Frers Sr canoe-stern 50ft cutter, with which we got a second prize in Cannes and won our class at the Voiles de St Tropez. Meanwhile, nearer to home on the


River Plate, I also kept Aguacil, a 1939 44ft double-ended centreboard ketch, another old Frers Sr creation, which is very competitive under the local CIM rule. But after 20 years with Aguacil I began to get tired of looking at the white top of the double-ender’s external rudder head and started thinking about jumping to a more conventional, traditional-looking craft… It was not long before we realised that a


yacht built to those old Recluta drawings from 1943 would fit our new recipe per- fectly. And being larger than our previous boats, being the largest of all my father’s sailing yacht designs, she would also double as a family cruiser. This time I had never really considered


another restoration. Instead, from the out- set I was strongly attracted to the whole idea of building a replica of the original Recluta design. First, because in Argentina there were no old boats that I liked left to be restored; secondly, because after four restorations I have learnt that taking apart an old craft and then rebuilding it using minuscule pieces of the original in order to call it a ‘restoration’ is very expensive and also counterproductive. I communicated my decision to Tito


Szyka, a master-yachtbuilder with whom I have done all the restorations of my previous classic yachts mentioned above,


50 SEAHORSE


In January 2016 the lead keel arrived


and, with the laminated Viraró keel stem and backbone, it was moved to the shed when construction properly started.


The detail The challenges of building a new yacht to a design and drawings that are now 80 years old are many and varied. We started by digitising the original


hand drawings and translating them to a 3D program with the idea of facilitating construction and allowing prefabrication of larger metal components. The metal floors and centreboard case were then welded up quickly and, with the benefit of the 3D model, to a high degree of accu- racy… certainly much more accurately than was possible in the 1940s. Meanwhile, the original lines were being


plus two other notable designs, Heroina, a 75ft laminated wood sloop for which he built the interior and finished a hull built by Belarmino Sarmiento, and Bluebell, a 24m motor yacht restoration. Tito was 82 in 2015 but he never hesi-


tated and got to work immediately on the very substantial laminated keel, stem and backbone of our new yacht. Meanwhile, I made a deal with the Yacht Club of Argentina to construct a large build shed at their premises in San Fernando, in exchange for using it for the next three years (this would later be turned into a well-appointed paint shed for members and others to use).


re-faired in the computer in lieu of having any traditional full-sized loft floor draw- ings. Laminating jigs for each of the laminated frames were made up and the lamination was started; but here is where some of our local workforce’s innate resis- tance to change began to surface. The frames were laminated exactly as


per design. They were then supposed to be joined at the deck level as per our digitised plans; however, the guys had insisted on fairing out the hull and deck connections ‘by eye’. In addition, they had elected to use cheap green wood to create the joints… which changed length each day with the humidity.


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