Anyone who has ever done any work restoring an ageing timber boat, sail or power, will know exactly what they are looking at here and know the immense amount of skilful work involved getting from one snapshot to the next. At which point the major work has barely begun…
after one more season Dorade sat out 2009 ashore, her owner struggling to juggle his growing love for vintage 12 Metre racing with finding time for a very special yawl. Relaunched for the 2010 season and the
80th anniversary of her original launch at Minneford Yacht Yard, City Island, New York, Dorade was placed on the market with the brokerage arm of her original designers. Unusually, for even the most iconic of classic yachts, she sold quickly. And landed on her feet. Matt Brooks and Pam Rorke Levy are
project people. Their goal was to sail all the races of Dorade’s past that still exist, and others she hasn’t sailed. Eleven years on they’re still at it, albeit accepting the global hiccup that’s been the past two years. From the outset they’ve been driven by the desire to tell Dorade’s story and preserve her by using this lovely yawl as originally intended, rather than as a static exhibit. Prior to the hectic decade of worldwide
competition to come, Dorade entered refit once more by a team assembled, again at the LMI yard in Rhode Island, to ensure she was fit for a return to serious ocean racing. This work included a new spruce rig and reinstatement of an auxiliary engine (removed in Edgar Cato’s owner- ship), with a feathering side propeller. Matt Brooks told Chris Muesler in 2012:
Some of Dorade’s major offshore triumphs while in the Stephens family ownership:
1931 Transatlantic Race: line honours and 1st on corrected time 1931 Fastnet Race: 1st on corrected time 1932 Bermuda Race: 1st in Class B 1933 Fastnet Race: 1st on corrected time
By 1934 Dorade’s successes offshore,
and the desire to improve on what they’d learnt, led to the commissioning of Stormy Weather and in quick succession her 50- plus footer cousins, including Edlu, San- tana, Avanti, Sonny, Zeearend, Vryling (now Skylark), Atalanta and Blitzen… Olin was too busy at the drawing board
and Rod was now immersed in supervising construction and sailing so Dorade was sold at the end of 1935 and began her more than 50 years as a west coast boat. Under her first Californian owner, James Flood, she cleaned up at the 1936 Santa Monica to Honolulu ‘Transpac’ Race: first to finish, first in class and first overall. But as the years rolled on, despite a
couple more Transpacs, and regular entry into the 1960s, plus a cameo in 1979 in the Swiftsure Race, with class victories and placings, to successive generations of
60 SEAHORSE
sailors her name became more associated with a deck fitting; the simple, ingenious, eponymous water-trap yacht ventilation system has become so normal that the capital D is often demoted to lower case. So it was only somewhat later in the
mid-1990s when Federico Nardi’s passion, vision and good connections to patrons with a desire to own something very special would eventually begin with the restoration not just of her structure and cosmetics, but also of her fame. But Dorade’s subsequent love affair
with la dolce vita, as well as the eastward transatlantic flow of American classics, came to an end in 2006 when her second European suitor, Dutch shipowner Peter Frech, sold her to Edgar Cato of North Carolina, a youthful octogenarian (he was born before Dorade), serial race yacht owner and, as is often the case in classic yacht ownership, a collector of classic cars. After a first season of learning what he
had on the US east coast classic circuit he put Dorade in for another major structural refit in Portsmouth, Rhode Island under- taken by Buzzard Bay Yacht Services and Mount Hope Boatworks. Born again, again… she became the summer of 2007 belle of the ball on the classic circuit. Then
‘Dorade has always been a trendsetter. She changed the way people looked at sail boats… but in the 1960s and 1970s no one wanted her. Then, with the Italian restora- tion, she was again setting a trend… once again making history. I believe she is on the cusp of history again. She’s going to set a trend with this year’s Bermuda Race. Even if she just finishes in good order it will speak to what Olin did in 1929 and the Italians in the 1990s. It will revolu- tionise how you look at these boats.’
Highlights of 10 more successful seasons on the road include: 2012: Newport-Bermuda, 2nd in class 2013: Caribbean season victories and placings, 1st overall Transpac 2014:Mediterranean and Caribbean victories and placings 2015: Fastnet, 2nd in class, 7th overall 2016: Victories and placings, US east coast 2017: 2nd in class, Sydney-Hobart, wins and placings, Australia and US west coast 2018: 1st overall, Onion Patch Series, 4th in class, Newport-Bermuda, other victories and placings, US east coast 2019 & 2021: east coast wins and placings
It’s a remarkable tally for a now 92-
year-old, very special yacht. One imagines – hopes – that Dorade will still be doing it in the 22nd century.
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