The whole hull; whole boat photos
Seeing the hull truth…
Classic Boat/National Historic Ships Photo of the Year
Recently I presented the Classic Boat Award in the National Historic Ships UK photographic competition.
This is an annual competition for amateur and pro shooters, with a range of categories unsurprisingly all themed around the nautical. There is one big difference compared to other competitions – the winner doesn’t take home the money. This, in an admirable move rare for our times, is given to a historic boat of the winner’s choice. The winner gets other stuff, including a Classic Boat subscription, so everyone goes home happy.
The result is a visually stunning celebration of the sea, of classic boats and of the traditional maritime industry, which just might inspire onlookers to get involved and help crew/repair/maintain/skipper/pay for the UK’s important maritime heritage. Sadly, with Government cuts ever tighter, the future of the competition is in doubt. Sponsors, please step forward.
It was a tough year for us judges – I’m joined by broadcaster and fellow marine journalist Tracey Clarke, by long-time Beken photographer and now freelance Peter Mumford (he knows a bit about photography), David Newberry (also a member of NHS’s council of experts), Jock Wishart (he rowed to the North Pole, for Pete’s sake), and director of the Buckler’s Hard Maritime Museum Mary Montagu-Scott (races Scows and owns a Crabber yawl, Faithful).
A very fair and genial bunch, who managed to remain civil even when things got tight.
In the Classic Boat category, things got very tight. It came down to two images that couldn’t have been more different.
The first was taken on the shore of Mersea Island in Essex, 0755hrs on a freezing January morning earlier this year. Amateur photographer Shaun Mills set up his tripod on a steep bank, with its legs in the water, pulled his hat down even further over his ears, and waited. It was grey, but he knew what was coming.
Using a one-second exposure, which shows how calm it was that morning, Shaun managed to get the shot just as the sun rose over the horizon. The grey turned to the extraordinary scene you can see above. Minutes later, he said, the conditions were different and multiple photos from the same sequence were binned. This is the one that worked. It’s a photo that wouldn’t look out of place in the Turner room of the National Gallery.
So did we have a winner?
Yasmin Steel, of Melbourne, Australia, was five days out of Tristan da Cunha on a trans-ocean voyage on the tall ship Europa. A series of storm fronts had passed through, hurricane force winds battering the rig and sending waves roaring past the ship’s tall hull. Pretty terrifying stuff, but with blue skies overhead, Yasmin knew it was time to get the camera out.
Clipped on, and I hope with one freezing hand for the rail, she spent most of the day outside, taking a series of shots that will either persuade you to go to sea tomorrow, or put you off the idea forever. And as you can see in the shot at the top of the page, she’s even managed to keep the horizon straight! It’s a show-stopper.
We’ve plastered it over two full pages in the December issue of Classic Boat, on sale Nov 2 in the UK, and we made it our overall winner. (Yasmin took her shot with a Canon Mark11 body and the lens was 16-35mm, with 2.8 Canon Zoom.)
Meanwhile we felt second place wasn’t good enough for Shaun’s magical early-morning sunrise, so to give it the recognition it’s due, we created a new prize, the Judges’ Specially Commended Award. (Camera: Canon EOS 760d. Lens: Canon EF 24-70mm f/4 L IS USM. ISO: 100. Shutter Speed: 1/10 sec @ f / 4.5. Focal length: 24mm).
Two very different shots – and where would you rather be, in Shaun’s scene or in Yasmin’s?
Here are all the winners of the competition.
http://www.nationalhistoricships.org.uk/pages/photography-competition.html
The Moitessier myth
Moitessier would have won the Golden Globe? Barry Pickthall tackles this persistent myth in our current issue
WoodenBoat Show 2024: Exciting updates from New England yards
The Classic Boat team has just returned from a four-day road trip of Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island, finishing their trip at the huge, annual WoodenBoat Show in Mystic, Connecticut.
We visited seven boatyards and found wonders that included a 100ft Trumpy motor yacht in complete rebuild; original Herreshoff blocks being made in a home basement; brand-new catboats on a beautiful pond, stays whispering in a summer breeze; a ‘canvas guy’ who described what it was like to do ALL the canvas work on the 185ft schooner Adix; silent, dark warehouses stuffed full of yachts by Herreshoff, Burgess and more; a sail loft that makes parachutes for weather gear (and sails!); two perfect, just-launched Concordia yawls sitting on a river jetty with the world’s oceans ahead of them; an incredible sport fisher in rebuild… too much to list here!
The photo shows Dave Snediker, of Snediker Yacht Restorations, pictured at the WoodenBoat Show. The yard is in charge of the ongoing restoration to the 1905 gaff cutter Doris, the largest all-wooden vessel ever built at Herreshoff Mfg.
Dave looks remarkably cheerful and relaxed for a man with that sort of job on! But, as we discovered, there’s still plenty of the ‘can do’ attitude over on that side of the pond. And the sun was shining… Read more in a future issue of Classic Boat magazine.
CB Awards 2017 – the shortlist is in
The shortlist for our 2017 Awards has now been completed, for publication in our next (February) issue.
Book review: A Tide for Drowning
Sailing writer Dick Durham has published his first novel.
Before he wrote for Classic Boat and Yachting Monthly, Dick was a successful tabloid reporter, in the days when tabloids were read by millions of people across the country daily. It would have been no surprise if his first novel drew heavily on his Fleet Street adventures. But A Tide for Drowning is something quite different.
The opening scene is as macabre as could be – a crucifixion out on the Essex mud flats. From there on in things get steadily darker, but it’s a gripping and amusing tale. Dick enjoys those parts of London where high life meets low life (perhaps that is something he’s borrowed from his Fleet Street days) and of course he enjoys the east coast, where he has sailed all his life.
A Tide for Drowning plays out with these backdrops, Mayfair and the mud flats, where the tide goes out for miles, leaving a deserted expanse where no soul ventures. Dick makes this mesmeric area as eerie as it’s ever been in print.
On the way we have a fast-paced narrative with a dose of sauciness and much pithy commentary on modern life.
Down Channel it certainly isn’t. But if you want a Rankinesque page-turner with a denouement worthy of Hitchcock, A Tide for Drowning should be on your list of must-reads this spring.
Available on Amazon
Building a galleon
This LEGO Ideas: Ship in a Bottle (with cork and seal) features a multitude of traditional fittings including gimballed compass, cannon, crow’s nest, raised aft deck, printed sails and flag. It’s based on a wooden tall ship model. The recommended age range is around 12 years old but a budding boatbuilder I know, aged 7, did it in two rainy weekends.
Price £69.99 – shop.lego.com
Panerai Transat Classique blog
I’ve spent the past week at the start of the Panerai Transat Classique in Lanzarote.
Race HQ is the three-year-old Marina Lanzarote in Arrecife, well protected from any ocean swell and overlooked by a dramatic panorama of several volcanoes. It certainly beats the high rise apartment blocks at your average UK marina.
Nine classic boats, most from France and Italy, gradually arrived here over the last few months for the race across the Atlantic and on Tuesday afternoon we waved them off towards Christophe Harbour on St Kitts in the Caribbean.
Nobody wants to start a transat in a blow and Lanzarote served up calm seas and glorious January sunshine as the crews sailed upwind over the start line in 8 knots of wind, then rounded a mark and set spinnakers, heading west on a voyage that for many of those taking part has been a lifetime dream.
It’s a smaller fleet than previous editions of this three-yearly race, but what a fascinating collection of boats and sailors is taking part.
Grabbing headlines are two sailing stars from different generations. In the 1980s and 1990s Philippe Monnet broke every offshore record in sight, often sailing solo on the latest big multihulls, including a famous circumnavigation against the winds and currents in 2000. He is here on his yacht Lys, built to an Olin Stephens design in 1955 at Sangermani. At a fairly lively Mount Gay Rum party on the pontoons two nights before the off, Philippe told me his real racing days are over and this time he is sailing ‘for fun’ with childhood friends from the Alps. They had an agonising last-minute delay due to repairs and had to wait on the dock while the others were casting off.
They eventually left six hours behind, but by then, cruelly, the wind had dropped to almost nothing. It may be a day or two before they catch up, but given Lys’ speed and Philippe’s experience, they are unlikely to be last into St Kitts.
Another well-known name is Alex Pella, Spain’s most successful offshore sailor, fresh from a record-breaking Hong Kong to London tea route run on the MOD70 Maserati – 36 days with an average speed of around 35 knots.
Alex will be getting used to a somewhat slower life on the classic yacht Stiren, but Stiren won the first edition of the Panerai Transat Classique and is tipped to do so again. I joined them for a preparation sail off Lanzarote three days ago, when the boat went beautifully in a big swell. One couldn’t help thinking of the work of one Mr O. Stephens, but Stiren‘s crew are well prepared and strong. Some are professional, some amateurs, an interesting mix.
Elsewhere this race has thrown up some lovely stories, including two former merchant navy captains, Philippe Thurneyssen and Noel Racine, who trained together as young men and are now sailing together on the Sparkman & Stephens yawl Hilaria. Noel is a well-known name in the modern racing world, where he has amassed many racing gongs in his JPK 10.10 Foggy Dew, including a second place in the 2017 Fastnet.
On the 1968 Maas design, Bryell, we met the race’s oldest competitor, one Alain Cardonnet, 73, from Paris, who has been dreaming of doing this since he was a boy. “With a bit of luck we should not miss America,” he said with a customary smile before casting off their lines.
Also on Bryell is Frederique Weygand, one of four women in the race. Frederique is a sculptor from the Loire who has worked on restorations of some of the valley’s châteaux. She said: “I’m looking forward to a big break! For me it’s a personal challenge – how I will react with the people, the weather, the boat. I think I will learn a lot about myself, about navigation, about the sea. It wasn’t my dream to do this, but when [owner of the boat] Jerome asked me I couldn’t refuse.”
Glen-Mael, a tweaky race boat built for the One-Ton Cup in 1973, looks like being quite a wet transatlantic ride, but she proved her mettle with a fast start and her crew were quick with the spinnaker. They will be crossing in some style, as owner Jean-Philippe Gervais works in the French wine industry and has packed the bilges with fine Burgundy wines. There will be a tasting on board every day, during which the crew will try to compare that day’s wine with a famous classic yacht. Who wouldn’t want to join them?
Among the oldest boats in the race are two dating from 1936. One is Coch y Bondhu (‘red and black’ in gaelic), a 17-ton Gauntlet that has already sailed 2,400 miles from Rimini to reach Lanzarote. The boat drew admiring glances from all, having been restored in Rimini, overseen by her timber merchant owner, Paulo Zangheri. Paulo has been told the boat was at Dunkirk but has been unable to verify this. Can anyone help?
The other boat from 1936 is the handsome Fife, Eilean, owned by race sponsor Panerai and kept in top condition by her professional, mostly Italian crew. They Italians showed their style on the dancefloor, too, at a crew dinner at Lanzarote’s modern art museum on the weekend. The race organisers keep their sailors well entertained in the week prior to departure.
Dwarfing all the boats entered is Xarifa, the biggest, at 50m, and oldest boat in the race, dating from 1927, when she was built in the Solent, and now refitted in the most luxurious manner and crewed by a team of nine, catering for owner and guests. Xarifa needs wind to get going but once her skipper Diego finds it, she’ll cream her way to the Caribbean at a steady 10 knots, the guests’ glasses of Spanish rosé barely ruffled.
Interestingly, however, Diego was the only skipper to chose a northerly route out through the Canaries. Most went directly south in search of the trades, while Xarifa sailed north west on a real flyer.
I wonder if Diego has had an eye on the Golden Globe Race, where leader Jean Luc Van Den Heede has been stuck in the Doldrums just south west of the Canaries, reporting: “I am in a very difficult area where normally the trade winds are well established in January. I can tell you that they are not established at all.”
As Transat Classique race officer Francois Seruzier, who rates each yacht on the JCH formula, said, the Panerai Transat Classique is gentlemanly racing, but it will be fascinating to see how these hugely varied classic boats perform against each other over the next 3,000 miles.
Follow them at paneraitransatclassique.com
Laminates and cotton
Few issues are so divisive in the classic world as modern sails on wooden rigs. On page 76 of our next (August 2016) issue we have David Murrin, Commodore of the British Classic Yacht Club, who relishes the performance enhancement he gets by fitting his 1955 Laurent Giles sloop Cetewayo with the very latest laminates.
Credit: Flypictures
On page 42 of the same issue we have Greg Powlesland, who has gone to some lengths to fit out his 1920 Nicholson gaffer Patna with cotton sails. (Interestingly, Greg’s new cotton is said to be rot-resistant and relatively stretch-resistant too. Could we see a cotton revival?)
People get pretty worked up about what is classic and what isn’t, but our Letter of the Month in the same issue calls for less snobbery when it comes to vintage yacht fit-out. David and Greg merely represent two ends of the same scene. The progressives and the purists will always have a lively debate, but they both have a place, making the classic world more enduring and more interesting.
The August issue of Classic Boat is published on July 1 in the UK. You can buy a single digital issue of Classic Boat here.
