The boats were popular with members of the Tigre Yacht Club, in a plush northern suburb of Buenos Aires, and nearby Novotecnia is where the new breed of Colleen is taking shape - faithful to the old designs but benefitting from a modern treatment.
The boat was designed as a replacement for the Mermaid, and is reckoned to be the first one-design keelboat class in the world.
Now being built in GRP, with a 3hp engine fitted, the clinkered hull and classic gaff rig will make turn-of-the-century colonial style available to the masses.
Classic Sailboats in the UK have been involved from the start, drawing their experience with other classics like the Water Wag and the Shannon One Design.
As per the Colleen Class website:
Towards the end of 1896 that the Dublin Bay Sailing Club selected James Doyle as the designer of their new One Design Class to replace the Mermaid Class and the Half-Raters. Dr W.M.A. Wright, at a meeting of the Club, spoke enthusiastically of Doyle's design - the best of six or submitted by some of the most able and experienced designers of the day.
'They (the new boats) would sail well and present a handsome appearance... they would combine stiffness under canvas, stability, buoyancy, quick-staying powers, be good boats, whether going to windward, reaching or with free sheets...they would also have the additional advantage of being Irish in design, Irish in material and Irish (he hoped) built....'
Interested parties should check out both sites. Colleens are available with standard fittings, traditional fittings, or modern-as-the-internet Harken race spec fittings.
Colleen Class website
Classic Sailboats website
Interesting aside:
The Colleen isn't the only Irish seafaring link between Ireland and Buenos Aires. William Brown, a peasant from Foxford in Co Mayo, emigrated as an orphan to Argentina and became the great Admirante Brown, Admiral of the Argentine Navy and one of the country's greatest maritime war heroes.
He died in 1857, missing the genesis of the Colleen Class by 39 years.
