Multi-talented offshore sailor Pamela Lee of Greystones has been at the heart of it in the annual late season Classics racing on the French Riviera, crewing on Richard Matthews’ 1898-vintage 48ft William Fife-designed-and-built cutter Kismet in a notably successful programme which included winning the Gstaad Yacht Club Centenary Trophy 2022 at St Tropez.
Richard Matthews of West Mersea, a familiar figure at Cork Week over the years, is renowned for his association with the Oyster range of performance cruisers, and a succession of top offshore racers under the Oystercatcher name. He first acquired a taste for classic restoration when he brought his late father’s Holman-designed Stella OD back to life. She was one of the first of the successful class when new, and he still sails her - he raced the Stella at Ramsgate Week in Kent in 2022.
Also in the Matthews stable afloat is the America’s Cup-targeted 12 Metre Crusader, but when he decided to go down the pure classics restoration route, it was with a boat that was a familiar sight in the neighbourhood. The originally hundred per cent Fife cutter Kismet was in a local mudberth, and had been used as a houseboat - with a large “living shed” on deck - for sixty years.
Kismet (1898) to weather. Uneven conditions this year provided continuous sail configuration challenges…
….but then the Mediterranean would pause to be its most presentable self.
The return route to full classic trim - using the noted talents of master craftsman Adrian Wombwell of Tollesbury, and the design input of David Cooper of Holman & Pye in West Mersea - took four patient years “and an element of budget over-run”. Initially, Kismet was a feature of Classic regattas in England, but in 2018 she made her debut in the high-powered September-October programme in the south of France. And though this has been interrupted to some extent by the pandemic, it was very much back for 2022, and particularly for the Gstaad YC Centenary Trophy at St Tropez, a feature since the GYC’s Centenary in 1998, a date Kismet shared.
The Centenary Burgees of Gstaad Yacht Club in 1998, with the club’s regular burgee on the right. Quite how the Howth Yacht Club burgee (left) became involved is anyone’s guess.
As it happens, the Swiss Alps-based Gstaad YC’s centenary burgee almost exactly replicates the burgee of Howth YC (founded 1895) in Ireland, and the Gstaad club shares the classic Howth Seventeens date of inauguration in 1898, so both – like Kismet - will be celebrating their 125th in 2023.
Both clubs also share distinctly hilly locations, but while HYC manages direct sea access from its clubhouse, the Gstaad sailors have to trundle down to Monaco to get afloat on salt water. As to whether or not Gstaad shares Howth’s distinction of having a hillside flock of pure-bred Old Irish Goats complete with blonde goatherd, we couldn’t possibly comment…….
MAGIC WIN OF CENTENARY TROPHY
For Richard Matthews, winning the Gstaad Centenary Trophy was a magic moment, and he commented:
“We are very happy - the boat went perfectly, we never had her going so fast to windward. And the course was perfect, we had enough wind, not too much. It was just a perfect sail. We were looking back and kept saying ‘where are they?’ We saw Scud (Ernesto Bertarelli with Torben Grael) coming up fast, but we thought we’ve got enough time, we can make it, and we did. The key moment was when we decided to change the small jib into a bigger one. We have got a great crew too - they are very good sailors, and we would love to come back next year to defend the title”.
Kismet crosses the line off the unmistakable St Tropez waterfront to win the GYC Centenary Trophy. In an easing wind, it was the very smoothly-executed change-up to that powerful masthead Yankee jib which kept her in the lead.
Irish interest in the series didn’t finish with Kismet, as the Royal Cork YC’s own Cork Harbour OD Jap was also racing, while probably the oldest boat in the fleet was the 1874 former pilot cutter Madcap, owned for many years and cruised far and wide by current Dublin Bay Old Gaffers Association President Adrian “Stu” Spence.
When he took his emotional farewell of Madcap to a French owner some years ago, it was in the understanding that she was going into a maritime museum situation – more or less - in La Rochelle. To hear that she’s alive and well and racing at St Tropez is great news. She’s the oldest boat aboard which I ever did the Lambay Race (we were beaten fair and square by Paddy Murphy of Renvyle racing the Galway Hooker Naomh Cronan), and this latest chapter is an appropriate addition the story of a boat which has been surprising everyone for 148 years.
In 1998 when the Gstaad YC was celebrating its Centenary, Adrian Spence’s 1874-built former pilot cutter Madcap was in Greenland. Twenty-four years later and now in French ownership, Madcap was the oldest boat racing for the Gstaad YC Centenary Trophy at St Tropez. Photo: Frank Sadlier
