Innehållsförteckning för September 2024 från Classic Boat

Spirit C72 Gwenhyfar II, winner of the Spirit of Tradition boat in our 2024 awards, took the overall regatta trophy at the Spirit Yachts owners’ regatta in Guernsey, Channel Islands this June, after a closely fought, six-race series, seeing off strong competition from Spirit R52 Happy Forever and Spirit C65 Chloe Giselle. Hosted in partnership with Locate Guernsey, the biennial regatta was based at Guernsey Yacht Club. Despite stormy conditions making for challenging delivery trips to get there, the weather settled down for the regatta and the yachts enjoyed 15-20 knots and sunshine for most of the week. Overseen by race officer Peter Saxton and a team of volunteers from Guernsey YC, the racing programme delivered a series of windward/leeward courses in the Little Russel Channel, and longer passage races…

Time flies. It is already, somehow, that time of year, and the 55th Southampton International Boat Show, this 13-22 September. It’s now Britain’s only major boat show of its kind, and among the line-up this year is the Classic and Day Boat Zone, which always has a great collection of trailer sailers, classic woodies and live demos. These are all presented by the builders of the boats, so it’s a good opportunity to look at boats for sale, and meet the people who built them. Other highlights include the Dale 37 and 45 traditional, seagoing power cruisers (photo right shows the 45), Drascombe Boats, Duchy Motor Launches, the Wooden Boatbuilders’ Trade Association, and no doubt more as the list fills in. There’s always a good array of chandlery exhibitors too,…

On 15 June, 2024 it was like 1961 all over again as a squadron of deepthroated Fairey power boats ploughed over and through lumpy grey waters reminiscent of the conditions that met the brave contenders on that first boat-breaking Cowes-Torquay power boat race back in 1961. This time, the dozen-strong Fairey fleet churned up a River Orwell the colour of lead and not much softer, as part of the Suffolk Yacht Harbour Classic Regatta. It was quintessentially British, as are the legendary hot-moulded agbalaminate Faireys. That 1961 race was instigated by Daily Express proprietor Sir Max Aitken, whose brief was for "high-performance powerboats suitable for extended cruising, including open sea passages.” The diesel-powered Fairey Huntsman 28 and Huntress 23 are a unique expression of that. Italy had Rivas, while in…

Should any racing yacht deserve immortality on the strength of one victory? Forgive the bee that has been buzzing in my bonnet ever since I came across a pamphlet* claiming that the schooner America was a phoney, but the author’s argument is strong albeit all arguments leading to a foregone conclusion tend to leave out the counter arguments. America clearly did win the £100 Trophy, put up by the Royal Yacht Squadron in 1851, despite the fact a much smaller yacht finished just eight minutes later, a time that would have given her a clear handicap victory. But the story goes to the winner, as in any battle, and America’s win led to the event bearing her name which takes place again this year, 173 years after that famous, and…

There are archives and there are archives. Some are a polite form of disposal: categorise, list and preserve the labour of the dead, then you can get on with the business of living, while the business of the past slowly settles under the silt of time, to be disturbed once a generation by a student researching an obscure postgraduate. Others are kept haphazardly as a result of enthusiasm or sentimentality, and are only easily accessible to the keeper. Both are considerably better than a hired skip and should be applauded, but they are a sign of the troubles facing archives these days. Museums, their natural home, are low on funds and can barely keep what they've got let alone take on more. And in the world of sailing, much of…

Right now my boat is lying in Kalmar, halfway up the sound inside the long, long island of Öland in eastern Sweden. We’re in the marina basin and it’s such a pleasant respite from banging against a wall for two nights in Bornholm, that Roz and I have opted to stay an extra day. It’s fun having a drink in the cockpit in the evening, watching the yachts arrive as we quietly award points out of 10 for tidy berthing and whether or not they please the eye. Beauty of course is in the eye of the beholder, but for my money, the only yachts that can claim necessity for having a flat sheer or a shapeless boot-top line are today’s more extreme race boats. Their creators at least have…

When the chips are down, it pays to have a journalist friend in every port. I turned to fellow CB columnist Adrian Morgan when the mast on Sea Jay, my classic Rhodes 6 tonner, came crashing down in Loch Maddy, South Uist, during our cruise around the Outer Hebrides last summer. The search for a boatbuilder to shape up a replacement or even a crane to hoist it in place proved fruitless. Fears that I would have to motor several hundred miles back to civilisation were met with Adrian’s cheerful response: “Come across to Ullapool. We have a traditional boatyard here that specialises in classic boats and mast making.” That meant a 70-mile solo motor passage across the Minches at night. “Oh, that’s OK. I’ll alert the Coastguard, local fishermen…

Let’s build back better.” Although that slogan has been used and paraphrased by several political groups and individuals – perhaps most notably Joe Biden – it was also recently adopted by the team that found itself restoring the 1896 ketch Cariad for the second time, barely 13 years after doing so previously. “But,” said Des Kearns who was joint project manager for both restorations, “we think the slogan was more appropriate for us than for Biden.” Cariad was designed by Arthur Payne and built by Summers & Payne, the Southampton company which had been formed when he went into partnership with William Summers in 1890 after his own yard, AR Payne & Sons, had been destroyed by fire. She was built for Windham Thomas Wyndham-Quin, the 4th Earl of Dunraven…

Keelboats, by their very nature are not meant to capsize and sink. Mike Bond and his crew from the Swallow Buccaneer (S66) proved to be the exception after broaching in strong winds during a race in Chichester Harbour at the end of June. Designed in 1946 by Tom Thornycroft as a light-displacement, low-cost, two-man keelboat for the London ‘Austerity’ Games in 1948, the gold medals went to Britain’s Stewart Morris and John Bond (Mike’s dad). The class was dropped from the next games but continues to race in Chichester harbour and Cowes. The class national championships took place on the same weekend as this year’s windy Round the Island Race, which saw 418 boats retire. There were no blue chequered flags flying for the Swallows, and though the conditions led…

Toba is one of the five West Solent Class commissioned by the Yacht Club Argentino (YCA) and ordered in 1924. According to the brochure published in 1926 by the builder and designer, Harry G May at Berthon Boat Company Limited, they were advertised as the ‘Lymington Racing Cruisers’, then became known as the ‘W’ boats and finally classed as the ‘West Solent Restricted One-Design Class’ that led to the acronym WSOD. The first five boats were built in 1924 for members of the Lymington Yacht Club at a cost of £600. In the same year, five boats were built under Lloyds supervision and sent to Argentina. According to the same brochure the owners were very happy with the boats and their performance. The Argentinian boats were all named after native…

It wasn’t the first time I’d ridden on a speedboat at over 20kts. As a yachting journalist, I’ve spent untold hours in RIBs chasing classic yachts around the course at regattas from Ajaccio to Langkawi. It’s at once exhilarating, often uncomfortable, and occasionally scary. So when I was invited to ride on board the new electric foiler from Spirit Yachts, with its top speed of 32kts, I was quite prepared for a thrilling white-knuckle ride across the Solent. After all, just a few days before she had beaten the speed record for an electric boat going around the Isle of Wight, slashing four hours off the previous record holder by completing the 51-mile course in just 1 hour 56 minutes. I had butterflies in my stomach just thinking about it.…

The second edition of the Richard Mille Cup that started in Falmouth, Cornwall and concluded in Le Havre, France covered a total of 255nm of offshore racing, and eight days of inshore racing at some of the most historically notable maritime ports. The warm hospitality of the host clubs – Royal Cornwall YC (Falmouth), Royal Dart YC (Dartmouth), Royal Yacht Squadron (Cowes), and Société des Régates du Havre (Le Harvre) was exceptional, and the racing, which was closely fought throughout, went right down to the wire. Although Mariquita started as she meant to continue by winning the first four opening races in her class, it was by no means a ‘walk in the park’ with her closest rivals pushing her all the way to the finish line in the final…

The working waistcoat Some synthetic work clothing is waterproofed using harmful per-and polyfluoroalkyl ‘forever chemicals’ which – perhaps needlessly for the wood-working boatbuilder – are used because they also repel motor oil, stains and grease. A more planetfriendly – not to mention authentic – option is a waistcoat woven in natural fibres, as worn by boatbuilders back in the day. Having walked or cycled to work the shipwright would hang their jacket on a nail and loosen their collar thence to adze, saw and plane all day wearing their waistcoat. Tradition aside, the sleeveless wool or cotton waistcoat remains a highly practical garment since it offers unrestricted arm movement, good ventilation where needed, and is of naturally breathable material. Then there are those excellent little waistcoat pockets placed handily for…

ADELA The rebuild of the 1903 wooden gaff cutter Adela as a steel yacht was highly controversial two decades ago, but today, we revisit her legacy as arguably the yacht that kickstarted the spirit of tradition PROAS AND CONS Proas are weird, fast and assymetrical. A recent newly-built 18ft example in the west country prompts Nic Compton to take a good look at the pros and cons of proas THE DISTANT NORTH Pilot and sailor Ellen Massey Leonard explores the misty north Pacific by steel pilothouse cutter and a restored De Havilland Beaver seaplane PLUS… A current day photo shoot lights up Brigitte Bardot’s association with Saint-Tropez, Riva and Albatross; the best of boatbuilding in Britain today; the vessels of D-Day; and more OCTOBER 2024 ISSUE ON SALE 06 September…

This June, 176 boats gathered for the annual Falmouth Classics, an event that in recent years has coincided with the ever-popular Falmouth Sea Shanty Festival. The three races – started from the mighty 1907 West Country trading ketch Irene of Bridgwater – took place in fresh conditions punctuated by a brief but ferocious 40kt gust in the middle of Friday afternoon’s race, and this took its toll. The 1895 Falmouth Working Boat Victory sank, four boats were dismasted, and the race was abandoned, but thankfully there were no casualties and Victory was successfully raised the next day. Conditions for Sunday’s parades of sail were much kinder. With a “Rescuers and Rescued” theme reflecting the RNLI’s first 200 years, the Main Parade was led by Falmouth All Weather lifeboat Richard Cox…

This year Christchurch Sailing Club is celebrating its 150th and part of the celebrations included the re-launch of Ianthe, in time to participate in this year’s Yarmouth Old Gaffers Regatta (13-16 June). The 24ft 6in (7.5m) racing day boat built in 1898 has been part of the club from the start, and was owned by several commodores before her present owners, the Ianthe Preservation Group. In idyllic conditions, Ianthe sailed to Yarmouth, Isle of Wight, a day early to beat the approaching weather, and rowed through the harbour entrance to her allotted berth. As anticipated, high winds meant that both the Gaffel Race on Friday and the Main Race on Saturday were cancelled. The crew’s enthusiasm was not daunted as they were welcomed into the Royal Solent Yacht Club, enjoying…

Westward was designed by Nat Herreshoff and built by the Herreshoff Manufacturing Company for the New York industrialist AS Cochran in 1910. Three years later she was bought by a syndicate of German businessmen who renamed her Hamburg II. From 1924, with her original name restored, she was owned by Jersey-born businessman TBF Davis, who for many years raced in the Big Class in regattas around the British Isles. Five years after Davis died in 1942, Westward was scuttled in the English Channel in accordance with his wishes. The Association of Yachting Historians has digitised 92 volumes of The Yachtsman (1891-1940) and the complete Lloyd’s Registers of Yachts (1878-1980) and these can be bought on memory sticks. See yachtinghistorians.org…

OSENAT, FRANCE Classic hydroplane economics Classic hydroplanes have yet to take off in the market and offer sensational value as an entry level into the world of high-speed classic competition and thrills at a fraction of the price of their four-wheeled counterparts. Italian Angelo Molinari is regarded as a maestro of wooden hydroplane design, the lightweight all-alloy Alfa Romeo twin-cam, four-cylinder a classic race-bred engine, and Michel Barone a highly regarded racer, who helmed this circa 1965 Molinari hydroplane to the 1973 1,500cc world championship at speeds approaching 125mph, for which the 1,290cc Alfa power plant had been bored out to that limit. Basically it ticks all the boxes of provenance, pedigree and history. So how do you put a value on that? Well, in a sale of a one-owner…

It’s late May, and we’re preparing Princess Svanevit for the short-handed offshore race, the Raymarine2star which starts and finishes in Oxelösund, Sweden. The sail bags form a small mountain next to the yacht. They were heavy getting from the car to the pier and it’s quite a distance to the narrow beam, even empty-handed, so we’ll need the halyard to get them on board. Out there at sea, how heavy will it be moving them along this beautiful, sometimes slippery, Oregon pine deck? And the hatches are tiny: how on earth did they get sails up and down in 1930? The water is still cold. This 300-mile race has evolved from a longdistance, endurance race during three days and nights, with short time-restricted stops, into three sprint distances where the…

HEALEY 55 The boat that sank Stirling Moss A holiday in the Bahamas in the 1950s where keen water-skier Donald Mitchell Healey holidayed with a young Stirling Moss persuaded the motor manufacturer that there was business to be had in pacey, competitively-priced sports boats to complement his company’s sports cars. Healey had already scored a hit with the Austin-Healey 100, which evolved into the 3000, and set up Healey Marine in Warwick in 1955. The 16ft (4.9m) Healey 55, announced at the 1956 London Boat Show, was built of marine ply with mahogany frames and keel and classy planked decks. Motive power, as you’d expect, was carderived, with a centre-mounted BMC 1,489cc in-line four, as fitted to the MGA sportscar. And ads for the Healey 55 proclaimed: “As thrilling on…

It may seem an exaggeration to suggest no tool box is complete without Gilbow tin snips, since they may lie undisturbed in the bottom tray from one year to the next, but for the purposes of trimming copper, brass, steel and other sheet metals, nothing else quite cuts the mustard. This year marks the tool’s centenary, with its first forgings having come from the Bridge Street, Sheffield foundry of the Gilbow Tool & Steel Company in 1924; surely a little piece of hand-tool history worthy of a mug of tea raised in celebration. I found Gilbows the ideal tool for shaping copper tingles, bedded down on mastic and tacked around the edges, to cover soft spots in a clinker dinghy well past its rebuild date, and managed one more year…

There is not doubt that I am a lucky man. I was born at the end of the Second World war, which meant that mine was the first generation ever to have lived in an unbroken period without conscription or the obligation to go abroad and kill foreigners. Atleast, inEnglandwe escaped it. We lived through the cold war and the shadow of nuclear holocaust, but isn’t it always like that? Our distant ancestors must have felt the invention of the bow meant the end of warfare as they knew it. Bullets and shells were equally terrifying; then bombing civilians from the air. ICBMs with thermonuclear warheads were simply more of the same. Now we face terrorism, cyber warfare and robot killing machines, perhaps the scariest of the lot. It never…