Innehållsförteckning för October 2024 från Classic Boat

RM SOTHEBY’S Ferrari flyer still on the pace In October 1953 Arno XI catapulted across Italy’s Lake Iseo to shatter the 800kg world water speed record and raise the bar to an incredible 150.19mph (241.7kmh) – propelled by a 4.5L Ferrari V12 grand-prix engine that had been hopped up with twin superchargers and tuned way beyond 385hp race-spec to produce 600hp. That 1953 class record still stands. In 2012, the restored wood-framed, ply and mahogany-skinned hydroplane sold for $1.1 million. More recently it’s been rumoured to be on the market for $15m. Arno XI, still with its original engine, is a one-off in the rarefied world of exotic Ferraris. So too is this remarkable large-scale model. Hand-crafted in exquisite detail to 1:3 scale, and leather upholstered, the model measures 2m…

The sea was centre stage at Cannes in 1956. In May, the Palme d’Or went to the documentary Le Monde du Silence by Jacques-Yves Cousteau and a few weeks later, the very select Motor Yacht Club of the Côte d’Azur (MYCCA) hosted the 16th world championship there. These races were reserved for the different categories of two-seater runabouts recognised by the Union Internationale Motonautique and in particular the medium-displacement European class E2. A sparse but high-quality field at the start was made up of two German competitors, Jürgen Baginski from Berlin and Markus Glas from Lake Starnberg, challenging the French champions Machat and Van Praet. Glas was an authentic sportsman with an athletic physique who had started racing powerboats several years earlier with some success: in the 1950s powerboat racing…

I knew that to try to celebrate Brigitte Bardot’s Saint-Tropez in photographs would be to travel on a road littered with potholes. While the charm of this most famous of seaside towns has a sense of permanency that touches only a few communities, we would be trying to tell a story of an icon; in her absence. Parody or not, that’s a dangerous game for a visual artist. Locations were always going to be a central building block to this project and there were some important decisions to be made in a town that can be very busy. Early on we honed in on one area – La Ponche. It’s such an emblematic part of Saint-Tropez: it was here that Roger Vadim rolled his cameras for And God Created Woman…

I wonder when you last visited your local chandlery? In your dreams it may still be a place of romance manned by a chap, probably of a certain age, wearing a brown overall. As you walk in and step onto the scrubbed planks, your senses are assailed by the scents of the ancient kingdoms of the sea. Pungent Stockholm tar, the creamy aroma of fresh cotton sailcloth, a whiff of paraffin, sweet beeswax and an indefinable dustiness, all set off with a faint hint of distant mildew. Behind the wooden counter scarred by a million knife-scores, sit phalanxes of small drawers containing screws sold individually, by the dozen, or by the pound. Copper nails with roves that fit are racked up above them with smaller-sized fastenings alongside. Coach bolts, ring-bolts…

Boaters of all stripes owe a huge debt of gratitude to the Greek mathematician Archimedes. Without his proposition On Floating Bodies we might very well feel sunk; indeed the entire discipline of naval architecture would appear less buoyant. The ancient man of numbers surfaced in a very different context while I was turning out the shed. Wrapped in oil cloth I found an Archimedes drill, last used for boring the tiny holes in brass contacts of a boat being rewired and, before that, by a retired mariner making copper chain plates for a pond yacht subsequently cutting a dash on the Canoe Lake in Southsea. Power tools horribly redolent of the dentists’ drill might be employed for such fine work today but perhaps none could be so infinitely variable in…

Safety at sea is something you can never ever take too seriously, as I well know as a sometime third hand in a customer service role on a Thames sailing barge that operates in the highly hazardous and perilous cream-tea trade. In general, most barge skippers prefer a less explosive cargo… such as explosives, for example, as the sticky tea business has landed many a captain and crew in a jam and driven them to easier professions such as smuggling brandy from France. In more recent times of desperation and famine following Brexit, some skippers have even resorted to carrying highly volatile French cheeses, but never in July, as vapours rising from the hold have been known to render entire crews unconscious. In the infamous “Brexit Brie Blast” incident reported…

In April 1903, two almost identical new yachts were launched on consecutive days: Evelyn having been built by Ramage & Ferguson in Leith, and Adela by Fay & Co in Southampton. They had been designed by WC Storey; both were of composite construction with English elm keels, 3½in (89mm) thick yellow pine decking, and most other major components – including the 3¼in-thick (82mm) hull planking, stem, sternpost, rudder, stanchions and bulwarks – in teak; and neither had an engine. Adela had been commissioned by Claud Cayley – who was rear commodore of the Royal London YC and would later become vice commodore and eventually commodore – and was named after his oldest daughter. Although Adela was built primarily for cruising, Cayley regularly raced her around the coast of British Isles…

This summer has seen some great rallies for electric boats: 34 e-boats cruised around the island of Venice, 65 e-boats teams competed at the Monaco Solar Energy Boat Challenge, then on 23 July, despite heavy rain, watched by 326,000 riverside spectators and viewed by 1.5 billion on their screens worldwide, 32 electric boats, some retrofitted some new, were part of a fleet of 85 boats which were transporting 205 flag-waving delegations of athletes, cruised for 6.3 km along the River Seine from Austerlitz Bridge to the Trocadéro for the unprecedented opening of the 33rd Olympic Games. Of course, the loud music and the cheering hid the silence of this fleet. It was near the same Seine in 1881 that prolific French inventor Gustave Trouvé fitting his electric engine at the…

It is a truth universally acknowledged that… the smaller the [wooden] boat the greater the pleasure, and I would add, just as importantly, far less of a chore to fit out. It takes time enough to sand, fill, prime and paint Sally’s topsides, then I look to my right where stands, propped up in the yard, a yacht not many feet longer than my modest 25 footer, and I thank goodness for small boats. Z4s, Hillyards, Debens of various kinds, et al, the list is long. Those hardy souls who camp in dinghies under ingenious tents, heating their rations on portable gas stoves, get even more of my admiration. It’s great to be invited aboard a big wooden classic, and I treasure my time racing the McGruer Kelana, or squatting…

I caught the sailing bug as a little kid, only about six years old, on a small island in British Columbia. It wasn’t long before I was daydreaming of sailing farther afield than my tiny dinghy could take me. I’m not sure why my childhood mind got fixated on the North Coast, right up by the Alaska border, and in particularly the Haida Gwaii islands, a misty archipelago sticking out into the North Pacific. But somehow it did. Maybe it was the chart of the British Columbia coast on the wall in my parents’ house. Or maybe it was the Native Haida artist who was one of my parents’ closest friends. One of his woodblock prints hung over the fireplace in our house: a stylized raven that held your gaze…

VIRGO Classic Pettersson launch Virgo is one of the early twentieth century Pettersson boats, commuter boats of choice for Swedish folk with an island summerhouse, and designed to cruise quickly and smoothly across the archipelago on long summer evenings. The current owner took Virgo to Clare Lallow’s boatyard on the Isle of Wight, where she was stripped back, repaired as necessary and revarnished. A Beta Marine 60 engine was fitted with associated ancillary gear and new electrical systems to create a fine launch which combines classic 1920s styling with 21st century technology. The 25ft 4in (7.7m) build features varnished mahogany planking in a carvel construction on oak and metal frames. “She handles extremely well at sea but would be equally at home on an inland waterway or a lake,” says…

It was a week of two halves in terms of weather at this year’s British Classic Week hosted by the British Classic Yacht Club (BCYC), but when the results were in, it was 6-M Sioma (small yacht winner) and 8-M Anne Sophie (large yacht winner) who emerged overall winners. Two days of wet and wild racing in the early part of the regatta preceded lighter airs and champagne sailing to complete the five-race series with race management by Race Officer Peter Saxton and his team from the Royal Yacht Squadron (RYS). Regatta Chairman Giovanni Belgrano commented: “It was an awesome week and some of the best sailing I have had in my life. The race management team did an exceptional job giving us five varied races in challenging conditions. The…

Is it a seabird? Is it a hydroplane? No, it’s Tiny Giant! For the past few months the inhabitants of Stoke Gabriel on the River Dart in Devon have been scratching their heads trying to figure out an unusual new craft that has appeared on a mooring off the village. Clearly made of wood, in looks nothing like any of the usual local boats, such as the indigenous salmon boats and trawlers once built on the river. Neither is it one of those plastic cruising yachts that seem to find favour among so many modern sailors. Yet, given half a breeze, this strangely-shaped craft can be seen flying down the river at speeds in excess of 8kts, looking like some crazy giant moth. What’s more, it never tacks but simply…

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, Drascombe Boats, Duchy Motor Launches, the Wooden Boatbuilders’ Trade Association, Cornish Crabbers, Rustler and no doubt more as the list fills in. There’s always a great selection of subsidiary exhibitors too, for sails, spars, electronics and everything else marine. There’s so much more to see at the Southampton International Boat Show… from jumping…

In the end I didn’t need the alarm; the gathering roar of engines coming in with the cool pre-dawn air through the open window cut me out of my dreams with an almost military sense of purpose. I rose, and plucking my camera off the elegant French dressing table, was in a few steps head and shoulders out of the fourth floor seafront window. Below me the hard sand beach, still damp from the receding tide, was swarming with D-Day re-enactors, in army green Jeeps, trucks, armoured cars, half-tracks, amphibious vehicles, motorbikes – some with side-cars, a few canvas-covered lorries… There were hundreds of men and women, almost all dressed in American cotton GI uniforms or British serge battle dress. Without too much direction, it seemed, they were obeying a…

Well-held hook A small bench hook is a versatile device for sawing, planing and chiselling just about anywhere. That said, small pieces can be hard to grip with fingers of the non-sawing hand. Some timbers have a tendency to ‘grab’ which may cause the entire set-up to judder. A pair of G-cramps solves the problem. bench hook. One applied with screw pointing forward holds the work to the fence, the second with screw pointing down holds the bed of the hook to the bench or other fixed surface. We are now free to adopt a more relaxed sawing stance, pausing as often as we like without fear of the work moving. Side fillister favourite The late John Perry, builder of impeccable Folkboats and Vertues, was applying finishing touches to his…

PEREGRINE The gorgeous OM Watts-designed, Wm Fife III-built yacht restored by marine artist Martyn Heighton and his wife VICTORIOUS A King’s Lynn smack brought back to life by an ex-Royal Marine to run adventure charter trips off the East Anglian coast WATERSKI BOAT Porsche team driver and champion from the 1950s, Gonzague Olivier, and his pet project, the building of waterskiing boats like this one PLUS… The best of boatbuilding in Europe today; steamedup at the Thames Trad; in conversation with chainsaw king Rudiger Stihl and his classic yachts; and more NOVEMBER 2024 ISSUE ON SALE 11 October Or why not subscribe? 30 YEARS AGO OCTOBER 2024, CB76 Occasionally, reading through old issues of CB, you come across something you barely know exists. The October issue is one such, featuring…