief. Nat Benjamin, the co-proprietor of Gannon and Benjamin Marine Railway on Martha’s Vineyard and Charlotte’s designer and builder, invited me on his humanitarian mission to this little-known, impoverished but stunning gem of the West Indies. He…

Clouds of creamy topsail, steeped in the scent of needle pines, wild herbs and sea salt; piercing bows crossing like swords on sparkling blue swell. Spirited trials in the day, spirits and smiles in the evening, while cicadas sing and the crews reminisce: there is a comforting timelessness to the Mediterranean classic circuit, especially after a year of loss and frustration. But among the parade of well-known names from Marseille to Saint-Tropez lies a unique gem of an event, timed perfectly this year to take advantage of easing restrictions: Porquerolle’s Classique, a three-day entry on the official calendar of the Association Francaise des Yachts de Tradition(AFYT), run by the Porquerolles Yacht Club (YCP). In a normal year, 40-50 yachts spend a long weekend competing in the bay and around the…

NAIANDE Mystery Class The 39ft (11.9m) bermudan cutter Mystery Class made yacht designer Robert Clark’s name in the 1930s. The first boat was launched in 1936 from AH Moody and a further 10 were built from then until 1946 at Sussex Yacht Works, with pitch pine and mahogany planking on a frame of oak, with teak coachroof sides, cockpit and coamings. Niande was launched in 1938 and restored in Holland in 2014, with a further rigging renewal in 2017. The engine is a 2003 Volva Penta three-cylinder of 30hp, first used in 2014. The interior remains original. “Something about Robert Clark’s Mystery Class yachts really catches the eye both at rest and at play,” says the broker. “It’s about an enticing mix of elegance and simplicity. This is what classic…

The story of Saecwen of Lymington begins in 1962, when the first Saecwen was built by Priors of Burnham – one of about 25 Alan Buchanan-designed Saxon Class sloops, all given Anglo Saxon names. Saecwen (pronounced saykwen) is Anglo Saxon for sea queen. In 1970, Saecwen was bought by Captain Colin McMullen, whose grandson Charles was born the same year the boat was built. “My earliest memories were on that boat,” Charles told me recently. The Watson family kept Saecwen for 28 years and she was, at one stage, co-owned by three generations – Charles, his parents and his grandfather. They regularly sailed her across Biscay to Spain and they took her across the Atlantic and back six times. “Summers were spent afloat,” said Charles. In 1989/90, Charles took a…

The 2021 Blackwater Match was a day of tight starts and tense finishes, reports Sandy Miller. Four staysail barges lined up almost bow to bow in a light northerly for the first start. Repertor was the fastest start, by a smidgen, but Niagara was first to the outer mark and first home to take the President’s Cup. In the bowsprit class, Mirosa was both the fastest start and the first to the outer mark but Blue Mermaid fought it out with Marjorie for line honours. After 6 hours and 4 minutes of racing, just 36 seconds divided these two, with Blue Mermaid helm Richard Titchener receiving the Keeble Cup and the Match Pennant. It was a similar story for the smacks. Although the 1906, Aldous-built, Maldon-registered smack Lizzie Annie was…

This stunning 1963 Sangermani-designed and built yawl, Beatrice, has been donated to the city of Imperia. The handover ceremony was held on 15 July in the Ligurian town’s naval museum and was followed by a flag-raising ceremony, attended by local authorities and Diana Bracco, president of the Bracco Group and last owner of the 51ft (15.6m) boat. Mrs Bracco said: “When I was asked one evening what should we do with this boat, I enthusiastically embraced captain Gaudino’s idea of donating Beatrice to the City of Imperia, to use her for the student’s sail-training after her restoration. I liked the idea of giving to a second life to Beatrice, and I hope that she will be able to participate in some of the classic yacht events, teaching and furthering the…

British Marine, the organiser of the Southampton International Boat Show, has confirmed that the 52nd edition of the UK’s largest watersports festival will take place from 10-19 September 2021. This year more than ever the show really does celebrate, in British Marine’s words, “everything that is great about being out on the water,” with the full gamut of boating included from SUPs to dinghies to raceboats and wooden yachts to all manner of kit. There will be more than 450 marine brands on show and more than 600 boats. Lesley Robinson, CEO of British Marine, says: “It is a great pleasure to announce that Southampton International Boat Show is back in 2021; the show is such a key event in the boating calendar and a real celebration to the end…

Nick Smith has more reason to believe in destiny than most. His life was transformed by a chance encounter on a beach on the Isle of Wight one fateful day 30 years ago, and he has been reaping the benefits ever since. It was 1991 and Nick had moved from Devon to the Isle of Wight to work with Harry Spencer on the restoration of the 1896 Camper & Nicholson cutter Avel. One bitter cold winter’s day while he was taking a walk around Newtown Creek he spotted an old clinker boat dragged up on a slipway. He had already seen the boat before on a mooring and been struck by her shape. “I guess she was originally a ship’s boat, but there was something about her that was just…

+44 (0)207 349 3758 Email: steffan@classicboat.co.uk A new 8-M yacht designed by W Starling Burgess but never built at the time, has just been launched on the shores of Lake Constance, at the Josef Martin boatyard. The design, from 1937, was discovered and published by Burgess biographer Llewllyn Howland back in 2014, and was just waiting for the right person to come along and have it built, plugging another gap in the unbuilt history of yacht design. Starling Burgess was an extraordinary polymath, as Llewellyn Howland points out in his 2015 biography No Ordinary Being. He was a pivotal figure in early aviation, a published poet and designer or co-designer of every J-Class ever to win an America’s Cup. It seems the owner of the new yacht is aware of…

Making dowels A sure way of ensuring dowels are a good fit is to make them using a dowel plate, if you can find one of the right size. Lie-Nielsen make both metric and imperial plates (costing around £70) but lacking a hole for the 7/16in (11.1m) dowels favoured by some joiners. An alternative is to bore a plate to the size you need, or better still find one already bored for another purpose. For 7/16in dowels the mounting holes in a sturdy field gate hook (costing £7) were spot-on. For strong dowels use dry straight-grained wood which can be rived into square-sectioned blanks (1). The blanks are approximately rounded using a plane inverted in the vice (2), aiming for slightly greater than final diameter. Next position the plate over…

CELEBRATING CLASSIC BOAT’S 400 ISSUES THE LOVELIEST OF ALL? To celebrate 400 issues, we ask something we’ve never asked before: what is the most beautiful boat in the world? MOTORBOAT MOTHERLODE A visit to Museo Della Barca Lariana, the world’s biggest motorboat museum on the shores of Italy’s Lake Como SECOND AGE OF SAIL We set sail on Tres Hombres, a Dutch-owned schooner that trades commercial cargo under sail PLUS… Solent racing yacht legend Clarionet restored; the houseboats of Mersea that became the most famous classic yachts in the Med; the wild Barton Hirers’ Regatta on the Broads and much more OCTOBER 2021 ON SALE Friday 10 September, 2021 Or why not subscribe? 30 YEARS AGO SEPTEMBER 1991, CB38 Editor Pete Greenfield starts the issue with a spirited defence of…

This year’s British Classic Week, hosted by the British Classic Yacht Club, attracted 50 sail and motor yachts to Cowes for a week of sunshine, sailing and socialising. Despite challenging light conditions at the start, the Royal Yacht Squadron race committee led by Race Officer Dai Prichard went ahead with all six races in the series, as well as the annual Ladies’ Race. The two longer passage races (sponsored by Classic Boat and Spirit Yachts respectively) took place at the end of the week, with winds of up to 17 knots and champagne sailing. Social events included drinks at the Royal Yacht Squadron and the Classic Boat pontoon party. On the Thursday, finishers were passed Hattiers Rum Dark and Stormies, and gin and tonics by Dartmouth Gin, as they crossed…

The 430-tonne Loch Lomond paddle steamer Maid of Loch has been hauled out for restoration work, only the second time she has been out the water in over 40 years. The major operation saw the 191ft (58.2m) vessel hauled out by the original steam-powered winch, in its A-listed winch house, onto the 120-year old Balloch slipway. Once on the slipway, urgent repairs to replace steel beneath the boiler room are to be carried out, following a survey of the hull. Funding permitting, a refurbishment of the starboard paddle box will also be carried out before the ship is repainted in her original ‘white goddess’ colour scheme, with yellow funnel and green waterline. The operation follows more than two years of planning after an unsuccessful winching operation in January 2019 that…

The 20 January 1947 was a big day for Arthur and Olive Bate, residents of Polruan just across the harbour from Fowey in Cornwall. Not only was their daughter Barbara born but it was also the day that they had planned to put a deposit down on a family house. So it must have come as something of a shock when Arthur visited the hospital that evening and told Olive that he had used the money to order a boat instead. Whether or not it softened the blow that the new boat would also be called Barbara is not recorded. The boat in question was a Fowey Troy. Arthur had ordered his from Fowey boatbuilder Archie Watty who had designed the Troy almost two decades earlier and had subsequently built…

There comes a time in any wooden boat owner’s life when – in my case after 26 years – you just want to throw some money at a boatbuilder and let them get on with it. From what I have read in pre-war magazines, an owner would simply entrust his yacht to the yard with instructions, some detailed, some taken for granted, as to what should be done by the time he returned in the spring. It might entail pumicing the topsides, and applying a flawless coat of white Llewellyn Ryland enamel; or ripping out the Rippingal, grinding the valves in the Stuart Turner and renewing the Kobe antifouling (“red please this year”). Come early May, owner would arrive – I like to picture him in casual suit, check shirt…

Sailor Fred Mortimer never wrote his memoirs, so he could have remained an anonymous man of sea, eternally taciturn, admired by his peers for his skills as a navigator and steely eye, but unknown to other earthlings. However, his wandering life left a paper trail, thanks to a handful of journalists and writers, including novelist Jack London and his wife Charmian. Our sailor’s name first appeared on 31 August, 1887 in The Sun, a New York daily. A five-line article towards the back tells that the 36-year-old “Second Mate F Mortimer of the ship St Francis was up for examination yesterday, before Commissioner Griffiths, charged with beating and maltreating Joseph Miller, a sailor.” This took place during the voyage of this three-masted wooden clipper from San Francisco to New York,…

On 22 July, sailing barge May, the oldest wooden barge afloat, swept past Gas House Creek in Harwich, home of the famous Cann’s boatyard where she was built, 130 years to the day after she was launched. A quick stop on the posts at Brightlingsea for a scrub and a fresh coat of tar and she was on her way up the narrow creek to her new berth at St Osyth’s Boatyard, where she will spend the next year while funds are secured for her restoration. May was built to carry grain to the mills at Cranfield’s in Ipswich and flour to London, so her new life as a floating bakery will be particularly appropriate. The female trio of Connie Gadd (aspiring artist and potter, and whose late husband Gerald…

DOWELLING JIG In our world increasingly dominated by impersonal machines, the minor irregularities in work done with hand tools are often prized as evidence of the human touch. Aboard boats this is especially true of interior surfaces and decoration, the texture of surroundings we like to examine and touch. Tiny imperfections imparted to the wood by a moulding plane or fret saw steered by the feeling hand give life to the wood. But in those hidden parts making up the skeleton of the structure – the carcase of a drawer unit, desk or lockers – it’s more important that the fit is accurate if doors and drawers are to open and close smoothly. Only once that’s achieved can we afford to indulge in the looser tolerances of tools guided by…

Don’t get me wrong, I love wooden boats, as do my brethren of the waterfront trades, because, as the owner of a 60ft by 20ft boat shed, I find that wooden boat owners are among my most regular and least troublesome customers. In fact they’re my only customers, as fibre-glass boat owners are always off sailing, which is downright disrespectful and of no use to anyone. Apart from not going sailing wooden boat owners are exactly the same in their lack of respect for our honest endeavours, and affront us further by actually attempting to do work on their boats themselves, which, as we’ve explained countless times, is beyond their capabilities and will cost them more in the long run. Worse, Classic Boat actually encourages this delinquent behaviour. A while…