Outstanding Boats - A Special Selection of Unusual and Noteworthy Boats I Find

[Jim Cate]

[QUOTE=Stea

This is a yacht for someone who really appreciates the beauty of a wood boat. I do. And if I could, I would take this wonderful woodie and sail her proudly. Would you?[/QUOTE]


Pretty indeed, Steady, but my goodness, what an uncomfortable looking cockpit! You might sail her proudly, but you'd soon have a close relationship with your local chiropractor!

Jim

[Steadman Uhlich]

Originally Posted by Scout 30

A great source of classic wooden boats for sale is Classic Boat Magazine. Their "Buy A Classic" section is free online & always filled with amazing boats. My favorite listing is a Luke Powell, Isle of Scilly Pilot Cutter. A great example of a classic design.

Isles of Scilly Pilot Cutter - Classic Boat Magazine

Buy a Classic Boat - Classic Boat Magazine

Agreed!

Luke Powell has made some nice traditional boats that look great and are highly regarded.

[JJ77]

At first I thought it was a typo,nigel Irens schooner,the one from all those supermultis?yes,check this out;

Nigel Irens 50' schooner

They build their own carbonfiber masts!
Cheers and have a nice weekend,

JJ

[Sea Dreaming]

Originally Posted by Jim Cate

Pretty indeed, Steady, but my goodness, what an uncomfortable looking cockpit! You might sail her proudly, but you'd soon have a close relationship with your local chiropractor!

Jim

But it has a poop deck for the pooch! Oddlythat takes precidence over my own needs. Call me fur fool

[Steadman Uhlich]

Here is a wooden square rigged ship that is engineless and still takes cargo on a circuit around the Atlantic today.

I enjoyed seeing this slideshow/video (link below) of their latest voyage. It looks like a dream come true to man the yards and sail the seas on a square rigger like this. I would like to do it too. How about you?

Have you ever sailed on a ship like this? Or dreamed of doing so?

You can learn more about this outstanding vessel and her mission and voyages on Facebook by looking for "FairTransport" or via the link below.

Her recent cargo included rum in wooden barrels, molasses, green coffee beans, and cacao. Going West, she has taken barrels of wine. The ships company produces and sells a line of their own branded Rum and coffee products. The small batch rum, in beautiful bottles is something to see too (photos on their Facebook page).

https://www.facebook.com/steadman.uh...40967565979234

[Steadman Uhlich]

Originally Posted by JJ77

At first I thought it was a typo,nigel Irens schooner,the one from all those supermultis?yes,check this out;

Nigel Irens 50' schooner

They build their own carbonfiber masts!
Cheers and have a nice weekend,

JJ

WOW!
Thanks for posting that photo and link.
Everyone should follow the link to see MANY photos showing th entire build process as this Cold Moulded schooner takes shape. The photos show the CM process very clearly, and also show the casting of the lead keel ballast and the fabrication of the Carbon Fiber masts too. All together, it is a fascinating picture story of how this boat went from design (plans) to finished boat in the water.

Take a look everyone. This is a very good ILLUSTRATED view of how a special boat is built, using wood, hand finishing, and some high tech materials too.

[Steadman Uhlich]

SUNSHINE sailing heavily reefed off of Portofino. This is a boat designed by William Fife III, one of the great naval architects of large sailing yachts.
____________________

A wee bit about Fife:

William Fife III
Fife designed two America's Cup yachts for grocery and tea magnate Sir Thomas Lipton who challenged for the cup a total of five times.

The Fife-designed challenger Shamrock I (1899) lost to Columbia (Nathanael Greene Herreshoff, 1899) and Shamrock III (1903) lost to Reliance. After the establishment of the first International Rule in 1906, Fife became a prolific designer of metre boats, designing and building several successful 15-Metre and 19-Metre yachts in the years leading up to the Great War. Between 1907 and 1913, William Fife, Jr. designed eight of the twenty 15mR yachts ever built, but his first 15mR named Shimna was not built at his famous Fairlie boatyard, but by Alexander Robertson and Sons Ltd (Yachtbuilders), because all Fife's principal yacht builders were needed to work on Myles Kennedy’s new 23mR, White Heather II.

[Steadman Uhlich]

Here is one of my favorite photos to see of yachts racing. In this image you see SHAMROCK III. (1903)

While primarily recognized because he designed some of the most famous large racing yachts, he also designed cruising boats too.
_________________

Here is more about William Fife's bonnie boats:


The Fife yard also had a reputation for the extremely high quality of the craftsmanship of the yachts built at the yard. Today, it is thought that there are somewhat less than 100 Fife designs still in existence. Of these, there are around fifty still sailing, most notably:

cruiser handicap rater Nan (1897)
36-rater Pen Duick (formerly Yum, 1898)
21-rater Mignon (1898), sisterships Pierette and Yvette (1899)[2]
cruiser handicap raters Moonbeam III (1903) and Moonbeam IV (1920)
15mRs Mariska (1908), Hispania (1909), Tuiga (1909) and The Lady Anne (1912)
12mR Cintra (the oldest 12mR in existence, launched 1909)
8mR Lucky Girl (launched 1909)
19mR Mariquita (1911)
ketchs Sumurun (1914), Adventuress (1924) and Belle Aventure (1929) on the Eastern Seaboard
handicap rater Hallowe'en (1926)
23mR Cambria (1928)
gaff-rigged schooner Altair (1931)
ketch Eilean (1936), which famously featured in the music video for the 1982 Duran Duran song Rio.[3]

Fife once said that the secret of a great yacht was that it should be both "fast and bonnie".
_________________

Following on the heels of the success of his design Dragon (1888), Fife adopted a stylized Chinese dragon as his trademark. Thereafter, those yachts that took shape on the shingle at Fairlie were known throughout the yachting world by this distinctive scrollwork.
_________________

SOURCE: Wikipedia article on Fife.

[Steadman Uhlich]

SUHAILI
The boat made famous during the first Golden Globe Race in which Sir Robin Knox-Johnston became the first person to sail around the world non-stop. This was his boat then and now.

Note: this is a nice quality larger photo.

[Steadman Uhlich]

ADIX

A 3 masted schooner, 185 feet, steel hull, built in 1984, and designed by Arthur Holgate.

[Steadman Uhlich]

EUROPA

A barque, shown sailing a few days out of Tristan da Cunha.

Imagine what sea legs it requires to crew on a ship like that in seas like that!

This shows why a traditional sailor's hands were sometimes tattooed with the words "HOLD FAST" on their fingers!

[Steadman Uhlich]

LIBERTINE

Spirit Yachts 46 MkII built 2005

She is sleek, sexy, slippery. I would love to go saiiling on her. How about you?

[boatman61]

The Fairey Atalanta.. a boat one loves or loathes from the 1950's.. good examples can still be found today.


Construction methods[edit]
The hot moulding process was an adaptation to post war boat building of the method originally developed by de Havillands in the 1930s for "stressed skin" wooden aircraft production, using layers of thin birch plywood sandwiched together with glue over a male mould and "cooked" in a large oven called an “autoclave” By using true mass-production techniques, Fairey Marine were able to turn out vast numbers of identical boats at an unprecedented quality and price. Moulds were constructed from spruce, built up on a steel base plate. Seven by three inches planks cut to the waterplane sections provided the starting point. Working from the sheerline, the planks were built up in a series of steps, arriving quickly at a close representation of the designed shape. Subsequent fairing yielded finished dimensions. Rebates for the keel, stem and transom completed the mould building process. Although the veneers used to produce Fairey boats may appear to be parallel sided, every one was in fact profiled. Rather than shaping each veneer to fit on the mould, as in traditional boat building, Faireys saved an enormous amount of time by sawing complete sets of veneers to precision patterns. Veneers were produced in stacks of six. Boat were then typically built in batches of 24 or 36. Early boats used 1/8″ spruce ply, surplus to the War Department’s de Havilland Mosquito aircraft programme. When this material became unavailable it was replaced by 2.5*mm agba veneers.
Chosen for its high gum content, agba formed easily without splitting and glued well. All the dinghy classes used just three agba veneers while some of the bigger boats used up to six. Initially all the veneers were laid at 45° while later boats changed to fore and aft outer planking for aesthetic reasons. With the keel, stem and transom in place, veneers were applied starting on the centreline and working out towards the shear. Each veneer was held in place by just three staples at the keel, bilge and shearline. Roller-application of Borden One-Shot waterproof glue preceded each veneer except the first. With all veneers in place a vacuum bag was drawn over the moulding and secured in place using a clamp plate and G-clamps. Early vacuum bags were made from war surplus barrage balloon fabric. After about 1950, individual rubber bags were prepared on the moulds using uncured rubber sheets which were subsequently vulcanised in the autoclaves used for production.[6]
Placed in the autoclave, the vacuum was drawn down to 27/28*inches water-gauge and steam at a pressure of some 50 pounds per square inch introduced. Processing took about 45 minutes at 100*°C. Curing at elevated temperatures under vacuum not only ensured that all the veneers were firmly consolidated – a process requiring many thousands of staples using the conventional cold-moulding process – but allowed for the use of a truly waterproof, single part, high-temperature curing glue. During the curing process the glue impregnated the wood resulting in a virtually rot-proof finished shell. Components such as side-decks were also hot moulded while other parts required for assembly were cut to patterns in the same way as the skin veneers. For one of the more complex boats, the International 14, the time for final construction from bare hull to finished boat was set at 230-man-hours compared to 400–500 hours associated with traditional construction.

[Steadman Uhlich]

Superior Sailboats Ltd One-Off Sloop, 1978

Asking Price = $278,265

Steady's NOTES:
Cold Moulded Wood Construction
Spruce Mast
Outstanding interior!
Look closely at the interior photos (see large) to get an idea of the quality of construction and finishing on this yacht. It is very special. Awesome use of wood!

1978 Superior Sailboats Ltd One-Off Sloop Sail Boat For Sale - www.yachtworld.com

Additional Specs, Equipment and Information:

Boat Name
Golden Goose

Specs
Builder: Superior Sailboats Ltd.
Designer: Superior Sailboats Ltd.
Flag of Registry: Germany
Keel: Fin
Hull Shape: Displacement

Dimensions
LOA: 13.68 m
Beam: 4.26 m
Length on Deck: 13.68 m
Minimum Draft: 2.04 m
Maximum Draft: 2.04 m
Displacement: 11 kgs Half Load

[mitiempo]

Originally Posted by Steady Hand

Superior Sailboats Ltd One-Off Sloop, 1978

Asking Price = $278,265

Steady's NOTES:
Cold Moulded Wood Construction
Spruce Mast
Outstanding interior!
Look closely at the interior photos (see large) to get an idea of the quality of construction and finishing on this yacht. It is very special. Awesome use of wood!

1978 Superior Sailboats Ltd One-Off Sloop Sail Boat For Sale - www.yachtworld.com

Additional Specs, Equipment and Information:

Boat Name
Golden Goose

Specs
Builder: Superior Sailboats Ltd.
Designer: Superior Sailboats Ltd.
Flag of Registry: Germany
Keel: Fin
Hull Shape: Displacement

Dimensions
LOA: 13.68 m
Beam: 4.26 m
Length on Deck: 13.68 m
Minimum Draft: 2.04 m
Maximum Draft: 2.04 m
Displacement: 11 kgs Half Load

Built for Gordon Lightfoot in Canada.

This Goose Is Golden