Left to right: Bruce Huber, Royal Yacht Squadron Rear Commodore Yachting, Sir James Holman, Commodore, and William Collier, welcome the participants on the club’s famous lawn. Collier is the main organiser of this new two-week event. Left: the masthead-man on Mariette balances against the spring stay while carefully holding onto the main topmast forestay as he helps to tack the topsail…
coming second, and regularly did. Looking back perhaps the Duke was protecting his king’s prowess; on an occasion when the king was absent she took the first with ease. When she was restored there was
nothing else like her around (Hispaniawas restored in 2012). It was Eric Tabarly, who owned Pen Duick, a smaller Fife but with similar rig, who was instrumental in rediscovering how to sail boats like these. ‘You would think there was something
written, about handling these boats, but while the designs were there no one was alive who had ever sailed these yachts and their knowledge had died with them,’ Tabarly once told me. Tuiga is campaigned from the Med and
has sailed in the Caribbean as well as Scottish and other north European waters.
unbeaten monohull record for the fastest sailing time across the Atlantic while racing for a gold cup proposed by the German Kaiser. Charlie Barr famously locked Marshall in his cabin during the race when Barr was accused of dangerously flying too much canvas. So that’s a little bit of the back story
that informs our view of the new schooner, built in Dutch steel in 2010 by Ed Kastelein. She is being chartered by Mille for the event and, like several other boats here, has come north from her normal Mediterranean base. Ed himself, a native of Rotterdam, was pleased to be in tidal waters like the Solent. Like many here he is a fan of big boat classic sailing which has created a small industry for specialists in classic yacht construction, restoration, management and crewing. Ed restored sev- eral yachts before building the replica Her- reshoff big class 136ft Eleonora in 2000. Atlantic might be a fast boat but her
16ft draft keeps her out of any shallow water tidal advantage when it comes to racing. Sailing her the day before visiting the Squadron she slowed hugely in the tide
52 SEAHORSE
getting into the western Solent while other boats closer inshore pulled ahead. But it was a fabulous day to look at living history as these yachts grace the waters where many of them were designed and built.
Tuiga Tuiga is a great example of how a yacht club can own and campaign one of the most beautiful boats in the world. She belongs to the Monaco Yacht Club, crewed and maintained by club members since she was restored in 1993 by the newly founded Fairlie Restorations, whose Duncan Walker found her in Cyprus. She was built as a gaff cutter in the
15 Metre class, part of the 1907 Metre rule, essayed to create a more even match between boats as opposed to using handi- cap systems. Tuiga was built for the Spanish Duke of Medinacelli, who sailed her against King Alfonso XIII’s Hispania, another 15 Metre launched the same year. Both yachts were designed by the Scottish genius of yachts that were fast and pretty – William Fife. But Tuiga soon got a reputation for
Mariette The two-masted steel schooner Mariette, designed by the renowned Wizard of Bristol (RI) Nathanael Herreshoff, was launched in New England in 1915 for a Boston textile manufacturer. She came to Europe in the late 1970s and was restored at La Spezia in Italy. Venture capitalist Tom Perkins then
restored her original rig in 1995 and raced her at the Nioulargue Regatta at St Tropez that October, where she unfortunately collided with the 6 Metre Taos Brett IV which sank beneath the schooner’s bows causing the death of a doctor from Nice called Jacques Bourry. Perkins and his skipper at the time were
fined £6,000 each and given suspended jail sentences. The Nioulargue disappeared as an event and was replaced in 1999 by Les Voiles de St Tropez. Perkins sold her in 2005. She still races on the Mediterranean circuit. Mariette won her class and the Richard Mille Cup at this inaugural event. To replace Mariette Perkins, who
passed away in 2016, commissioned the automated and computerised three-master Maltese Falcon, a 288ft yacht that can be sailed on and off her berth from shore by wireless control. Quite a contrast.
q
INGRID ABERY
JAMES ROBINSON TAYLOR
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