Tips Sail

Last weekend I had the pleasure of attending the Wooden Boat Show which was held at the Mystic Seaport in Mystic, Connecticut. It was a picture perfect summer day in New England. Of particular interest were two examples of early Sparkman & Stephens yachts; Isla, hull #10 of the New York 32s (design number 125) and Skylark (design number 146).

Isla is one of the 20 NY32s that were built by Henry Nevins of City Island, New York in 1935-1936. This design was commissioned by the New York Yacht Club in 1935. She was restored by Peter Cassidy and his team at Buzzards Bay Yacht Services and is in perfect condition. The NY32 is a simple boat and I was pleased to see how closely the owner and restorers followed the original plans from our archives, which are in storage at the Mystic Seaport.
This is not a "gold plated" yacht but a nice sailing boat with tiller steering. In addition to doing a complete restoration a new wooden mast was built. You can read about this in Wooden Boat Magazine, issue #124 (May/June 2010).



In contrast to Isla, Skylark was docked alongside. This boat was designed the following year and was built by the Pendleton Yard of Wiscasset, Maine. By comparison this is a fancy boat with teak decks, multiple skylights and bright work aplenty. Skylark was restored by East Passage Boatwrights of Bristol, Rhode Island. These fine craftsmen had good experience restoring Sonny, an S&S design from 1935 (design number 94) for the same owner.


Like Sonny, Skylark is a near sister to Stormy Weather (design number 27) and each was an improvement upon the previous design.

The boat is currently for sale and the future owner should enjoy years of sailing (and racing) this fine example of a classic S&S yacht.

Here are a few interesting statistics from the Monaco Yacht Show. There were approximately 100 superyachts in the show and inside of Port Hercules. The average size was 40-meters and up to 90-meters. In addition to the boats in the show, and as a general indicator of the big boat brokerage market there were an additional 107 megayachts moored off the harbor and for sale! I snapped the image above from the bridge onboard Nazenin. It's a bit hard to see (double click for bigger image) but as all yachts are now part of the AIS (Automatic Identification System) you can see the area of the port itself completely chock-a-block with boat names but upon inspection you can see just how many yachts were moored nearby.

Today I'm in Annapolis at the Sailboat Show. What's with the catamaran craze? They're taking over more and more of the show every year. And the foreign manufacturers with what I might refer to as nondescript Clorox bottles (the French monohulls). Okay I'll stop griping now.