Innehållsförteckning för March 2022 från Classic Boat

After Classic Boat spotted the original Moonbeam being loaded onto a cargo vessel in Nice in January (shown here), our quayside spies noticed that she had turned up in Brest a few days later. There she joins a small but significant Fife fleet comprising Mariquita and Moonbeam IV. Has the new owner of those two boats bought another classic Fife to add to his collection? We'll have the full story for you next month! The Fife Regatta is due to take place in June on the Clyde estuary this summer, dates TBC.  fiferegatta.com…

There is a clutch of special anniversaries coming up this year, not least 50 years since the death of the brilliant yacht designer Uffa Fox, the godfather of planing under sail. Let’s not forget the Argentinian sailor Vito Dumas either who in 1942 – 80 years ago – set off to sail solo around the world, south of the three great capes aboard his 31ft ketch Lehg II. His achievement was largely forgotten in the heat of the war, but he became no less than the first person to do so, long before similar voyages by Sir Francis Chichester and Sir Robin Knox-Johnston. The most popular cabin yacht of all time – the Nordic Folkboat – reaches the same birthday this year. Another popular boat with a landmark birthday this…

British Classic Week will return to Cowes this summer from 16-23 July to celebrate the regatta’s 20th anniversary. There will be a six-race series, with courses set by the Royal Yacht Squadron for IRC classic yachts of 24ft and over, or modern classic, Spirit of Tradition yachts of either wood or steel construction. This year, the regatta will host a new class for gaff-rigged yachts to race under OGA ratings. Classic motor boats are invited to join the regatta to watch the action on the water and enjoy events ashore, while there is also a programme for cruising yachts, visiting places around the Solent. The regatta features drinks at the Royal Yacht Squadron and the Open Yachts Pontoon Party sponsored by Classic Boat magazine, with drinks from Hattiers Rum and…

CHARLES MILLER LTD All the King’s toys I don’t know whether 5ft tall (1.52m) King Victor Emmanuel III was overcompensating for something but the Italian monarch who reigned from 1900 to 1946 rarely had fewer than three royal yachts on the go at once. Though dwarfed by the 441ft (134m) Trincaria, the 184ft (56m) Iela was supremely elegant. Built in 1902 at the famed Scottish Ramage & Ferguson yard as SY Rannoch for a distillery heir, the king added her to his fleet in 1914 alongside another smaller Iela. Powered by Ramage & Ferguson’s own three-cylinder engine, the larger Iela was capable of 15 knots and was handsomely fitted out with electric lighting and hot water. No less exquisite is this extraordinarily finely detailed builder’s model made by Ramage &…

INTERNATIONAL YACHT BROKERS 2 Southford Road, Dartmouth, South Devon TQ6 9QS Tel/Fax: (01803) 833899 – info@woodenships.co.uk – www.woodenships.co.uk 41’ Bristol Channel Pilot Cutter replica built by RB Boatbuilding, Bristol, in 2017. Traditionally built boat with all non-ferrous fastenings, pine planking on grown oak fames. 6 berths including aft double cabin and 4 singles. 6’3” headroom in the saloon. Used as a private sailing yacht since her launch, not for commercial sailing. 2021 survey available. France €220,000 41’ Woodnutts Bermudan cutter designed and built by Woodnutts & Co. in 1938. In the same family ownership for over 45 years, she is professionally maintained regardless of cost. Pitch pine planking on oak timbers. Large volume interior with 6 berths and good headroom. A smart, substantial and capable yacht. Sussex £50,000 42’ McGruer Cruiser Racer 8…

We all need paint. Our houses, our cars and, of course, our boats are covered in the stuff. Sometimes we apply it ourselves and sometimes we employ professionals to do so, but either way we want to know that it will look good and that it is of a high enough quality to protect wood from rotting, steel or aluminium from corroding and GRP from osmosis, and to minimise the fouling of underwater surfaces. But it is an inescapable fact that many paints can have serious consequences for the environment and for people’s health, not only during their manufacture and application, but throughout their lifetime of protection and even when they are ultimately removed and disposed of. As time goes on, regulatory bodies introduce new rules to diminish these consequences,…

The Medway Queen is back at her home berth, Gillingham Pier on Kent’s River Medway, after some months at Ramsgate, where she was hauled out for various works to be undertaken, including to her paddle wheels. Work continues to restore the magnificent, 180ft (54.8m) paddle steamer, known as ‘the heroine of Dunkirk’ for her rescue of some 7,000 soldiers during Operation Dynamo in 1940. The Medway Queen Preservation Society was set up in 1985, two years before the founding of this magazine, and it seems as though the end of the almighty restoration is in sight. The aim is to restore the vessel to seagoing condition, using her original steam engines. Learn more at medwayqueen.co.uk.…

Mahogany mindfulness Working with impressionable wood, sharp edges and the hope of accuracy always demands close attention, but some woods stir a deeper mindfulness, perhaps none more so than mahogany – it’s so delightfully workable yet also mysterious, and controversial. Down the years a good few woods of different genera have been labelled ‘mahogany’ and we may even wonder if the species in hand is the real swietenia macrophylla, the ‘Honduras’ mahogany of South America. Assuming it is, the question then arises: should we be working this stuff at all? Given that every old-growth tropical tree felled brings us a step nearer environmental catastrophe, perhaps not. It’s far less likely to be the ‘Cuban’ swietenia mahogani which, since brought to Europe by Spanish explorers in the late 16th Century, has…

It pays for anyone to be wary when claiming to have spotted a trend, but in the little global fraternity of traditional sailing, you have to be as careful as a drunk on a ladder. If one boat owner, say, chooses to retain the Formica in his galley when refurbishing a post-war cruising yacht, it’s possible, given the sample size to call it a ‘trend’, but not necessarily advisable. What about the trend of the ‘young conservator’ or YouTube boatbuilder? It’s not entirely a new idea: Alec Laird became famous for his restoration of the 72ft LOS gaff cutter Patridge of 1885, over two decades (1979-1999), a job that he started while still a teenager. That was considered amazing at the time, and every reference to his great work included…

Classic Boat 2022 Awards NOMINATED The story of the new International 8-Metre yacht Starling Burgess begins nearly a century ago, on a rainy autumn night in Maine. At least one light was on, as her eponymous designer W Starling Burgess burned the midnight oil on a new design brief for a client. Those who know anything of this great American polymath might already guess that this design, to one of history’s most fiercely contested rules, would be at the forefront of technology and design. Those to whom the name of Burgess rings only the most distant of bells should not be blamed: the legacies of sailing’s great designers have been alternately diluted by time, expanded by whim and disfigured by patriotism or enthusiasm. A 20TH-CENTURY POLYMATH It would not be…

One of the victims of Storm Arwen in December was Runagate, the Hillyard yacht once owned by author Nevil Shute, writes Peter Willis. After spending many years deteriorating in a marina in Newcastle she was nearing the end of a transfer to Grangemouth with a new owner who was planning a restoration. The storm caught her in Edinburgh’s Granton Harbour; she broke free of her moorings and was blown into other boats. Members of the local Forth Corinthians YC went to the rescue but, by now badly damaged, she broke free again and ended up partially submerged in the harbour’s southwest corner where she has continued to break up. The passage to her new home had already run into problems not far out of Newcastle when she lost her steering…

BoatLife Live, the new boat show taking place at the NEC in Birmingham, is set to open its doors over the weekend of 17-20 February. There will be more than 100 boats on display, plenty of kit for racing and cruising sailors, as well as a wealth of talks on the main stage. The show will be opened by Vendée Globe star Pip Hare, before Pip joins show host Olympic silver medallist Mark Covell on stage to chat about her experiences. Pip said: “I’m honoured to be opening the BoatLife Live show. I really want to help encourage as many people as possible to get out on the water and experience the freedom of sailing, boating or whatever you choose to do. So I’m delighted to be able to welcome…

Visitors to Cutty Sark will be able to climb the ship’s masts, for the first time since she arrived in Greenwich in 1954. After a briefing beneath the hull, those undertaking the challenge will step up from the main deck onto the ratlines and climb up just as hundreds of sailors did during Cutty Sark’s long career at sea. Visitors will traverse one of the ship’s lower yardarms before reaching the tops platform, taking in the view across London. Visitors will then experience a luxury that the ship’s crew did not: a controlled descent from the rigging, down to street level. Tickets go on sale on 21 February. rmg.co.uk/cutty-sark…

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Nothing gives the owner of a long-keeled old wooden boat quite the smug satisfaction as overhauling a big Bavaria. No matter that the chances are that the BB’s skipper is trolling along with eased sheets, enjoying a light lunch on the cockpit table while the autopilot takes the strain, whereas his or her counterpart has eyes glued to the tell tales, hand on the sheet winch, senses peeled for the faintest of cat’s-paws. “Ha!” they’ll exclaim, as they creep past. “See, the old girl’s no slouch. Modern rubbish. Pah!” To get the best out of any boat you have to race her. I’m a great one for sailing as efficiently as possible, cruising or racing. Winning a prize is nice, but when a tidal gate lies between you and getting…

Testing a motorboat off an island sounds idyllic. Palm trees, sunny skies and white beaches spring to mind, but this was December and about two degrees above zero, with a light rain falling. Also, it being England, where islands are seldom islands, Dorset’s Isle of Purbeck is actually a peninsula, although it’s a lovely corner of the realm nonetheless. The photographer and I arrive at the Ridge Wharf Yacht Centre, a small and very pretty ‘marina’ on the River Frome, to find the owner in good spirits and offering excellent coffee and biscuits to repel the cold, and the boat’s builder, Win Cnoops, AKA Star Yachts, based in Bristol’s historic Underfall Boatyard. The boat we have come to see is the all-new Bristol 6, designed by Andrew Wolstenholme and built…

The bow plunges, kisses the spume, and rears skywards. We hang in the air for a second, dip, then soar again. I jam my foot against a rail to steady myself and untie the staysail sheet. A wave floods the foredeck. My rope, half free of its fastening, becomes an angry hydra, snapping hungrily at my fingers. I fix my eyes on the horizon, trying to quell a creeping queasiness. And this is meant to be a leisurely day out. I’m sailing on Pilgrim, the oldest Brixham-built sailing trawler still operating today: 106 glorious tonnes of English oak, Douglas fir, larch and Canadian pine. In late Victorian times, up to 300 such boats plied the waters out of Brixham, making the town home to one of the largest sailing trawler…

Hughes: +44 (0)207 349 3758 Email: steffan@classicboat.co.uk A busy village in south Devon was brought to a near-standstill in January as a 25ft (7.6m) wooden boat was craned over a back wall into someone’s garden. The boat was a 1947 Yachting World 5-Tonner ‘in need of some TLC’, as they say in the ads. The new owner was 16-year-old Stan Brown who had just acquired the boat for the princely sum of £1. The garden and wall were at his family home, and his mum Lisa looked delighted at the latest addition to her garden, squeezed in next to the chickens and the raised beds. The family moved down from Sussex in 2017 “to be nearer the water”. The plan seems to have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams, as Stan…

English sailor Matt Orchard is busy restoring the 57ft (17.4m) bermudan yawl Sails of Dawn, built by McGruers in 1969. She’s thought to be the last ever design from Laurent Giles, built before his death and launched just after. The build was to Lloyds 100-A1, in Burma teak on laminated Canadian rock elm frames. “She’s more or less completely original including the interior, however I have some refinishing to do!” says Matt. Even the engine is the original Perkins 6.354. The yacht was built for Mr Morell of Mitchell Construction who sailed her around the world in the 1970s and owned her until his death, after which a new owner took over, but then pulled out, selling to Matt. Matt now has a nearly complete record of the boat’s history,…

Shaped work is awkward to grip in the standard bench vice, as it lacks the parallel faces required by parallel jaws for secure clamping. Pattern makers who routinely handle such work use an expensive, purpose-designed vice with pivoting and tilting jaws, but if we’re lucky we might improvise by filling the gap between work and vice using a suitable offcut from the scrap pile. A more convenient alternative is to shape what is effectively a floating jaw which, when placed between the vice jaw and the work, adjusts automatically to fit. Plastic versions of this can be bought but the frugal woodworker with a 4x2in offcut to hand may baulk at the idea of buying in plastic what can easily be made in wood. Ten minutes shaping with the ½in…

Sailing double-handed, 65ft Spirit of Tradition design, Faïaoahé, was a few days out from Grenada as we went to press, competing in the Royal Ocean Racing Club’s Transatlantic Race. Faïaoahé, raced by Remy Gerin and Bernard Jeanne-Beylot, representing the Yacht Club de France, is one of the classic fleet in the race, which runs from Puerto Calero in Lanzarote every January. Henry Cochin’s 1968 Philip Rhodes 71ft ketch Eugenia V, skippered by Baptiste Garnier, was also less than 500 miles to the finish as we went to press. Having completed the crossing, and safely tucked up at the finish in Camper & Nicholson’s Port Louis Marina, was the other boat racing under IRC for the Classic Trophy, Martin Westcott’s Chilean 1978 S&S Swan 57 Equinoccio. The 3,000nm race attracted a…

After a 2021 season which comprised only mixed-fleet racing under various handicap rules, the J Class have made provisional plans to convene at three key events this season as activity and interest ramps up and key owners and teams return to the racetracks. Now in new ownership, J5 Ranger has undergone a substantial refit and is currently in the Caribbean, set to compete for the first time since the passing in 2018 of long-time owner and J-Class enthusiast John Williams. A new crew has been hand-picked including double America’s Cup winner Ed Baird as helmsman. Together they will set out to enjoy the first ever racing season for a newcomer owner whose first racing boat is the 2003 built, steel hulled Ranger replica. The recent J Class AGM signalled an…

The trust that owns Arthur Ransome’s old yacht Nancy Blackett has plans to expand its operations after a £150,000 windfall. The ‘game-changing’ donation was left to the Nancy Blackett Trust by trust member Tony Parslow, who died in December 2020. In its winter newsletter, the trust says: “Tony, who appears to have had no immediate family, was a great enthusiast for Arthur Ransome, and this amount represents 50% of the residue of his estate, following the sale of his house and a number of small bequests to friends. The other 50% goes to the Arthur Ransome Trust, which was set up about 10 years ago with the aim of raising funds to set up an Arthur Ransome visitor centre in the Lake District.” The trust says: “The scale of the…

The Island Sailing Club has announced that entries are open for the 2022 edition of the Round the Island Race, which is being held on Saturday 25 June. Race Director David Atkinson said: “In 2021, the 90th year of the race, our expectations were exceeded when we welcomed over 1,200 boats and 8,000 competitors, who enjoyed an absolutely magical extravaganza on the waters around the Isle of Wight. "We hope to build on this success and attract a wide range of boats from the UK and abroad to experience the race and hopefully onshore hospitality in Cowes this year." The Ellen MacArthur Cancer Trust continues to be the Official Charity Partner for the race and Frank Fletcher, Ellen MacArthur Cancer Trust CEO, said: “Hundreds of young people living through and…

I n the first dozen-or-so years following the war, H Dick Broom seems to have become a serial owner of new sailing yachts. First, in 1946, Berthon Boat Co built the 14-ton Gauntlet Dehra for him; this was followed by the 38ft (11.6m) Minstrel Maid, designed for him by Charles A Nicholson and built by Lallows in 1953; the next year, the same collaboration produced the 42ft (12.8m) Swanhilde. During that time, he also owned the 1937 Laurent Giles Maid of Malham for a few years. In 1958 – by which time he was vice commodore of the Royal Southern YC – came his fourth new post-war boat: Brynhilde, designed by Fred Parker and built by AH Moody & Sons. She had a mahogany centreline, mahogany planking on oak frames,…

CUSTOM-MADE MODELS Here we have models of the S&S One-Toner Volonte (top left), along with Dick Carter’s Tina (bottom left) and the S&S Amazon (right) built by C&N. The models are made by Shipshapes Models, using the “best materials and traditional techniques… faithful to the original vessel”. Each is built according to the naval architect’s drawings, with photos, using lacquered wood, nickel-plated fittings, stainless steel and textile rigging – made in La Rochelle, France. Prices from £3,600 Email shipshapes-models@wanadoo.fr CHATHAM SHOES We love the background as much as the shoes, which are part of the new summer 2022 range from British brand Chatham. They also do the Java G2, which is designed using the Genesis leather concept, aiming to “reduce consumption of water, harmful chemicals and energy throughout the manufacturing…

FIARA Mylne one-design project “The Alfred Mylne-designed Island Class may be one of the finest one design classes of all time,” says broker Iain McAllister. “These elegant and supremely efficiently rigged yawls represented the final expression of an intense turn of the 19th century period of one-design class development on Belfast Lough during which the concept of the bone fide cruiser racer was born, refined and perfected. What we are left with now is a beautifully proportioned Edwardian yacht of the highest pedigree, her designer being at the height of his race yacht design prowess and the builder with stock of the finest materials, especially her pitch pine bottom planking. Fiara’s restoration by highly skilled craftsmen has begun, but requires a new custodian to take the project to completion, to…

Is there a sight more captivating than the shipwright clenching a clinkerbuilt boat? Extrapolate, if you will, from my two fastenings to the glittering ranks of copper nails and rooves awaiting the nippers and ball peen hammer in a smart 12-footer of mahogany on oak. Following the nipping of each nail to about one-sixteenth inch standing proud, a firm tap of the hammer’s flat face will spread the point before a succession of carefully weighted swings of the ball peen will mushroom it over the roove. In full flow the work has all the rhythmic alchemy of a loom, turning raw materials into a beautiful fabric of copper-fastened wood. It’s the sort of work which Jerome K Jerome may have had in mind when, reflecting on the efforts of his…

RUNNING TIDE The S&S sloop Running Tide might just lay claim to the most successful racing yacht of all time – and she’s just been completely rebuilt BREAKING THE ICE CB illustrator Claudia Myatt went on a long trip to Antarctica, where she recorded wrecks and wildlife in her sketchbook GOING BIG The 1960s yacht Odyssey III was built in the 1960s by Benetti and recently restored for an English couple at Pendennis. What was it like, taking on a mammoth project like this? PLUS… The first in a series on the building of the 8-M yacht Starling Burgess; a visit to a living history boatyard; recap on varnishing, a new, minimalist 14ft dinghy, and much more APRIL 2022 On sale Friday 11 March, 2022 Or why not subscribe? SAILING…