If Charles Lawrence were ever to enter Mastermind, his specialist subject would undoubtedly be the history of Fairey Marine. His office and garage are piled high with more than 2,000 drawings and 100,000 photos and documents which he has scanned into a database covering every powerboat built at the Company’s former aircraft factory at Hamble Point on the edge of Southampton Water.

He has also written four books tracing Fairey’s illustrious history, and nine others associated with the story of these iconic boats and their derivatives. Offshore powerboats have held a fascination for Charles since his school days; a passion finally consummated when he bought an original Ray Hunt deep-vee 23ft (7m) Huntress in 2002. And not just any Huntress. His was hull No 48, completed at Clare Lallow’s yard in Cowes with a distinctive cabin top that featured in the Bond film From Russia with Love (1963). More recently, he has also owned a Swordsman 30 – a Fairey revival boat based on a Spearfish 30 hull. “I was slowly drawn into the history of Fairey Marine, much of which appeared to be myth and legend, so I noted the actual events discovered from contemporary sources and searched for information to fill the gaps,” he says. He has been doing this ever since he took over the job as archivist of the Fairey Owners’ Club. “It seemed a worthwhile exercise to record this tiny but important piece of history before it was lost” he adds. 

The start of the history

This work was started by the late Tony Hamilton-Hunt, the first curator, together with world air speed record holder Peter Twiss, a hands-on director of Fairey Marine; Alan Burnard, the firm’s chief designer; and several long-standing Fairey boat owners. Together, they made a first attempt at creating a register of all the powerboats built by Fairey. This work was still far from complete when Charles took over the role as curator, but helped considerably when he took over Peter Twiss and Alan Burnard’s entire archives after they died, together with the access he was given to the Fairey drawings held in the Classic Boat Museum in East Cowes.

A retired architect, Charles not only has a keen eye for detail but a penchant for double referencing facts whenever possible – not so easy these days now that all the key players in Fairey’s history have passed on. New information is often apocryphal, which is what brought him to get in touch with Classic Boat to question some of the facts set out in our article Fairey Tales in the October 2023 issue. 

The Alan Burnard Legacy

Charles’s greatest criticism was that not nearly enough credit had been given to chief designer Alan Burnard who took the 23ft (7m) deep-vee open launch designed by Ray Hunt and transformed it into the iconic Huntress 23 which became the distinctive DNA for the future Fairey marque.

Fairey’s next offering was the popular Huntsman 28 – still a Hunt hull, but extended 5ft (1.5m) from the original Huntress mould and designed with a larger cabin and twin engines, which Burnard masterminded. 

Charles notes: “Although the stretch of the Hunt hull was envisaged by Fairey before Alan Burnard even arrived at Hamble, his design for the Huntsman 28 was spot on. It also demonstrated the ability to produce a variety of hull lengths and encouraged other possibilities including the Christina and Dell Quay Rangers.” 

The second generation of Fairey powerboats – The Swordsman, Super Swordsman 33 and Huntsman 31, the glassfibre- moulded Spearfish 30, Fantôme 32 and Amira 54, together with their commercial and military derivatives, were all designed by Burnard, but the initial expansion of the range came about almost by accident. “An abandoned project for a larger boat was spotted by an existing Huntsman 28 owner who saw the potential for more spacious accommodation in the larger hull, and so the successful Swordsman 33 was created.” recalls Charles. 

Over 12 years, Charles got to know Alan Burnard well and says of the designer: “He was both an exacting engineer and intuitive designer, with an eye for harmonious lines, and had a clear, distinctive drafting style. But I’ve often wondered why he seemed overshadowed and in a different social circle to other father figures like Olympic medalist Charles Currey, world speed record pilot Peter Twiss, Colin Chichester-Smith and Alan Vines. Was it because all but Twiss were keen sailors or that all but Burnard had graduated from the war as senior officers?”

Burnard’s beginnings

By contrast, Alan Burnard joined the Gosport shipbuilder John Morris in 1941 as a 16-year-old apprentice, qualified as a naval architect, and stayed there until recruited by Fairey in 1957. The son of naval architect CW Burnard who had joined Morris at the outbreak of the Second World War and was responsible for building minesweepers there until 1948, Alan was approached by Currey and Chichester-Smith to apply for a specific job working with Bruce Campbell, a wartime De Havilland test pilot and school chum of Dick Fairey (son of Fairey founder Sir Richard Fairey). The project was to develop a 15ft (4.6m) runabout and an innovative deep-vee hull design drawn by Ray Hunt, using Fairey’s hot-moulded timber construction. 

Burnard’s first task was to complete the 15ft Cinderella and Carefree runabouts before starting work on the Hunt boat, the Huntress 23, which he completed in November 1958. Fairey’s management was clearly impressed, because that same year, Alan was appointed chief designer in charge of the drawing office and all technical aspects of Fairey Marine Ltd. This included designing propellers for the marque. 

In his book, Charles Lawrence recounts how Burnard felt overshadowed by Currey and Twiss taking so much of the credit for the race successes they enjoyed in the boats he had designed. 

“Burnard claimed that by 1964 he had been feeling left out as Charles Currey and Peter Twiss were driving the official Fairey boats in the races. His response was to sketch out a pure racing boat strictly as required by the regulations, and by doing so, laid the foundation of the third generation of Fairey cruisers. 

“He was told that Fairey would build the race boat if he could find someone to place an order for one, but despite some interest, there were no takers. A frustrating year later, his solution was to build the boat himself in his garage at home.”

A pure race boat

It took another year for Alan to complete the boat, which was ready in 1967. She was named Sea Fox after the Hamble-built Fairey spotter aircraft that found the German pocket battleship, Graf Spee. Sea Fox was designed as a pure race boat powered by twin Perkins 145hp diesels, with minimal accommodation. She also had a more extreme hull shape with slightly deeper vee sections and a much less bluff bow than the Huntsman 28, together with a turtleback deck like Fairey’s Atalanta cruising yacht for simplicity and weight saving. 

The engines were set as far back as possible on straight shafts that continued out on brackets beyond the transom. This led to problems with aeration of the props, cured by the addition of cavitation plates. Perhaps remembering the difficulties with Swordsman Brown (a one-off Swordsman 33 race boat built for Sir William Piggot-Brown in 1964), Alan opted for a single rudder ahead of the props. The cockpit was set right aft, being the most comfortable position in rough water.

Perkins later uprated the T6.354 engines for him to 205hp, which made her the fastest Perkins-designed boat at the time, achieving 40 knots over the Southampton measured mile. Sea Fox raced from 1967 to 1970, retaining race No 711. She was driven by Alan Burnard, with Fairey Marine colleague Freddie Fry in the Cowes-Torquay races, and achieved third in class (13th overall) in 1967; and first in class (9th overall) the following year in 1968.

The obvious improvements to the seakeeping of Sea Fox made Burnard anxious to update the Huntsman 28, but as sales of this boat continued, it remained an uphill battle to convince the Fairey Board to make the necessary investment. This he blamed on a lack of confidence and vision displayed by a constantly changing senior management, who had to justify development funds to the main Fairey Group board.

The end of Fairey’s wooden era

The lessons Burnard learned were eventually incorporated into the Huntsman 31, the final Fairey hot-moulded powerboat launched in 1967, which marked the start of a new generation of Fairey power cruisers with a fine entry and distinctive flared bow. This made the 31 a much better and drier sea boat than the 28, and also allowed for much wider side decks, and a forward cabin that felt more spacious. These ideas were also included into the later Swordsman 33, together with the Spearfish 30, and Fantôme 32, all moulded in glassfibre.

Alan remained as Fairey’s chief designer until collecting his gold watch, marking 25 years of service in 1982. He left to set up his own design office rather than commute to Cowes after Fairey moved all production to the newly extended Groves and Guttridge yard. He continued for 30 years designing for a wide range of clients including parts for owners of Alfa Romeo, Bentley, Bugatti, ERA and Maserati cars, and in his spare time, rebuilt and raced a treasured Delage 15-S8 Grand Prix car, now on display in the Brooklands Museum in Surrey.

In 2011 Burnard fell and damaged his leg, forcing him to close his office and to retire to a nursing home, where he died a year later. He is remembered most for the many Fairey powerboats still in active service but his legacy has also been kept alive by the Supermarine Spearfish 32 launched in 2020, some 50 years after the original Spearfish 30 had been launched. Based on Burnard’s original deep-vee hull, fellow designer Stephen Jones drew a very stylish deck and superstructure that retains a strong visual reference to the timeless Fairey look that Alan instigated. 

Uffa Fox, Alan Vines, and the Atalanta

Finally, Charles Lawrence questions three other ‘facts’ within the Fairey Tales article. One, also challenged by Richard James in the letters page within the February issue of Classic Boat, is that Fairey Marine’s popular Atalanta 26 cruising yacht was designed by Uffa Fox, and not Fairey Aviation’s technical director, Alan Vines as disclosed by Gordon Currey, another student of Fairey Marine’s history. 

There is little doubt that the prototype was designed and built by Alan Vines who used aircraft principles to attach mast, rigging and keel to the main bulkhead to triangulate the forces. This 24-footer (7.3m), named Jansuewiz, merging his daughter’s forenames, was extended to 26ft (8m) in production form to allow for longer bunks and cockpit, and was simply a scaled-up version of the prototype. This is confirmed by two of Vine’s daughters, Sue Harris and Jan Leslie. 

“The fact that Uffa Fox is named as the designer was simply a marketing exercise” says Sue, adding: “My father’s name was unknown in marine design circles compared to that of Uffa’s, who already had close links with Fairey Marine.” 

Jan Leslie confirms. “Yes, my father and Uffa were close sailing friends and Uffa was a regular visitor to our home. They could well have discussed the Atalanta in some detail and Uffa may have had some input, but the concept and design was definitely down to my father. Uffa was paid a small royalty by Fairey Marine for allowing his name to be used this way”. 

The development of the Atalanta 31, also credited to Uffa Fox, is less clear, for neither daughter can recall these details.

The mosquito myth

Charles Lawrence also questions whether Fairey Aviation ever produced the legendary World War Two wooden-hulled Mosquito fighter bomber at Hamble Point. 

“I can find no direct evidence of this,” he says, although he does point apocryphally to an early Fairey Marine brochure that states: “Fairey Marine found in 1946 that by adapting and improving a method of hot-moulding wood veneers used during the war for producing such outstanding aircraft as the Mosquito, a boat hull could be produced which would fulfil these criteria better than one built by any other process.”

This was the story told to me by Charles Currey when he offered this writer, then 19 years old, a job at Fairey Marine as his assistant. But rather than manufacturing complete airframes as I had believed, Ken Merron, the son of furniture manufacturer Arthur Merron who first perfected the method of hot-moulding wood veneers into complex shapes under pressure in an autoclave, told Classic Boat shortly before his death in February:

“My father had a very close relationship with Fairey Marine, Charles Currey and Uffa Fox that began before Fairey Marine started mass-productioin of hot-moulded boats in an autoclave. Both Charles and he were boatbuilders after all and became good friends.

“My Father was the first to master a method of forming pieces of wood into compound curves. He was closely associated with Aero Research Ltd, which produced high-quality glues including Aerolite, and developed the concept of hot-moulding boats and parts for aircraft in an autoclave using a glue that set under pressure at 100 degrees Centigrade.

“He worked with Uffa Fox to develop an airborne lifeboat during World War Two which, carried under an aircraft, were dropped via parachute to stricken airmen who had ditched into the sea. Later during the war, these were also produced in the autoclave at Fairey Aviation’s plant at Hamble Point, together with complex shaped parts including the back of the fuselage, fuel tanks and parts of the rear wing for the Mosquito.”

It is also well recorded that the original Mosquito was cold- moulded using Cascamite, a Urea-formaldehyde glue that rapidly deteriorates in hot, moist, environments. This proved a problem when the planes fought in the Pacific theatre during the latter part of the war, where they suffered badly from delamination and termite infestation. The belief had been that De Havilland turned to Merron’s hot-moulding process to solve this problem.

Lost in the mists of recent history

Fact or fiction? Charles Lawrence remains unconvinced. He points to the fact that neither the Hamble Aircraft Museum nor De Havilland has any record of Mosquito parts being made at the Fairey factory, or the use of an autoclave. Even Charles Currey’s account to this writer is questionable because he was not employed at the factory until two years after the war. Ken Merron’s recollections are also circumstantial because at the time, he was a young teenager and may not have been involved directly with his father’s work. The quote in the Fairey brochure might also be viewed as misleading because it doesn’t specifically link Fairey’s Hamble factory with the building of Mosquito parts. 

The research continues with one question outstanding. If the high-tech autoclave hot-moulding system installed at Fairey’s Hamble plant during the war was not used to make parts for the Mosquito, what was it used for? Perhaps a reader can help?

Charles Lawrence is spot on when talking about the radiused centreline of the Huntress and other Hunt inspired Fairey deep-vee hulls that softened their ride and directional stability, as “not a happy accident due to the hot-moulding process” as we described, but a feature within Hunt’s original drawings that show a 21in (53cm) radius clearly dimensioned on the plans. 

From Fairey marine with love

Finally, Lawrence’s painstaking research answers another disputed question: which Fairey boats featured in the Bond film From Russia with Love?

Bond’s boat was Huntress 23 hull number 32 Rumble II powered by an Interceptor V8 petrol engine which, with a different paint scheme, appeared a few weeks later sporting race number 28 driven by Charles Currey in the 1963 Cowes-Torquay race. Its present location is unknown although there are some bogus claims going around. 

The baddies’ boats were: Huntsman 28 hull 34 Here and Now, driven by Peter Twiss. Its present location is in the Solent; Huntress 23 hull 48, then called Cockatoo, completed by Lallows of Cowes and powered by a 140hp Mermaid diesel. Its present location is also the Solent; Huntress 23 hull number 61 Gay Dolphin, powered by a Perkins S6M diesel. Its present location is probably Scotland.

Finally, the camera boat was Huntsman 28 Huntsman, hull 12, powered by twin petrol Greymarine Fireball engines, possibly driven by Charles Currey. Its present location is, once gain, the Solent.

Lawrence’s Books and Drawings on Fairey Marine history for sale

Visit the Charles Lawrence Chiswick website to purchase Lawrence’s books and drawings on Fairey Marine history.

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Who is Tapio Lehtinen

There’s an old Nordic saying – “There are three kinds of men. The living; the dead – and those who go to sea.” Tapio Lehtinen is unashamedly one of the last, and if he can do so in a Sparkman & Stephens design, then so much the better, 

The Finn certainly has salt in his veins, a bloodline shared with his brother Eero, a fellow circumnavigator, and two of Tapio’s offspring, who have both represented Finland in Olympic sailing.

Tapio first came to international prominence as a competitor in the 2018/19 Golden Globe Race and is now about to complete his third circumnavigation as skipper of the 1970 built Swan 55 Galiana WithSecure, competing in the 2023/4 Ocean Globe Race. 

His introduction to the sport came in the form of a Christmas present when Tapio was 12: he was given a secondhand two-man, plywood Vasama dinghy in urgent need of restoration. He loved it just as other boys take to a puppy, and soon he was sailing her with his father at the Helsingfors Sailing Club near Helsinki where he joined their coaching programme under the guiding hand of Olympic sailor René Nyman. Soon he was winning podium positions in successive Vasama National championships and in 1971 won the Finnish qualifiers to take part in the first Youth World Sailing Championships where he finished fourth in the under-16 category. Two years later, Tapio and his sister Elina won the Flipper class nationals, winning every race within a fleet of 30 boats.

His fascination for Sparkman & Stephens designs began watching two 45ft mahogany- built S&S offshore racers take shape in a local boatyard. He’s been a firm fan ever since, and when not sailing around the globe, Tapio is likely to be found sailing or tinkering with his 1936 classic wooden, S&S-designed 6-M yacht Maybe at the Helsingfors Sailing Club where he has been commodore.

He went to great lengths to secure a 1965 Benello Gaia 36 – a long-keeled forerunner to the S&S-designed, fin-keeled Swan 36 to compete in the 2018/19 Golden Globe Race. But time was not on his side. Preparations were rushed, her new engine died within a week of setting out from Les Sables d’Olonne and the antifouling applied was for the brackish waters of the Baltic. As a result, the thick crop of goose barnacles that took up residence on Asteria’s hull added so much drag that he was still rounding Cape Horn when race winner Jean-Luc van den Heede crossed the finish line back in France.

He finished fifth with a time of 322 Days, 8 Hours, 21 Minutes – 10 days slower than Robin Knox-Johnston had achieved 50 years before when winning the first Sunday Times Golden Globe Race. But anyone finishing a 27,000-mile circumnavigation solo, non-stop, eking out the last vestiges of food to the end, is a winner in anyone’s book. 

Undaunted, the Finn returned for a second bite of the apple, saying he had unfinished business when entering the third Golden Globe race in 2020, this time with a much-improved Asteria.

Tapio and Asteria performed much better, challenging for a podium position when passing the first major hurdle, the Cape of Good Hope. But then disaster. His yacht suffered an unknown catastrophic failure and sank within five minutes. Lehtinen barely had time to pick up his grab-bag, let alone don a survival suit and in this haste, the slip knot he had used to tie the painter of his life raft to the yacht did just that, letting the raft go free. He had no option but to dive into the Indian Ocean and swim after it, as Asteria sank bow-down behind him.

Thanks to modern technology, the EPIRB packed in the liferaft was soon alerting the world to his predicament and rescue was soon to hand in the form of South African entrant Kirsten Neuschäfer, the eventual race winner. But his luck still didn’t hold. Everyone’s dream in such circumstances must be to be picked up by a solo female sailor, but no sooner were the two clinking glasses to celebrate Tapio’s rescue, than a huge freighter heaved into sight and he found himself transferred to a slow boat bound for China!

Far from being dispirited, the voyage gave Tapio time to plan his next great adventure, this time to give young Finnish sailors the opportunity that he and his brother Eero enjoyed crewing in early Whitbread Races, to experience the trials, tribulations, and sheer excitement of racing around the world, particularly through the Southern Ocean.

When Don McIntyre, organiser of the last two Golden Globe races, divulged to Tapio at the end of the 2018/19 Race that he was planning to organise a similar retro event for fully-crewed yachts to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the first Whitbread Race back in 1973, he jumped aboard, even though there would be only a nine-month divide between the second GGR race and start of the Ocean Globe Race. 

Tapio immediately set his sights on another S&S design, the classic Swan 55 yawl, and quickly settled on the British-based Galiana. Now he had been given time to prepare the yacht properly and fully train young aspirants wanting to become the next generation of ocean racers. The programme has been a huge success attracting sponsors like the Finnish insurance group WithSecure and a host of others that share his vision to invest in young talent.

The 66-year-old former company advisor says: “I want to make sure that the Finnish ocean-sailing legacy that dates back to the era of Erikson square-riggers will be carried forward by further generations.” Tapio appears to have found a self-funding solution light years away from the multi-million-dollar, high-tech fast foilers that now dominate the record sheets – and that must be good for the sport in general.

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History was re-written in April when Marie Tabarly stepped out from the shadow cast by her famous father by taking line honours in 2023/4 Ocean Globe Race celebrating the 50th anniversary of that first Whitbread.

Racing Eric Tabarly’s 73ft (22.25m) French ketch-rigged yacht Pen Duick VI designed and built specifically to win that first race, Marie was jumping for joy at the finish of this circle of the globe back at Cowes, shouting: “We did it… We have won in real time… No one can beat us… This was always our aim.”

By contrast, her father had five attempts at winning the Whitbread Round the World Race without achieving victory – three in this 33 ton, now venerable maxi, and in two more modern maxis in the ’90s. All lacked the planning and preparation needed to sustain 27,000 miles of hard racing especially through the Southern Ocean.

A career officer in the French Navy, Eric was supremely fit and fiercely competitive – traits his daughter has clearly inherited. He set records and won many international races starting with the 1964 Observer Singlehanded transatlantic Race (OSTAR), when he won instant fame and the Legion of Honour at home and the American Blue Water Medal, after beating Francis Chichester by three days.

This was followed by victories in the Channel Race, Round Gotland and Sydney Hobart events all in one year, and later with record passages across the Atlantic and Pacific. His most notable victory was in the 1976 OSTAR racing Pen Duick VI, designed to be sailed by a crew of 12, punching through five Atlantic storms that knocked out his leading rivals in an extraordinary display of seamanship that surprised many.

“It surprised me too” said Marie at the end of her race…adding: “But that race is all upwind…He’s (Pen Duick VI) definitely a tough boat to sail. – just look at those spars. So heavy. It takes all 10 of us to gybe in heavy weather.” Marie explained.

“Do you mean ‘she’?” I asked, thinking she had her genders mixed up. Boats are normally compared to the female form. “Oh no… Pen Duick is definitely an ‘homme’… just look at him!” She has a point: 33 tons of black and bare aluminium, this global gladiator, purposely designed by Andre Mauric for the ’73 Whitbread, is certainly masculine looking.

“It’s racing downwind in 50kts of winds that Pen Duick becomes a real handful. We were in these conditions running towards Cape Horn when a freak wave knocked us down. There was nothing I could do at the helm.” She recalls.

But like any great boxer, Pen Duick VI is strong enough to bounce straight back up, shake himself down and get back into the fight.

Back in 1973, this Pen Duick was launched just weeks before the start with no time for any real preparation. Tabarly was not alone. Peter Blake told the story of starting the Whitbread Race aboard the British maxi Burton Cutter.

“We were still fitting her out below, stacked crates of Whitbread beer acted as companionway steps, and we were cutting rope from a reel to make sheets each time we changed sail because none of them had been hoisted before!”

Weeks later this crew found that only one of the ship’s heads had been plumbed in, which ruined their appetite for food stowed in the bilges.

Despite all this, Burton Cutter was first into Cape Town after skipper Les Williams took full advantage of the windward ability of modern yachts to pioneer a shortened route through the south east Trades instead of taking the traditional ‘clipper ship’ circular route across towards Brazil and skirting around the South Atlantic High.

Eric Tabarly chose the latter, but after 25 days at sea Pen Duick’s deck-stepped main mast collapsed. Having the French Armed Forces as a sponsor helped. A new mast was flown out and the boat was re-rigged just in time to reach Cape Town and make the start of leg 2 to Sydney.

That sail back across the Atlantic showed just what this yacht was capable of. In a record-breaking run, the French clocked up multiple 240-mile days, her best noon-to-noon run being 303 miles.

But the gremlins returned 200 miles into the leg 3 from Sydney around Cape Horn when Pen Duick was dismasted a second time.

Four years later, Tabarly and Pen Duick VI arrived to join the fleet in Auckland ready to compete on the last two legs of the 1977/8 Whitbread round Cape Horn to Rio de Janeiro and back to Portsmouth, but soon became embroiled in controversy.

Les Williams, co-skippering the British maxi yacht Heath’s Condor on alternate legs with Robin Knox-Johnston, complained that while his yacht had carried a three per cent rating penalty for having a mast made from exotic materials (carbonfibre) during the first leg, Pen Duick suffered no such penalty for her exotic keel made up of ingots of spent uranium, a material much denser than lead, which had been banned by the Offshore Racing Council after the ’73/4 Whitbread because of its restricted availability.

The Protest committee found that they had no means under the Whitbread Race Rules to penalise Pen Duick, but while checking through the yacht’s papers, found that she carried an outdated and thus invalid rating certificate.

With just two days before the re-start, there was not time to check whether the French National Authority had, as claimed, issued a new certificate, so Tabarly was allowed to start as a provisional entry while the question was resolved.

Eleven days into the leg, Race Control confirmed that Pen Duick did not have a valid IOR rating certificate and was therefore ineligible to compete in the Race. Tabarly’s radio man just uttered a startled “Oh” and closed down transmission, but it proved the main talking point on the inter-fleet net.

An indignant John Ridgeway suggested that a protest telegram be sent to the Committee demanding a full explanation. Clare Francis, skipper of ADC Accutrac, agreed and asked the other yachts what they thought.

Conny van Rietschoten was the only skipper to go against the motion and asked for his name to be deleted from the telegram, pointing out that it was the Committee that ran the race, not the competitors.

The Dutchman, who went on to win the race with his 65ft (19.8m) ketch rigged Flyer on handicap and take both line and handicap honours in the next race in ’81/2 with his maxi yacht Flyer II, wrote at the time.

“It made no difference to us whether Pen Duick raced or not because she was only competing in half the event and could not challenge our overall position. Rules are needed to run a race like this, just as they are needed in life, and if a competitor cannot measure up to them, I felt he should not have entered.

“Tabarly knew full well before he even sailed to Auckland that Pen Duick did not have a valid certificate. Her uranium keel had just precluded her from entering the TransPac Race, but he had entered this event just the same, perhaps trusting that no one would raise a query.”

The telegram was never sent

Tabarly took the decision philosophically and continued to Rio without letting up the pace. Later, the Race Committee, encouraged by Robin Knox-Johnston, allowed the French yacht to continue racing with the fleet on the fourth leg to Portsmouth.

“I wanted to beat him… and we did!” Knox-Johnston recalls. “We managed to close down a 100-mile lead and slip past him while negotiating a route around the Azores High Pressure system. We broadcast our course and position, then tacked immediately, found better winds and kept radio silence until providing the Race organisers with an ETA once we were in the English Channel.

Before I could do so, Captain Dudley Norman (the Race Secretary) interrupted, saying ‘Oh Robin, good to hear from you. Tabarly is now off Plymouth and we are preparing to welcome Pen Duick home as the first boat… Where are you?’

‘About 40 miles ahead!’

The French media took deep Umbridge, viewing the affair more a re-run of Agincourt and Waterloo combined. Historian Daniel Charles recalls: “I always felt that you Brits were grossly lacking in sportsmanship. What happened was that [during the building of Pen Duick VI] Eric was, as usual, short of cash.

André Mauric had designed the keel to be cast in lead, but this was expensive, so they made a deal with the Commissariat de l’Energie Atomique to receive at no expense, ingots of spent uranium These were encased within the aluminium keel and encapsulated in epoxy resin. The keel’s shape and volume did NOT change, so technically, the overall density of the keel was not in excess of lead and stayed within the spirit of the rule.”

Designer David Alan-Williams, one of the crewmembers aboard Heath’s Condor, tends to agree. “In reality there was no advantage. Indeed, it was possibly a worse arrangement for there was so much ‘safety padding’ around the uranium to avoid any radioactive leaks that the keel was neither smaller in volume nor a lower centre of gravity for there to be any performance gain.”

After that race, the keel was changed to a standard fin and-bulb configuration proportioned to maintain the yacht’s original stability factors, and raced again in the ’77/8 Whitbread as Euromarche, again with Tabarly as skipper, and finished 10th on corrected time.

During the Ocean Globe race, Pen Duick VI and her crew showed that this 50-year-old veteran had lost none of his/her old magic. Fourth on leg 1 from Southampton to Cape Town, and 2nd in to Auckland, Marie Tabarly and her 10 mixed crew, made the third leg around Cape Horn their own after closest rival, the Italian Swan 65 Translated 9 (ex ADC Accutrac) suffered structural problems and forced to pull into the Falklands to make repairs.

The final leg from Punta del Este back to Cowes was all Pen Duick. Recovering from a man-overboard incident at the start, Marie and her crew forged their way back through the fleet. Escaping the worst of the Doldrums, they skipped around the Azores High and rode a southwesterly gale, surfing at 23kts back across Biscay, the Western Approaches and up the English Channel, to pull out a two-day lead over their nearest rival, the former Whitbread winning French yacht L’Esprit d’Equipe.

Recalling the stand-out moments, Marie said. “I remember we were going fast towards Cape Horn in 55kts of wind and there were dolphins jumping out of the waves around us. In 55kts/ CRAZY! I remember racing very closely with Translated 9 and Maiden and being able to see them. Then there were all the buddy chats, four times a day over the radio. I’m going to miss all that.”

The big differential between Marie’s Whitbread campaign and those from before was down to preparation. Both Pen Duick and Maiden – the overall winner on handicap – took on world tours to support their charities and test out potential crew enroute. Tabarly worked through more than 100 potentials.

“I selected them for each leg and rotated them accordingly. I’ve got the best crew in the world! They had fun, love the boat and have learned a lot. In human terms, we got on perfectly. Everyone pulled in the same direction, and we didn’t have a single tense moment on board. We’ve really experienced something extraordinary together.”

Pen Duick’s world tour between 2018 and 2021, dubbed the Elem en’Terre Project, centred on raising public awareness of major environmental and social issues for a French TV documentary series and visited Iceland, Greenland, the Caribbean, Patagonia, and Antarctica.

Marie and her crew also took part in the 2022; Seven Star Round Britain & Ireland race finishing first in class, and completed their warm-up with last year’s Rolex Fastnet Race. The programme made all the difference.

One aspect that Marie failed to accept however, was the retro aspect surrounding the Ocean Globe event. The rules, published four years before the start, banished all digital aids – GPS, chart plotters, computers and mobile phones.

Just a sextant, paper charts, barometer, wind-up chronometer and weather fax receiver over HF radio connections – just as it was back in 1973.

Yes, each yacht was equipped with a satellite phone for safety reasons, but calls were restricted to Race HQ only, and a once-a-week interview was posted on social media along with photos and video.

This was not enough for Marie, who wanted more direct social media connectivity. The issue came to a head when a WhatsApp message was reported to have been made from Pen Duick shortly after the race start.

An investigation in Cape Town uncovered a broken seal on the bag containing all the personal mobile phones aboard which led to a 72-hour time penalty.

At the time, that did not worry Tabarly unduly. She was focused on winning the race on elapsed time, but at the finish, those lost 72 hours cost Pen Duick IV the opportunity to claim both line and handicap honours.

Pen Duick VI specifications

Design: André Mauric
Build: Naval Shipyard Brest, 1973
LOA: 73ft (22.3m)
Beam: 17ft 5in (5.3m)
Draft: 11ft 2in (3.4m)

The post Passing on the flame: How Marie Tabarly re-wrote history with Pen Duick VI appeared first on Classic Boat Magazine.

The First Whitbread

Standing on the dock in HMS Hornet, Portsmouth (now the Gunwharf Quay shopping centre) on Saturday September 8, 1973, to count the 18-strong Whitbread fleet out, no one fully appreciated – least of all the many young crew members, some of whom had only signed on just days before – the enormity of what they were taking on. 

Yes, Francis Chichester had already rounded the globe alone with one stop followed by Alec Rose (2 stops). Robin Knox-Johnston had become the sole finisher in the 1968/9 Sunday Times Golden Globe Race and Chay Blyth had completed the first west-about solo non-stop circumnavigation two years later. But these were all solo challenges with an average speed of little more than 4 knots. The big question was how full-on racing yachts designed and built to compete in transatlantic or 600-mile events like the Fastnet classic, would hold together over 27,000 miles of open ocean.

Back then, we didn’t have anything like the hourly news feeds that social media now deliver. Indeed, the Royal Naval Sailing Association (RNSA), organisers of those first Whitbread races, encouraged skippers to report their positions 24 hours in arrears so as not to give their competitors listening in on these open conversations, any tactical benefit from their position reports.

It was only nine months later when just 13 of the original number returned to Portsmouth to complete the course, that the full scale of the challenge became clear. Yes, the South African yacht Jacaranda used the first leg simply as a delivery trip back home, but others like Eric Tabarly’s French favourite Pen Duick IV was dismasted (twice), Burton Cutter, the British maxi skippered by Les Williams, which was first to finish the first leg to Cape Town, came close to breaking up in the Southern Ocean, and three lives – Dominique Guillet, Paul Waterhouse, and Bernie Hosking – were lost at sea. Those fatalities alone led to sustained pressure on the organisers to call an end to the event.

Changing Tides

Fifty years on, history of the Whitbread Round the World Race has become a history of ocean racing itself. When it began from Portsmouth back in 1973, no one had raced a fully crewed yacht around the world before, navigation was rudimentary, communications spasmodic, clothing was basic and man-overboard rescue techniques, theoretical.

The event was conceived by sailing publisher Anthony Churchill and publicist Guy Pearse who published their proposals for of a four-leg race around the world during the 1981 Cowes Week regatta. After failing to find sponsorship, the pair handed the race concept over to RNSA which had been approached by the Whitbread brewery with the offer of sponsorship for a major regatta. Admiral Otto Steiner, Vice Commodore, met with Sam Whitbread to draw up the initial plans for the circumnavigation over a Pint in a pub in Old Portsmouth. The overall sponsorship fee agreed was £13,000 – less than a single berth aboard some of the 14 yachts competing 50 years on in the current Ocean Globe Race to commemorate that first adventure. The rest, as they say is history, but this is no stultified story – the race progressed almost out of recognition reflecting developments that have occurred in sailing over four decades. 

The race attracted many of the established sailing names, among them Chay Blyth, who was supported by the British philanthropist ‘Union’ Jack Hayward for a maxi entry, Great Britain II, in the first race. Robin Knox-Johnston co-skippered Heath’s Condor in the second race. French doyen Eric Tabarly competed in three races, sailing the first two in his maxi yacht Pen Duick VI, but never enjoyed the same success as his singlehanded endeavours which started with him winning the 1964 Observer Singlehanded transatlantic Race (OSTAR).

Peter Blake who sailed as a crew member in the first two races, went on to convince New Zealand’s business community to sponsor his later entries. His high-water mark was winning every leg of the 1989/90 Race with the maxi-ketch, Steinlager 2. But by that time, major changes were being proposed, and while the maxis were still planned as the lead class, competitors and sponsors were considering less expensive options.

The Race Gets it’s Own Class: Whitbread 60 Class

In 1991, Whitbread organised a major conference of international designers, engineers, builders and spar makers to formulate the basis for a new 60ft class to produce a totally new breed of faster, safer boats, more exciting to sail and less expensive than their IOR counterparts. It meant that boats from a variety of designers would sail at very much the same speed. As a result, handicapping disappeared and during the latter years of the Whitbread era, the race became more comprehensible. 

The Whitbread 60 class was introduced for the 1993/4 race and made a dramatic entrance, by beating many of the 80ft (24m) maxi-raters on a boat-for-boat basis. The new class had such a great impact both on the race and the sport that the Whitbread 60s became the sole class in what was the last of the Whitbread sponsored races in 1997. This time the boats raced for the Volvo Trophy.

But the focus here is on those first pioneering races and the 50th anniversary event – The Ocean Globe Race, conceived and organised by Australian Don McIntyre. The yachts in the current race are all from that Golden Age of sailing and some like Tracy Edwards’ Maiden, Outlaw, the Baltic 55 formerly known as Equity and Law, the Swan 65 ADC Acutrac skippered by Clare Francis, now named Translated 9, Pen Duick IV, and two other French yachts Neptune and L’Esprit d’Equipe, the latter, winner of the 1985/6 race, are all former Whitbread racers now fully restored for this event.

Back in 1973, the Flat Earth Society still had a voice, and apart from the invention of radio, navigation remained very much as it had been since John Harrison invented the first chronometer in the 1720s that gave seafarers the ability to calculate longitude positions from sun sights for the first time. These OGR sailors are restricted to the same equipment available to their 1973 forebears – sextant, chronometer, and paper charts together with VHF and long-range radios. There is no GPS, chart plotters or radar, and personal items such as watches must be wind-up and music on old fashioned cassette.

1973/4 Whitbread Race

The first race began from Portsmouth September 8th, 1973, with 17 making the start line.

Portsmouth grocer Sir Alec Rose fired the 100-year-old cannon to send the fleet away on the 6,650-mile leg to Cape Town. The Royal Navy’s Nicholson 55 Adventure was in pole position as the gun fired, while further offshore Chay Blyth’s 77ft (23.5m) Great Britain II was to windward of Eric Tabarly’s 73ft (22.3m) Pen Duick VI. Aboard the biggest boat, Les Williams’ 80ft (24.4m) Burton Cutter, her crew were still busy completing the interior joinery as they headed off down the Channel.

Once clear of the Cape Verde Islands, the fleet fanned out in the South Atlantic with Pen Duick VI taking the most westerly route for 25 days until she was dismasted. Burton Cutter skippered Les Williams and George Bryans with Adventure made full use a modern racing yacht’s windward ability to pioneer a new route straight down the Atlantic, rather than follow the traditional Clipper ship route towards Brazil. Remarkably, five weeks out, Bryans’ crew sighted the bigger Burton Cutter four miles ahead. Burton Cutter broke clear and was first to Cape Town, a day ahead of the handicap winner, Adventure, which, in turn, was 3 hours ahead of Great Britain II. Sayula II finished the next day, having taken a trade wind route to claim 2nd on handicap.

Pen Duick VI, with a replacement mast, arrived two days before the second leg started on November 7th. Most boats stayed around 46°S for the traverse of the Southern Ocean where the seas have no equal, building themselves into awesome precipices and cavernous valleys. 12 days out, Paul Waterhouse was lost overboard from the 55ft (16.8m) Tauranga and in the same gale Eddie Hope’s arm was broken on Great Britain II. Four days later Dominique Guillet disappeared from 33 Export. Burton Cutter pulled out early into the second leg when plating in her bow area deformed badly. 

Halfway between Cape Town and Sydney, at 46°S, 90°E, Sayula II capsized, yet despite this, her crew piled on the pressure to finish 5th behind Pen Duick VI, Great Britain II, Roddy Ainslie’s 71ft (21.6m) ketch Second Life and the 57ft (17.4m) Kriter of Jack Grout to win the leg on handicap and take the overall lead.

The previous leader, Adventure, developed a rudder problem on December 2nd and was forced to rely on the trim tab on the back of the keel for her steering and dropped to 3rd overall on corrected time.

Frantic working over the holiday period resulted in 15 boats at the start on December 29th. The 8,370-mile course to Rio included the ‘Old Ogre’, Cape Horn, the sailors’ most feared landmark. Two hundred miles into the leg, Pen Duick VI’s mast toppled again. With great haste and much efficiency, a new one was prepared and stepped in Sydney and the French boat departed again on January 3rd.

Two days after that, Bernie Hosking was tragically lost from Great Britain II. In general however, the Southern Ocean was not so cruel. After two days of calm, Great Britain II was first around the Horn and into Rio, followed by Sayula II, which, with the same place on handicap behind Adventure, retained the overall lead.

Chay Blyth continued to lead on the next leg – the 5,500 miles back to Portsmouth. Burton Cutter, back in the race for the final leg was 2nd home and Sayula II 3rd. But the 4th to finish, Adventure, took the handicap honours on this leg and 2nd overall behind the Mexican Swan 65. Ramón Carlin and his Sayula II crew had sailed their way into the history books.

1977/8 Whitbread Race

These were still pioneering days for ocean racing, and the disparate fleet of 15 yachts from 6 countries, ranging in size between 51 and 77ft (15.5 – 23.5m) reflected this. Two had been designed specifically for the challenge, five were production yachts, three from the same mould as the 1973 winner Sayula, two others heavily built cruising yachts and one, Traité de Rome, the smallest in the fleet, little more than an inshore racer. For many, the event was still an adventure, but having so many yachts entered for a second race, the Whitbread was now established as a four-yearly event in the sporting calendar.

Eric Tabarly was back with his Pen Duick VI (later disqualified for its spent uranium keel) as was Great Britain II, renamed GB II, this time skippered by Rob James with 16 fare-paying charterers as crew. Adventure also raced again as did Les Williams with another maxi-sized yacht, the 77ft (23.5m) Heath’s Condor co-skippered by Robin Knox-Johnston. Peter Blake went with them as a watch leader again. The ketch rig was still the majority choice, its advocates believing that two masts provided a greater safety margin with the bonus of smaller sails to manage. Few at this stage of race evolution saw any performance advantage. Of the three Swan 65s, Pierre Fehlmann’s Disque d’Or and ADC Acutrac skippered by Claire Francis, the first woman to enter the race, were both ketch rigged, and only Kings Legend skippered by Nick Ratcliffe had a single sloop rig. Flyer, designed by Sparkman & Stephens as an improvement on the Swan 65 model, skippered by the little-known Dutchman Cornelis (Conny) van Rietschoten, was another to be ketch rigged.

One major innovation was the experimental carbon mast stepped at the last minute on Heath’s Condor, designed to lessen her pitching movement in a seaway. It carried a 3 per cent rating penalty but failed 3,000 miles out of Portsmouth. An alloy replacement was air-freighted to meet the dismasted vessel in Monrovia, allowing Heath’s Condor to just make it to Cape Town in time for the start of the second stage of the race to Auckland, New Zealand.

This first leg was won by Flyer which not only showed that a modern ketch rig could compete on equal terms against sloop rigged configurations, but that beating into the southeast trade winds was quicker than the traditional clipper ship route skirting the South Atlantic high pressure system.

Heath’s Condor led the fleet into Auckland, despite having a man-overboard incident en route. There was another emergency aboard GB II, when the spinnaker guy wrapped itself around Nick Dunlop’s waist and also trapped the legs of skipper Rob James. When the sail filled, the rope began to squeeze the life out of Dunlop, bursting the blood vessels behind his eyes before the line could be cut. The only assistance available was medical advice received over the radio from the doctor on Heath’s Condor. Mercifully, the two eventually made a full recovery. Others to experience difficulties included Adventure, which broke her spinnaker pole, 33 Export, which suffered a broken boom, and Kings Legend, which sprang a leak in her rudder post. Eric Letronse was washed down the deck of 33 Export and broke his leg badly. 

Flyer, which had finished 45 minutes behind Kings Legend into Auckland, continued to lead the handicap stakes around Cape Horn and back to the finish. She returned in a force 10 gale to secure the handicap trophy. GB II took line honours for the fastest circumnavigation, finishing 10 days inside her own record set four years earlier.

Modern Day Racing

Future races became more and more professional with no place for amateurs. The costs also increased to the point where even multinational sponsors began to waver. From a record entry of 28 yachts in the 1981/2 Whitbread Race, numbers faded to 10 or fewer.  The original Whitbread race has now morphed into The Ocean Race in 2022/3 in which only five multi-million Dollar, foil-borne IMOCA 60s took part. Only one, Team Malizia, completed the course, although due to the scoring system, where completing the course no longer counts for much, came second. 

By contrast, there are 14 entries in the Ocean Globe Race – all secondhand yachts sailed by amateur crews. First into Cape Town in October at the end of leg one, was the Finnish Swan 651 skippered by Jussi Paavoseppä which stole the lead from Marie Tabarly’s Pen Duick IV in a nail-biting finish, ahead of Translated 9 – the current handicap leader, followed by the all-girl crew on Maiden, skippered by Heather Thomas.  

Ocean Globe Race 2023/24 Updates

Here are the latest Ocean Globe Race updates.

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The post Whitbread History: The Legacy of this Round the World Race appeared first on Classic Boat Magazine.

Maiden does it again: Sailing around the world and circling back on history, the all-female crew on Maiden were welcomed home by Tracy Edwards MBE in Cowes at 10:52am (GMT) 16th April, after 41 days at sea!

The weather is unseasonably calm in Cowes today – just what Heather Thomas and her Maiden Ocean Globe Race crew hope will continue through to 05:00 on Monday next week. That’s the deadline they set at 10:52 yesterday for their rivals on the French yacht Triana, some 800 miles behind on the last leg of this global race from Punta del Este, Uruguay to pip them for overall honours.

By contrast, the strong sou’westerly winds that propelled this all-girl crew up the leaderboard during the past week carried them up the Solent with such a flourish to cross the Royal Yacht Squadron finish line yesterday morning to whoops and whistles from a large enthusiastic crowd gathered on the Parada.

For those of us who witnessed Maiden’s previous homecoming at the end of the Whitbread Race back in 1990, it was an emotional re-run, not least for Tracy Edwards who skippered her then, and is now patron to this campaign. Wiping away tears of joy, Tracy said “I’m delighted for the girls. It’s been a tough last leg with these winds. Of course it brings back memories. I know how they are feeling and I’m so proud of what they have achieved.”

Just as Tracy and her Maidens did in 34 years ago in winning two of the Whitbread Race legs and finishing 2^nd in class, Heather and her crew have put up an amazing performance, always ranking in the top half of this 16-strong fleet. They finished 3^rd on leg 1 from Cowes to Cape Town, 4^th on leg 2 to Auckland and 2^nd around Cape Horn to Punta del Este. This was their toughest was the toughest test of them all. Maiden’s engine failed soon after the start, then their water maker broke down – needed to re-hydrate all their freeze dried food, – and then their inverter burned out. Mercifully, the weather gods came to their aid providing plenty of rain showers for them to collect water in buckets.

Heather Thomas said at the finish: “This last leg was probably our worst performance but we all pulled together and saw it through.  There is such a strong bond between us. We’ve achieved our goal of showing what women can do.”

Now she and her crew must wait until the early hours of Monday morning to see if the Triana team can beat the time Maiden has set for them. Its all down to the weather gods and for today at least, they are shining down on Maiden’s gleaming deck.

Follow the race live

• Classic Boat Awards 2024: Photo Gallery
• New May Issue of Classic Boat: Out Now!
• Tabarly Wins McIntyre Ocean Globe Race 2024

The post Maiden Success: Ocean Globe Race All-female Crew appeared first on Classic Boat Magazine.

Tabarly Re-writes History

Her Father, the French sailing doyen Eric Tabarly had two attempts at winning the Whitbread Round the World Race, but was dismasted, not once, but twice during the inaugural race in 1973/4. Then 4-years later, his 73ft ketch rigged PEN DUICK VI, in which he went on to win the Observer Solo Trans-Atlantic Race (OSTAR) in 1976, was outlawed mid-way through the 1977/8 Whitbread for having a keel made of spent uranium an exotic material that had become banned in the interim.

Marie’s Moment

Yet, last night, his daughter Marie stepped out from behind the great man’s shadow by winning the Ocean Globe Race celebrating the 50^th anniversary of that first Whitbread, on elapsed time.

Shouting with joy after PEN DUICK VI crossed the Royal Yacht Squadron finish line at Cowes shortly before midnight, she said. “We did it…We have won in real time… No one can beat us…This was always our aim.”

Passing over the celebratory Champagne, Don McIntyre, the race organiser, drew more cheers, by telling her “There may be more.  Pen Duick could also win the race on handicap. Your nearest rival, the French Swan 53 TRIANA, is some 1,400 miles behind and stuck in no wind. If she doesn’t finish within four days you will have won both elapsed and handicap honours.

Fourth on leg 1 from Southampton to Cape Town, and 2^nd into Auckland, Marie Tabarly and her 10 mixed crew, made the third leg around Cape Horn their own after her closest rival, the Italian Swan 65 TRANSLATED 9 suffered a serious leak and was forced to pull into the Falklands to make repairs.

This final leg from Punta del Este back to Cowes was all Pen Duick. Recovering from a man-overboard incident at the start, Marie Tabarly forged through the fleet, escaped the worst of the Doldrums and skipped around the Azores High to ride a south westerly gale surfing at 23knots at time to chalk up a secession of 200+ mile days across the Bay of Biscay, the Western Approaches and up the English Channel to pull 2-days ahead of their nearest rival, the former Whitbread winning French yacht L’Esprit d’Equipe skippered by Lionel Regnier, still 275 miles astern at 08:00 today.

Ocean Globe Race: Arriving In Cowes

After docking at Trinity Landing close to the Royal Yacht Squadron, Marie spoke with passion about her round-the-world experience. “There were so many stand-out moments. I remember we were going fast, in 55 knots of wind and there were dolphins just jumping out of the waves around us. In 55 knots!  Crazy. I remember racing very closely with TRANSLATED 9 and MAIDEN and being able to see them. Then all the buddy chats, four times a day over the radio. I’m going to miss that. There have been way too many amazing moments.”

Don McIntyre was equally ecstatic: Marie and her crew have achieved a dream and re-written history. Every Ocean Globe Race entrant has a back story, but this one is simply WOW! BRAVO MARIE and your entire team. You have been so inspirational in so many ways.

Follow the rest of race on the OGR live tracker.

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The post Ocean Globe Race Finish: The Tabarly Triumph by Barry Pickthall appeared first on Classic Boat Magazine.

The 12ft wooden Firefly dinghy, Jacaranda, sail No F503 was one of 21 one-design class boats built by Fairey Marine for the 1948 Games, and has been painstakingly restored by Alastair Vines and Dave Nickson. She was found by David Chisholm and Kerry Robson in Norfolk back in 2004 devoid of her rig and many fittings, and remained stored in a garage for the next 20 years. Alastair and Dave took on the task of restoring the Firefly in June 2022 in time to take part in the Uffa Fox 50 celebrations at Cowes later that year.

The two have been maintaining this Firefly ever since for owner Jono Pank, adding more original gear as it is found. She is now equipped with a period Reynolds rotating aluminium mast and boom and cotton sails by Ratsey & Lapthorn, together with her original heavy steel centreplate and fixed rudder, period, cast-iron pulley blocks, deck-mounted mooring cleats and rope-lifting handles found by Alastair and Dave.

The 1948 Olympic singlehander gold medal was won by Danish superstar Paul Elvstrom, then just 20 years old, who went on to win a further three Olympic medals and 20 world championships. The key to his success in Torquay was to recognise that that the Firefly was often overpowered upwind in the blustery conditions experienced during the regatta. So he set up a rope system to pull down the jib when going upwind and sail under mainsail alone, then hoist the jib for the downwind legs. Arthur Macdonald who sailed Jacaranda in those Games finished the series 9th overall with a score line of 10,4,18,3,7,8 & Rtd.

Alastair and Dave plan to show off Jacaranda, their concours d’elegance winner, sailing in Firefly and other classic dinghy events around the country later this season.

Another dinghy at the RYA show to have been unearthed after 50 years stored in the roof of a garage was this 1965 Mirror dinghy, No 35637. Fully restored by Pat Ditton complete with wooden spars, the Firefly dinghy has been converted for cruising with a boom tent, removable bunk boards to cover the cockpit, and a raised fairlead board mounted on the boat’s bluff bow to take the anchor line and hold the oar blades. 

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The post Olympic Firefly: Winner of Concours at RYA Dinghy Show appeared first on Classic Boat Magazine.

About Galiana WithSecure

Galiana WithSecure, a 1970-vintage, yawl-rigged, S&S-designed Swan 55 is the oldest yacht competing in the current Ocean Globe Race. Skippered by Tapio Lehtinen and crewed by young Finnish sailors keen to experience the adventurous golden age of sailing during the 70s and 80s, she is the last design under RORC/CCA rules in a 40-year lineage of Olin Stephens designed ocean racing yawls dating back to his breakthrough 1929 design Dorade.  

Dorade, launched from Minneford’s shipyard, New York in 1930 revolutionised offshore racing, finishing 2nd in that year’s Bermuda Race before going on to win the 1931 Trans-Atlantic Race and Fastnet classic in ’31 and ’33. Between times, she took overall honours in the 1932 Bermuda Race and won the 1936 TransPac – a feat repeated in 2013! 

Previously, Bermuda and Fastnet Races had been won by designs derived largely from fishing schooners and pilot cutters. Dorade by contrast was an ocean-going version of a Six Meter, the class in which Olin and his brother Rod Stephens had first learned to race and later design. 

Tapio has been a big Olin Stephens fan since his junior sailing days and always thought that the Swan 55 yawl remains the most beautiful and classiest boat Nautor has ever built. 

The Finnish skipper recalls, “I have loved the classic Six Meters since my childhood and have owned my S&S designed May Be IV for almost 4 decades. Dorade has always been a sacred yacht in my eyes and one of my dream boats. “

When Lehtinen, who competed in both the 2018 and 2022 Gold Globe races with his S&S designed Gaia 36, Asteria, a long-keeled forerunner to the Nautor Swan 36, learned from Race founder Don McIntyre that he was planning a retro fully crewed race to mark the Whitbread anniversary, The Finn realised he could fulfil two dreams in one – re-sailing the Whitbread, (he completed the 1981/2 Whitbread aboard  the Baltic 51 Skopbank of Finland) and owning a Swan 55 yawl.

“When I bought Galiana in 2020, I decided to sail her as much as possible before starting to make her ready for the OGR. Two seasons later I had my list of improvements”.

Preparing Galiana to race

Bunks

All bunks are now aligned with the keel, so your head is never lower than your feet regardless of the tack. The open saloon without any bunks now, has two sea bunks on both sides plus two settee berths in the middle – making the saloon deliberately cramped to avoid anyone falling across the boat. 

Dry interior

Keeping the interior as dry as possible was achieved by removing the companionway leading from the cockpit to the aft cabin, and building a new dodger and hatchway modelled on the 1930 S&S yawls Comet and Manitou (JFK’s boat during his presidential years) that now leads from the forward end of the centre cockpit down to a wet room amidships.

Having read all the books about S&S designs and studied their ‘60s era 50-60 ft racing yachts, I know that a number had their companionway leading from the top of the coach roof into the main saloon. I also remember the German team, who raced the Swan 55 sloop Walross III Berlin in the ‘81 Whitbread Race complaining that the whole boat (especially the aft cabin) being soaking wet during the Southern Ocean legs. Now the aft cabin is closed off with a sliding door and stays dry.

Nav station

Galiana’s original aft cabin layout included a transverse double bunk under the cockpit. This has made way for our nav station with a gimbled chart table complete with a leather Harley Davidson saddle which has proved itself to be a great feature during the first leg of the race. During the 1981 Race, I had the honour of being shown around Pen Duick VI by Eric Tabarly. He too had a gimballed tables and Harley Davison seat. My plan is to invite his daughter Marie on board to show her Galiana’s nav station – and ask her to sign her father’s book on offshore racing for me. Hopefully she gets out of hospital before we leave Cape Town. (she was bitten by a seal when attempting to hop over one on the dock…)

Sea berths

The cabin now has two bunks set higher than original, and now aligned with the keel. At 60cm wide, they make great sea berths, but the starboard one can be opened into a small double bunk when in port – I’m single, but always optimist!

The ‘boiler room’

The central space where the nav table used to be, is now the ‘boiler room’. This wet area also houses all the electronics which are placed close to the centreline to limit the likelihood of them getting wet in the event of a knock down or roll over. 

This room also houses the water maker, two Safire diesel hot air heaters, and diesel generator. One popular feature is the drying locker for foul weather gear fitted with heated steel ‘organ’ pipes to dry wet boots, hats and gloves. There’s also a ‘liars’ bench, where crew can sit in their wet gear, having a cuppa, while telling yarns about the last port of call. We also fitted a door between this wet room and aft toilet so that crew can take a leak without getting the rest of the interior. wet. Note: It is forbidden to pee over the side on Galiana – We are a safe boat– not to say civilised!

Galiana: Main saloon

One detail important to me is the table, which came from Asteria, made by Cantiere Benello in Livorno in 1965 to S&S drawings. I had left the table ashore during the GGR races because of the lack of space, Likewise Galiana’s original table is now too big, but this sentimental piece of Asteria (which sank shortly after rounding the Cape of Good Hope) is with me. Two steel tubes were installed into the table from the floors up to the deck to make the table sturdy. Two more run longitudinally under the deck to give a good handhold for crew climbing in and out of the upper sea bunks.

The interior has proved to be very safe and functional. Every berth is 60 cm wide which in my opinion, is the most comfortable, with lee cloths stopping you from rolling from side to side…or out of the bunk. Some of the berths can be opened wider when in port. Another piece of nostalgia is the 1940s Paul E Luke solid fuel soap stone stove we have installed in the saloon. These were standard features aboard classy American cruising yachts cruising in the cool waters around Maine. Production ceased decades ago, but a friend found one in a second-hand chandlery in Texas. And we had it shipped over just in case we run out of diesel fuel during the cold Southern Ocean legs.

Unwanted privacy

I had planned to keep the cabin doors on the forward quarters around the mast to give the girls within our crew some measure of privacy, but the first thing they did was to take them out, insisting that they did not want preferable treatment.  At least their decision helped lighten ship!

Dismasted in the Fastnet

Our participation in the OGR was put at risk six weeks before the start when our new main mast came crashing down 10 hours into the stormy Fastnet Race. This led to a frantic rig replacement project undertaken by Marine Rigging Services in Gosport who upgraded all the rigging terminals to fully articulating connectors similar to those pioneered by Cornelis van Rietschoten for his 1981/2 race winning maxi Flyer. To motivate the task force, I reminded them how Simon le Bon’s Whitbread maxi Drum made it to the start of the 1985 Whitbread after losing her keel and capsizing also in the Fastnet. They made it…and thankfully, so did we.

Galiana WithSecure

Designed S&S (Swan 55 yawl)

Built Nautor Swan, 1970

LOA 55ft 3in (16.8m)

LWL 38ft 6in (11.7m)

Draught 8ft (2.4m)

Disp 20.6 tonnes

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The post Oldest Ocean Globe Race Boat: Olin Stephens’ Galiana appeared first on Classic Boat Magazine.

Author Barry Pickthall has completed the Round the Island Race many times in his wooden Rhodes 6-Tonner Sea Jay.

This year, as with every year, there will be great camaraderie among crews and great competition. If you have not sailed in the Round the Island Race before and have a classic yacht of any kind, I can only recommend it. Many classic yachts have won the race on corrected time, but for the vast majority, it is the taking part that counts. There will always be others around you, with similar boats or levels of experience, to provide some gentle competition.

Round the Island Race start

With so many boats taking part, the start can seem daunting, but the fleet is split up into manageable classes and it doesn’t matter if you are late crossing the line. You gain far more from finding clear air and making most of the strong tidal stream. At the start, this is always running westward, with the greatest current in the deepest channel between Prince Consort buoy and Gurnard, giving you a 2-3 knot advantage over those starting further out in the Solent.

Round the Island Race – quickest route

Being diamond shaped, the quickest route around the Island is invariably the shortest, so stay on the rhumb line when the stream is favourable. If it is an upwind start, be prepared to avoid yachts on port tack; there is a good chance that either they do not know the rules or are stressed and will do something unpredictable. Far better to duck a transom or two rather than force your right of way if this helps you stay in fastest tide.

Navigating the Hurst Narrows

At Hurst Narrows, the tidal stream can push Sea Jay along at 10 knots or more, so here more than anywhere, it’s important to stay in this fast moving conveyor belt of water.

Round the Island Race – The Needles

At the Needles, the tide kindly turns eastward, and the big question everyone asks is ‘inside or outside the wreck’? Sea Jay draws only 4ft, so there is only one answer, for the inside short cut allows us to overtake a good many boats. For us, it is not the wreck of the Varvassi, but Goose Rock just NW of the lighthouse and the ledge right under the lighthouse that raises our blood pressure. There is always someone ahead running the same gauntlet, so we tend to stay directly on their track ready to change course should they crash! If you have doubts, then round outside of the wreck, giving it a wide berth.

Scratchells to St Catherine’s Point

Once round the Needles there is normally still a bit of foul tide running westward and the temptation in light winds is to get right in to Scratchells Bay. But beware: it can be difficult to get out, since the cliffs are massive and what wind there is leaves the surface several hundred meters offshore and climbs over the chalk and can leave you becalmed. Our tried and tested tactic is to stay on the rhumb line to St Catherine’s Point, the halfway mark, where you can expect some wind acceleration and increase in wave height. The waters are normally flatter 200m offshore so this is a good place to plan a gybe,

Shanklin Bay

If the winds are westerly, don’t get suckered into Shanklin Bay but stay on the rhumb line to Bembridge Ledge. If the wind is easterly then there is often more pressure south of the rhumb line where the tidal stream is also more favourable.

Bembridge Ledge

When approaching Bembridge Ledge buoy, there is often acceleration in the wind so a tight rounding is important to secure a good lane away from the mark. Invariably, the tide is about to turn at this point but with a westerly breeze, keep to the rhumb line for it is not until approaching the Forts that the tide begins to have a big effect, and good transit will avoid you being pushed down tide.

Shallows of Ryde sands

You are now sailing against the tide so working the shallow waters off Ryde Sands is key, taking care to avoid sailing inside the sand bar hook. These sands always catch out several crews who must then sit out waiting for the waters to rise and miss dinner. Once beyond this channel at the eastern end of the Sands, work the shallows, watching the echo sounder. We usually scrape the bottom a couple of times here, so the crew have to be ready for some quick tacking.

Round the Island Race – home straight

Now on the home straight, it is a case of continuing to play the shallows, keeping clear of wind shadows inshore and the rocks that stretch from Norris Castle along that shoreline. With two finish lines set, check which one your class must pass through, record your finish time and the sail numbers of the yacht ahead and astern and report these by mobile phone to the race HQ.

Once ashore, remember to submit your declaration, claim your pewter mug, relax in one of the many bars in town and compare the story of your race with others.

It is as simple as that – Good luck!

The History Racing Around the Island

The first race took place in 1931 with 25 entries and it was indeed one of the smaller boats which won. Take a look at the history of the racing around the Isle of Wight.

Enter Now

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The post How to Win the Round the Island Race: Your Race Guide appeared first on Classic Boat Magazine.

He was my boyhood hero. I collected all his books, and as a cub reporter working for Yachts & Yachting magazine back in the early 1970s, I had the great privilege to meet the man. It was one of those lazy days during Cowes Week when what little wind there was continually boxed the compass and brought mayhem to the racing schedule. Too doddery by then to continue his usual role as sailing master to the Royal Family, Uffa Fox still had the mark of mischief that coloured so much of his life. Wearing nothing more than a night shirt, cap and carrying a candle he greeted Prince Charles back to the dock in the early evening light with “What kept you all this time?”

Uffa was one of the most significant 20^th-century characters within the sport, and certainly the most innovative, particularly in the field of dinghy and keelboat racing. He was one of the first to master the concept for a planing hull, the first to develop a reliable rotating mast, and the first to embrace mass-production techniques. Many of his designs have stayed the test of time: boats like the Firefly, Albacore, Flying Fifteen and National 18 continue to enjoy active class status, and many others have been brought out of garages, lofts and the Cowes Maritime Museum for display on Cowes Parade during the UF50 regatta.

One of his most innovative designs was the International 14 Avenger designed in 1928. She proved far ahead of her time, winning 52 of her 57 race starts, including the coveted Prince of Wales Cup. Uffa also sailed her three-up in stormy conditions 100 miles across the English Channel in 27 hours to race against the French fleet in Le Havre. They won, then sailed home again in 37 hours.

Avenger set a pattern for many years to come. She had a fine bow with prominent vee sections that developed into a flat floor aft. Carvel built, she was narrow, with a beam of just 4ft 8in (1.4m), narrowing to 3ft (0.9m) at the transom.

Her mast was also an advance. Up until that time, spars had been limited to 15ft 6in (4.8m) in order to fit inside a standard goods wagon. The Int 14 hull was the largest that could be sent by train – which dinghy sailors did in those days to compete in other parts of the UK, for 6 Shillings anywhere in England. It had been these size restrictions that had prevented the use of a bermudan rig. Uffa overcame this by producing a jointed mast similar in principle to a fishing rod, with the top mast fitting into a metal sleeve – a concept revived many years later with the Laser.

Avenger’s real advantage was her ability to plane. While other Int 14s could do so on occasions, Avenger would pick up her skirts and fly across the waves at the slightest provocation, and on the wind, she was just as efficient.

Was Avenger the first planing dinghy? Almost certainly not, but she did it better than most and set a design trend that was followed by other great designers like Ian Proctor, Jack Holt and Peter Milne.

Another design that marked Uffa’s career was the 12ft (3.7m) Firefly. Launched in 1946 to provide budget boating immediately after the war, the first Fireflys, named after Sir Richard Fairey’s famous fighter plane, were priced at £56 in kit form or £65 complete. That was £30 less than a National 12, and a third the price of an International 14. The boat used build techniques developed by the Fairey Aviation Co to produce wooden airframes for the Mosquito bomber which Charles Currey, then an innovative young sailor and dinghy builder, newly demobbed from the Navy, adapted to produce the world’s first mass-produced one-design dinghy.

The idea was sparked at the tail end of the war when Fairey Aviation was looking to diversify production at their Hamble facility to provide peacetime employment. Sir Richard, Colin Chichester-Smith, then chief executive, and Alan Vines, Fairey’s Chief Engineer, were all keen International 14 sailors, and the idea of using Fairey’s revolutionary hot-pressure moulding system to mass-produce lightweight dinghies, had immediate appeal. Fox had already built up a close working relationship with the company during the war, designing among other things an airborne lifeboat that could be dropped from aircraft to aid crews who had ditched into the sea.

Just prior to hostilities, Uffa had been commissioned to design a 12ft (3.7m) carvel sailing dinghy for the Oxford and Cambridge Sailing Society that he had dubbed the Sea Swallow. The war had brought a halt to the project, and when he learned that Fairey was looking for a 12ft sailing dinghy, he simply scratched out the name Sea Swallow from the plans and replaced it with Firefly.

Needing someone to run the operation, Colin Chichester Smith fired off a letter to fellow 14 sailor and boatbuilder Charles Currey, encouraging him to resign from the Navy by guaranteeing him a job for two years. For Charles, it turned into a lifetime’s work. He arrived at Fairey’s then top-secret aircraft factory spread out across the marshes at the entrance to the River Hamble, on Friday 3 May, and worked through the night to complete the first hull. The following day, he was joined by Uffa for a first test sail. Ignominiously the alloy mast broke and crashed down, but undaunted, Currey repaired the spar with a wooden section pushed up at the base and set off the following day to race the boat with Nora Chichester-Smith against the latest National 12 class dinghies for the Henley Challenge Cup – and won.

The class became a spawning ground for many of Britain’s top sailors. Stewart Morris, Charles Currey and his sons Alastair and Gordon, Bruce Banks, Rodney Pattisson, Robin Judah, the Jardine Brothers, John Maynard, John Oakeley and of course Mimie Currey, Charles’ daughter who remains the only female to have won the Sir Richard Fairey Points championship trophy… all cut their teeth in this highly adaptable design which can be sailed as a single hander, raced two up, or used with a cut-down rig as a junior trainer.

Some 200 boats were built in the first year of production, many of them bought for recreational sailing by colleges and for Britain’s military bases abroad. The biggest breakthrough came with the boat’s nomination as the single-hander class at the 1948 Olympics held in Torquay. By all accounts, it was a very windy regatta and the boat proved something of a handful to all but the 19-year-old Danish sailor Paul Elvstrom, who won the gold medal by lowering the jib when sailing to windward in the strong conditions, and re setting it on the reaches.

Uffa Fox could turn his hand, and mind, to designing and building almost anything. One example is an innovative rocking cot in the form of a miniature clinker dinghy he made to mark the birth Max Aitken’s daughter Laura, now on display at the Max Aitken museum in Cowes High Street. Just before the outset of hostilities in 1943, he foresaw the need for an airborne sailing lifeboat to be dropped from an aircraft to rescue downed aircrew in the sea.

From there came Britannia, the rowing boat used by John Fairfax to row solo across the Atlantic in 1969 which was self-righting, self-bailing and had a shelter to sleep under. In his latter years, he developed the concept further with Britannia II, used by Fairfax and Sylvia Cook to row across the Pacific in 1971/2, which remains the basis for the modern ocean rowing boats today.

Always one to steer his own course, Fox showed his distaste for authority from an early age. As a 23-year-old Scout leader, he set out for the western Solent with a crew of nine young Sea Scouts in a 27ft (8.2m) open whaler on a weekend camping adventure. He decided to extend the itinerary to cross the Channel and row up the Seine towards Paris, returning the same way 12 days later. They were met by the Coastguard, and understandably perhaps, Uffa was relieved of his leadership role within the troop.

Uffa had no real interest in money – other than to avoid paying whenever possible. At one point, his boatyard and drawing office was based in an old chain ferry on the West Cowes side of the river. Letters, especially formal looking ones, were invariably left unopened until the bailiffs arrived to serve notice on his rate arrears. Undaunted, Fox simply slipped mooring lines and had the ferry towed across to East Cowes, a separate rating district, and continued as before.

Cliff Norbury, a long-term compatriot of Ian Proctor, tells a wonderful story when Uffa joined a group of 12ft National sailors crossing the Channel by ferry to race in a French regatta. Word got round that Fox was short of cash and knowing perhaps how hard it might be to recoup any loans, the group gave him a wide berth. During the regatta, Uffa was not to be seen until the ferry return home. There on his arm was a young French woman, and despite he not speaking any French, nor she English, they lived happily together for many years.

Photographer Eileen Ramsay recalls his passionate side in her book Queen of Yachting Photography. “I was commissioned to photograph Uffa for a book cover and decided to picture him overlooking Cowes Roads from his terrace roof garden. I don’t know how many bedrooms he had in that house, but he tried to push me into each and every one of them. In the end, I had to tell him very firmly, ‘I’m here to take your portrait and think we should get on with it!’ Both he and Max Aitken were notorious lotharios, and between them got up to all sorts of mischief.”

To mark the wedding of the Queen to Prince Philip, the people of Cowes presented the Royal couple with the Flying Fifteen keelboat Coweslip. It led to a lifelong friendship with the designer, who looked after the boat and raced with Philip during successive Cowes Weeks during the 1950s and ‘60s. Fox, always the life and soul at a party, reputedly gave Queen Elizabeth a playful slap on the bottom when following her up the gangway steps to board HMS Britannia at the end of a day sailing, telling her “Hurry up Ma’am, or we will be late for dinner!”

Perhaps the most enduring and endearing memorial to Uffa’s lifelong sense of fun must be the annual seaside cricket match held at low tide on the Bramble Bank every year. He was one of the founders and the game is marked around the world as one of England’s greatest eccentricities – much like the man himself.

UF50 – A Sailing Festival to Celebrate the Legacy of Uffa Fox 50 Years On

This article first appeared in the August 2022 issue of Classic Boat magazine – try a single issue here.

The post Uffa Fox: reflections on a great sailing character, by Barry Pickthall appeared first on Classic Boat Magazine.