OPENING ADDRESS, GIVEN BY JOHN LAMMERTS VAN BUEREN
Ladies and gentlemen: As Cambria’s captain Chris Barkham would say: “beautiful boats attract beautiful people” and, as I look around, how right he is. Thank you all for being here tonight to honour and celebrate the most beautiful boats in the world. Thank you for the honour of having me speak tonight.
I would like to start by taking you back to 1982, to Lymington, and an old Thames barge stuck in the mud near the bridge. I was told the man on board had some old winches I could use for my boat so I went below to meet him and have a look. As I climbed down the companionway, a phone rang. I couldn’t help overhearing the conversation and it went like this: “Hi Harry, Joe here! Hey, I heard you broke up with Sue. That’s too bad. But you know, once you’re married the boat gets in between and you have to make a choice, well, you chose for the boat, you did the right thing believe me!”
Well, that set the tone as we chatted and I showed him a picture of my boat. “Ahh, she’s a real beauty and I can tell you what these things are all about too, you see, once you get used to the smell of dry-rot, you can’t live without it”.
She was a 31ft Teal Class, designed by Luke, pitch pine on oak, built by Eddy Williams. She came on the market in 1980 and I fell for her, but like every normal student I was broke and couldn’t afford her. Until the moment her owner realized I was the only one who came every couple of months, just to dream and say hello to a pretty boat. No offer came forward, but for some reason he entrusted the boat to and let me have her for a song. She was my first really beautiful classic boat.
So let’s define beauty. Let’s for now agree to disagree. You see, we all look at things differently, judge differently, enjoy different aspects. To me, beauty goes beyond the lines, beyond craftsmanship and the choice of materials. To me it includes personal memories of friends on board, of stories told under the cabin lamp, of fun and laughter. To me beauty is also defined by the courage, the madness and passion to own, create or preserve something unusual. At least to me, without the latter, beauty has no meaning.
So here we are: we judged each other’s boats and projects, judged craftsmanship, dreamed away with stories told and untold, gazed through the shortlist, and like me, you probably realised we are about to make a few people happy while disappointing even more.
So how do we judge? Does effort and determination count? How about the ‘one-man band’ in a tin shed, hanging upside down in the bilge to replace a broken frame while his mates are getting drunk in the pub? How about the person fortunate enough to just write a cheque to get the job done?
Who and what are we awarding? Is it just beauty, is it the yard, the architect, the owner? What about vision? Should those breaking new ground be awarded or should we award authenticity and tradition?
Is the project where the yard is able to exceed the budget more valuable than the kid who saves an old wooden dinghy from the boneyard and fixes it up on a shoestring budget?
All of us weigh things differently and most of us weigh things differently on different days. This evening we celebrate those who the majority admired and inspired most. But not so long ago it would have been unthinkable for us to be here at the Royal Thames to celebrate classic and wooden boats. Less than 40 years ago the usual reason to buy a classic was simply that you could not afford to buy a proper fibreglass boat!
Another reason could be that you needed a cheap home. Stuck in canals and mud berths were some lovely J-Class yachts, 15, 12 and 8-Metres and of course lots of cruising boats of the early 20th century. They were saved from the scrapyard because their scrap value was lower than the cost of moving them.
So, off to the DIY to get some two by four and a sheet of tarpaulin, add a heater and that old boat suddenly was a comfy home. With the notable
exception of Scandinavia, wooden boat traditions had faded around the world. I remember the nicknames for the old 8-Metre fleets like “The Rentokil Fleet” and “The Rotting Row”. Still, many of them survived. What saved them was their inherent beauty and the thrill of driving them to windward. What fun it was to pity the guys who pitied you when you raced an old clunker in a modern fleet and finished ahead of them all.
What saved them was the low cost; you could buy them for a song, slap some glassfibre on the planking and have fun. Sure enough, some were butchered, transoms were cut to get a better rating under RORC rules, rigs were changed, doghouses were added to get headroom, engines were added, old interiors were replaced by nice fashionable Formica ones. Winches were added, rigs were reinforced, keels and rudders were changed. Of course the rust of the steel frames leaked through the planking and the steam-bent frames broke. Gradually, planking became soft and the bilges were filled with concrete and epoxy to stop the leaks. Labour cost was high so the owners and crews learned to maintain their boats and keep them afloat. I am ever so grateful to these people as they saved many of the boats we admire and celebrate this evening!
Now let’s imagine that there would be a magazine covering the lives of these old boats. Imagine that the Royal Thames opening its doors for ‘the beaten-up old boats awards’. Something had to change to make that possible. That change came with a lady named
Elizabeth Meyer. She decided to do the unthinkable and in 1984 she bought the remains of Endeavour, widely regarded as the most beautiful J-Class ever built.
Elizabeth was 31. Old enough to have childhood dreams, young enough to be not realise what she was getting in to. The first one to sum it up was TOM Sopwith, the man who raced her for the America’s Cup. When Elizabeth told him about her plans to restore his old boat, she didn’t expect his first words to be: “You’re a darned fool!”
But Elizabeth was determined to follow through and three years later the world was in awe. The most beautiful J was no longer stuck in the mud, no longer a house boat. The unthinkable happened and Endeavor sailed again! She took the boat around the world and entered regattas. Elizabeth Meyer’s passion for Endeavour and her dynamic personality changed the yachting scene for decades to come.
She had shown the world that old boats are worth saving, that they can be restored, be raced and cruised and yes, that they can bring huge satisfaction and joy.
With Endeavour, Elizabeth inspired a generation of sailors and encouraged them to restore forgotten classics to a scale and standard unthinkable on that rainy day at Calshot. In the Mediterranean, men like Luigi Lang played a pivotal role in creating rules under
which classic boats could race. Naval architects like Olin Stephens, Doug Peterson, Jacques Fauroux and German Frers came to the scene and enjoyed sailing the old boats again.
Forgotten techniques of the past were brought back to life. Young sailmakers called up the old fogies to help them learn to design and cut Dacron sails. Wooden spars had to be built again, forgotten timber species had to be sourced once more. Riggers who just finished their course in PBO and composite splicing had to learn what seemed an ancient art; splicing galvanized wire.
And what about the crew? I remember our first days on Eleonora. We were overwhelmed by the huge sails and complexity of the running rigging. Most of the sailors on the dock knew how to race a Farr40 but few knew how to sail a classic schooner using transfer lines, jiggers, queens and jackyards. But the movement was persistent and so what once was a small and lone group of old boats became a fleet of well over 1,000 and the focal point of the sailing season in places like SaintTropez, Cannes, Argentario, Cowes, Brest and Maine.
And when you think about it, who would have ever imagined we would run out of wrecks to restore? That lost boats of the past would be built again? Ed
Kastelein led the way with his reconstruction of Westward, the schooner Eleonora. Soon the schooners Elena, Germania, Wolfhound, Columbia and Atlantic followed. What about the 20 or more 6, 8 and 12-Metres yachts, built brand new to 90-year-old plans?
All that and more inspired a new type of yacht, a hybrid of the old and the new. Sean McMillan led the way in promoting what we now call ‘Spirit of
Tradition’ yachts. The feel of a real wooden boat, lines inspired by the past as much as the present, resulting in designs that are in a class of their own.
Covid-19 didn’t bring much good to the world. But, if for us sailors, something good came out, then it has to be the revival of club racing in small boats. And so a whole new movement has started with wooden Stars, Finns, OK dinghies and more being restored and raced around the world. Away from the crowds, even professionals like Rod Davies and Paul Cayard once more enjoy sailing and racing wooden dinghies.
When I was a kid, I gazed at the photos made by Beken, Levick, Kirk and Rosenfeld. I read the stories of pre-war racing in what I regarded as the most beautiful yachts ever built. As a kid I always thought I was born at the wrong time, that I would never see them race like they did back then. I didn’t dare even to dream about witnessing more than 100 restorations from close by, crossing the Atlantic on a schooner or racing aboard Cambria. What about the idea to build a sawmill in Alaska and cut Sitka spruce for wooden spars? I can hear my late father whisper; “Wake up Johnny, time to step out of the dream”.
Well, ladies and gentlemen, look at where we are tonight, look at what we are looking at, look at the nominees we are honouring and the winners we are celebrating. Trust me, dreams come true, they really do.
Thank you and congratulations to all nominees and winners of tonight.