Our header image this weekend may look like an ordinary enough photo of a handsome boat of a certain era getting skilfully underway using sail only. And some of those not of the cognoscenti may think it’s a slightly frantic crew making the best of it in order to extract themselves from the result of engine failure.
But even now, 53 years after this was snapped, there will be many who’ll see that this is Denis Doyle taking his departure from an alongside berth in his beloved 47ft Robert Clark-designed Crosshaven-built Moonduster of 1965 vintage, which he owned and sailed happily engine-free for eight years.
Thus it was part of the daily routine as he and his crew took their choreographed and completely unruffled departure - in this case from Dartmouth in South Devon – to head on always under sail for Cowes Week and the biennial Fastnet Race of 1971.
Moonduster as the Queen of Crosshaven, in the entrance to Cork Harbur manoeuvring for the start of the 1970 RORC Cowes-Brest Race, part of the RCYC Quarter Millennial Celebrations. Photo: W M Nixon
FLEXIBLE NOON
We were on the same general programme with the new Hustler 35 Setanta, but having arrived in Dartmouth in the dusk the night before, we weren’t aware that Moonduster was there until a message was delivered along to us in the morning that she was scheduled to depart at 12 o’clock to catch the new tide up Channel, but as we were there, Moonduster Noon would be at 11 o’clock, and we’d be very welcome on board.
For an increasingly lively hour we enjoyed the mood and the moment with The Doyler and his shipmates, savouring the sense that this was one very special boat. So particularly in this case, eight years of ownership of something so special may not seem a long time when compared to some ownerships. But as the main owner of the boatyard, The Doyler had to keep the orders flowing through Crosshaven, and in 1973 a new boat, the Sparkman & Stephens designed 47ft “Blue Moonduster”, emerged from the sheds.
THE DEFINITIVE MOONDUSTER
Yet for many, that original white boat was the definitive Moonduster until the Frers-designed 51ft varnished beauty – or “heritage finish” as they might say across the Atlantic – appeared from the Crosshaven craftsmen in 1981. She most ably filled the Moonduster mystique in a new way. But meanwhile that first Moonduster was soon – after one civilised owner who sensibly changed the name - launched as Moonduster again on the path of perdition which can soon befall any boat which has acquired star status.
INDEFINABLE STAR QUALITY
Star quality, charisma if you prefer, is something wellnigh indefinable, but you know it when it is seen and and experienced. Thus the original white Moonduster had it, but the blue one didn’t. Yet with the varnished Duster of 1981, it was back by the bucketful.
Looking to another boat-type area altogether, the restored Conor O Brien-designed Ilen may be exemplary, but she’s too workaday to shine as a star, even if she is a Beacon of Hope. However, Fred Kinmonth’s Liam Hegarty-built Saoirse II re-creation has star quality in spades - she simply blows your mind, even if there is virtually nothing physical of the original world-girdling boat in her.
Mind-blowing. The new Saoirse - seen here alongside at Oldcourt – has star quality. Photo: W M Nixon
ASGARD’S RUB OF THE RELIC
Having that “rub of the relic” is essential for some folk, however. Thus I can remember arguments flying back and forth about what best to do with Erskine & Molly Childers’ original Asgard. One group was led by a doughty circumnavigator who insisted in stentorian style that he “wanted to, and would only sail, on the restored Asgard in a seaworthy state, and personally tread on the very deck on which Erskine Childers had trod”.
The original Asgard of 1905 vintage in her conserved role as a National Monument in the museum in Collins Barracks. Any group determined to know what she was like to sail is surely welcome to the use of the plans to build a replica. Photo: W M Nixon
It was a bit of a mouthful, but we got the drift. Then fortunately the situation was solved, when the powers-that-be - for once - acted quickly and decisively. Asgard went for conservation by John Kearon and his expert team at Collins Barracks. There, she became a manageable and eloquent museum exhibit. And if anyone wants to know what she was like to sail – for she sailed extraordinarily well – the plans are available, and an exact replica could be created in a very useful training scheme.
TRANSFER OF AURA OF ORIGINAL OWNERSHIP?
For the problem with original charismatic classics is that new owners think that somehow becoming the “custodian” confers them with the aura of the original legendary owner. But it doesn’t, as an owner of the original Saoirse discovered when he came into Dun Laoghaire early in the 1970s. He subsequently let the world know his welcome was unsatisfactory, yet I doubt if anyone around Dublin Bay lost a nano-second of sleep over that.
Equally, when a new owner came into Dun Laoghaire with the formerly Douglas Heard-owned Uffa Fox-designed Jack Tyrrell-built Flying Thirty called Huff of Arklow, it didn’t go too well as - among other things - he’d painted her white, whereas Douglas had his own perfect shade of dark blue. So when a subsequent owner returned with further restoration and the hull now properly dark blue, it went so well the Huff was adjudged the “Boat of the Show” in the Volvo Dun Laoghaire Regatta.
Huff of Arklow restored to her original condition of 1950 in Douglas Heard’s ownership, making her award-winning return at the Volvo Dun Laoghaire Regatta 2015. Photo: VDLR
A much sadder story is the way things have gone with the varnished Frers-designed Crosshaven-built Moonduster of 1981. As regularly reported here, she has been mouldering in Trondheim in Norway for nearly twenty years.
A dream of a boat – the Frers 51 Moonduster in her racing prime, with boat and sails made in Crosshaven
DRUG SMUGGLING VEHICLES
Yet that’s not the most gloom-making outcome of boats becoming stars in their prime. Because for a while, such special craft were targeted by drug smugglers, who were more than happy to let the boats be glorified as associated with their original owners, as they hoped that would be a mask for their own criminal purposes.
That’s what happened with the original Moonduster. Eventually, as the law closed in on her and the drug smuggling activities of a new owner, she was abandoned to become wrecked in the Caribbean. As for another boat of a slightly later era, Otto Glaser’s totally-varnished McGruer 47 Tritsch-Tratsch II was sold to some people with Swedish links and then onto someone of ulterior motives. In this process, they were so keen to prove their authenticity of purpose that they very publicly re-surveyed the already-surveyed boat from end to end.
A symphony in rare timbers. Tritsch-Tratsch II was the overall winner of an RORC race in the English Channel in 1974 – a first for an Irish boat – despite competing with a permanently inflated rating. Photo: HYC
UNEXPECTED INFORMATION
A by-product of that showy-plus ultra-thorough survey was the discovery that the forward IOR measuring pin – a little bronze thing about the size of the head of a drawing pin set into the topsides by the original designer and builders towards the bow – was actually a foot forward of where it should have been. But it was a very long time afterwards when Otto told me this, long after Tritsch Tratsch II had been sailed for three years by Irish crews to some measure of success - including the overall win of an English Channel RORC Race - despite her rating always being at least a foot more than it should have been.
And anyway, what could you say when the man was sadly telling you that a unique and very likeable boat, that had given a large number of people a very great deal of pleasure, was now entombed in a navy yard, gathering dust and dereliction after a huge drugs bust. It somehow compounded the sadness that Otto referred to the yard as being in Smyrna. He was very much a child of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and preferred to think of Tritsch-Tratsch II’s end-of-life place with its old Greek name, rather than the current Turkish title of Izmir.
GOOD NEWS ON THE IRISH CLASSIC FRONT
In the face of the three sad stories of the two Moondusters and Tritsch-Tratsch II, it’s like a breath of fresh air to hear that an Irish classic with a more ordinary story of decline has been taken over for a proper restoration without any baggage. Tjaldur (it means “oystercatcher” in Faroese) was originally built for Dr Rory O’Hanlon of Dun Laoghaire in 1964 by Jack Tyrrell, with the multi-talented owner finishing the boat himself in his front garden in Clonskeagh after the Arklow team had built the bare hull, deck and coachroof.
She was a Dee 27 designed by Peter Brett, who subsequently went on to design the Rival production range which made him a full-time designer. But in his early days his Dee 24s and Dee 27s – originally for fellow-members of the Royal Dee YC in Cheshire – were created in an amateur design capacity.
Tjaldur’s hull profile showed her marked toe to the keel, which caused more weather helm than Rory O’Hanlon liked.
Rory O’Hanlon at Tjalder’s helm in pre-bowsprit days
The best-known and most successful in offshore racing were the Dee 24 Rondinella and the Dee 27 Pellegrina, both owned and campaigned by Mike & Molly Tomlinson of Liverpool, whose sea base was at Moel-y-Donn on the Menai Straits.
Tjaldur was a hull sister of the much-admired Pellegrina, but Rory and his fastidious crew reckoned that with her marked toe to the forefoot of the keel, she carried to much weather helm. So she was fitted with a robust short walkway bowsprit which made her balance beautifully, and she twice was awarded the ICC Faulkner Cup in Rory’s ownership (he was Commodore too), as well as making an impressively efficient Atlantic cruise by being shipped to America, cruised with the CCA in the Bras d’Or lakes, and then sailed back across the Atlantic in record time from Nova Scotia to Kinsale.
Tjaldur’s bowsprit earning its keep in Sean Whiston of PBY&BC’s ownership. Photo: PBYBC
CHALLENGE OF MAINTAINING WOODEN BOATS IN IRISH CLIMATE
Subsequently she was in the ownership of the late Sean Whiston of Poolbeg Y&BC, but owners since then have found the challenge of maintaining such a totally timber boat in the Irish climate to be beyond them, and at least one project for total restoration has foundered as Tjaldur’s condition steadily declined.
But now this rare boat (only four Dee 27s were built) has been bought by David & Emer Kelly (she’s the legendary Half Ton Shamrock sailor Tony Farrelly’s daughter) of the Dublin Bay Water Wag Class, who are in no doubt about the scale of the project they have undertaken. Tjaldur is now with Liam Hegarty in his very special boatyard at Oldcourt on the River Ilen above Baltimore, and the restoration/rebuild work will get fully under way in the shed there through this summer, after the early-season Oldcourt rush has been cleared.
Tjaldur with Ruth Heard in the galley during the American cruise. The distinctive strength-conferring Peter Brett-style “keyhole semi-bulkheads” will be retained in the restoration at Oldcourt. Photo: Des Barrington
The 1960s are now a long time ago. Restoring Tjaldur is a worthwhile project in itself, unhampered by an excess of historical baggage. She will be a fine boat in her own right, and now primarily linked to her restoring owners. Yet in her back-story are some notable people who shaped the way we sail today. This is definitely a boat quietly worthy of respect on all counts.
