no question of selling the family’s beloved boat and, years later, when major work was needed, Lillerut sold the family home rather than get rid of Stavanger. It was a profound experience for the boy, who became a boat designer and surveyor – specialising in Colin Archers – and co-founded the Risør Wooden Boat Festival in 1979. Like his parents, he resisted the temptation to alter the boat and sailed her again to the Caribbean in 1986-87. By the mid-1990s, however, the demands of looking after an old wooden boat were beginning to take their toll. “The NSSR museum in Horten had asked me about buying Stavanger a couple of years before Christiania sank,” remembers Jeppe. “They asked me about four times, but I refused as it was hard to part with the boat. Eventually, I had to consider their offer, as it is a major job looking after such a boat. When Christiania sank, I felt it was time to get one of these boats on land and, since Stavanger is the most original one, it would be the right boat to become a museum. I discussed this with my mother, and she agreed. If we had to sell one day, it would be better to have the boat in a museum, rather than have someone else sailing around in our boat and maybe not treating her well.” Stavanger was bought by the NSSR in September 1997, and in 2000-2002 underwent a gradual restoration programme at Moen Trebåtbyggeri in Risør to reverse any changes that had been made during her time as a yacht. “The hull was in pretty good shape,” says Johan. “If we were going to keep sailing her, we
would have changed more, but with Stavanger the perspective is the other way: we don’t want to change anything if we don’t absolutely have to.” Below decks, the primus stove was removed and the wood-burning stove in the galley returned to its cooking role, while the heads was replaced by a traditional ‘Little Siri’ – or wooden bucket. Even the paintwork was replicated exactly as original, thanks to a painstaking study by the Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research. The work received an official stamp of approval in 2003, when Norway’s National Directorate for Cultural Heritage declared Stavanger a historic vessel, a status granted to fewer than 200 boats.
ROVING AMBASSADOR
Since then, Johan and his crew of Colin Archer aficionados and/or NSSR employees have sailed the boat extensively around Norway, acting as a roaming ambassador for the NSSR. And he has seen plenty of evidence to validate the NSSR’s claim that Stavanger was “perhaps the best [sailer] that Colin Archer ever built for us”. During racing at the Risør Wooden Boat Festival, she overtook several sister ships, despite her smaller sails. Johan says she is noticeably more manoeuvrable and lighter on the helm than other redningskøyter he has sailed – partly, he suggests, because she is sailing under her original configuration, without the weight of an engine or the drag of a prop. And, because the rudder hasn’t got a hole chopped into it for the prop, it can be a
STAVANGER DESIGNED
Colin Archer
BUILT 1901
LENGTH OVERALL 47ft 1in (14.4m)
LENGTH WATERLINE 41ft
(12.5m) BEAM
15ft 3in (4.7m)
DRAUGHT 7ft 8in (2.4m)
SAIL AREA 1,184sqft (110m2
)
CLASSIC BOAT MAY 2012
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