A man at ease


Comedian Griff Rhys Jones is a longtime classic yachting man, his elegant 78-year-old Sparkman & Stephens yawl Argyll being a regular sight on the Med regatta circuit – where our own global (and at times equally comedic) celebrity classics columnist Dan Houston is often to be found dodging the paps aboard her


Griff Rhys Jones has sailed and raced his beautiful 1946 S&S inboard yawl Argyll in the Mediterranean and northern waters for more than a decade. And a memorable moment for me was being in a race against Argyll at Saint-Tropez, while sailing on


58 SEAHORSE


another slightly older S&S yawl called Skylark (1937). She is now owned by Sir Jim Ratcliffe of Ineos Britannia fame, but at the time was owned by Tara Getty. And yeah, phew! I know I shouldn’t drop names – Prince Philip told me that, but here it’s just for context, right? This was in 2011 for the inaugural race


of the Bluebird Cup, Tara Getty’s yacht- on-yacht challenge race which has run at Les Voiles de Saint-Tropez ever since. And it was Griff who won it that year. For context on the boats, it’s worth


reminding ourselves of their provenance. The inboard yawls designed by Olin Stephens are often called the daughters of Dorade. Olin designed her, arguably his most famous yacht, at 52ft in 1929 when he was just 21. She launched in New York in 1930, and had come second in the Bermuda Race that year. Then, with Olin as skipper again, and now at the ripe old age of 23, she won both the Transatlantic and the Fastnet Race in 1931. America was so pleased with Olin and his crew, which included his brother Rod, that they were given a ticker- tape parade in New York on their return. They were the astronauts of their era. Sailing or owning an inboard yawl like


Dorade became a different kind of wet- dream for many a boy reading sailing and


adventure magazines over the next three or four decades. These yawls are so handy and like a sanctuary at sea; when you get into a bit of weather you dowse the main and sail on under jib and mizzen, stiff as a church. Sparkman & Stephens, Olin and Rod’s


company, went on to dominate the world of yachting from the early Corinthian days of the 1930s to designing six out of the seven successful 12 Metre America’s Cup defenders between 1958 and 1980. Olin was a rules-beating designer, over a


wide range of developing hull shapes, but when I interviewed him aged 80 in 1998 he said that Dorade and her type of hull and rig were still the best mix of speed and sea- worthiness for sailing or racing offshore. And that was something he repeated to me several times before he died 10 years later. This last summer at Les Voiles de Saint-


Tropez the Rolex Trophy was for the yawls. Twelve of them raced, seven of which were S&S designs. These were the 72ft Baruna (newly restored by Tara Getty), Comet (52ft), Manitou (62ft), Skylark (53ft 5in), Stiren (48ft 8in), Stormy Weather (53ft 11in) and Varuna (60ft – owned by Jens Kellinghusen) which won the class. There was no Argyll in 2023. She had


been a regular for more than a decade before that and Griff has been doing half a


DAN HOUSTON


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