In this time of year when ancient friendships and warm acquaintance seem doubly precious, some gifts mean more than others. Yet I'm not sure that, when Paul Adamthwaite in Canada sent the scan of a page of the October 1994 Yachting World, he fully realised just what a personal pearl for Christmas 2024 enjoyment he was providing in this memory from the days when paper ruled.
Before the Internet made things easier for controlling the unmeasured tonnage of words from Nixon Verbiage Industries plc, peak production saw regular time-dictated output for nine different printed dead tree outlets, while there were sorties elsewhere to magazine publishers in every continent except Antarctica.
Days most definitely not beyond recall from thirty years ago with a magazine piece from October 1994. The "Nixon At Large" column featured in the international magazine Yachting World for 25 unbroken years. The story here focuses on Stormy Weather and her then owner, Paul Adamthwaite, who voyaged more than a quarter of a million miles with this classic Sparkman & Stephens-designed yacht.
THE ALL-SEEING IRISH DIASPORA
Not that these were all kosher usage. But the Irish diaspora kept an eye on it. A friend home from Australia for Christmas commented on a well-illustrated article of mine, a work of some heft in a leading Australian sailing magazine. I didn't know a thing about it, other than that it had been originally published in London, and when contacted they knew nothing either. But our family lawyer – a sailing friend of course – said we could have a bit of fun with this piracy, "but the only people to make anything of significance from it will be m'learned friends".
A BIT OF SPORT
As it promised a bit of sport, we blattered ahead with international litigation. And in due course, our ex-Pat mate in Australia got his share of the dosh, a princely £11. This was in those days before new currencies emerged to further complicate things for a solo-working non-technical recluse, who only knew that his customary Olivetti Lettera 32 was at or near its regular 18-month replacement date when he sent the carriage hurtling across to stop with a crash and be ready for the first precious word of the next line, only to find the carriage finally broke free for a final glorious Flight of Death, terminating somewhere behind the heap of dusty sailing magazines in the corner.
"The Fife of Fifes" – the first classic saluted in the early morning at Glandore in July 1994 was the 1938 Solway Maid, designer and builder William Fife's own unfettered concept of what a yacht of this size should be like
HEAP OF DUSTY MAGAZINES
That "heap of dusty sailing magazines" is really what this is all about. As NVI plc soared to full production, and then soared again beyond that, it was impossible to keep copies of everything published. So we didn't keep anything. We now rely on the forces of cyberspace, someone's nostalgia, and the quest for knowledge of strangers to find some obscure piece referred to by someone else. But for us, it's long invisible, well beyond the horizon astern.
BBC 'BOOK AT BEDTIME'
This can catch you out in other ways. A friend of a friend was in touch in 2023 to say all the usual suspects had come up the night before in a reading of the BBC's Book at Bedtime, part of which featured the Cornish maritime writer Denys Val Baker's take on a spontaneous cruising people's party with the lone Irish skipper of the 25ft Vertue Ice Bird at La Rochelle in 1968.
This was when boats of character like our two (Denys's was a vintage ex-MFV) were made welcome in the town centre marina inside the Vauban fortresses, rather than exiled to the huge new plastic-filled berthing facility far outside the walls.
The exclusive inner harbour at La Rochelle. The best calling card was a classic boat
Things have improved since then to provide more in-town berths, though none so convenient as ours, which were effectively in the town's main square. So naturally our shared good fortune had to be celebrated with the proper gusto, but the subsequent assumption was that what happened in La Rochelle stayed in La Rochelle, and would certainly not be broadcast internationally more than five decades later.
VERY FEW SECRETS IN GLANDORE?
However, what happened in Glandore in 1994 is all here. It was a busy period as we were at peak performance in using the Contessa 35 as a genuine cruiser-racer, even somehow managing the win of an RORC race in 1993, and the annual Round Isle of Man Race the following Spring. So as 1994 was both a Round Ireland Race (third in class) and a Cork Week year, we did both, even if living aboard the boat while racing at Cork Week meant that the inevitable waifs and strays sniffed the on-board food and sensed the hospitable warmth.
This meant that by Week's end, Witchcraft of Howth was the Crosshaven Simon Community Afloat, with chaste accommodation for nine, and basic food if you were punctually on time for the seacooks' specials, for there were two of them and they'd developed a taste for this feeding of numbers during the Round Ireland Race. In due course, the news from the security guards at week's end, when I had to go up the village on an errand, was that my security pass revealed I hadn't gone beyond the RCYC compound all week. It figured.
The Mothership. The slightly-modified 1975 Contessa 35 Witchcraft of Howth in cruising mode, when equipment includes 45 fathoms of self-stowing seven-eighths inch chain, with appropriate anchor and windlass. When the sails were new, she was in the frame in offshore racing, and continues to receive awards for cruising which has been north to the Faroes, south to West Africa, east to St Malo and west to the Azores, with many round Ireland circuits, both racing and cruising. Photo: Kevin Dwyer
Nevertheless it was necessary to decompress with a passage west with that most easygoing and competent of cruising shipmates, the late Aidan Tyrrell. We spent the first evening away from Crosshaven in Kinsale. It says much about Cork Week in the 1990s that super-hospitable Kinsale provided a decompression chamber.
It both relaxed and refreshed us, such that we simply decided to sail on west despite some rain to experience that perfect early morning arrival in Glandore, and a sense of immersion in maritime history at many levels. For Solway Maid under the command of Iain McAllister was very special, as she was built entirely to William Fife's own notions in the vacuum after his yard built the Alfred Mylne-designed 73ft Mariella for a notably commissioning-fussy owner.
This Scotsman seemed to enjoy torturing Scotland's leading designers and craftsmen until they gave of their very best-plus, for as soon as this ultra-handsome new yawl was finished, he promptly sold her to Glasgow whisky magnate Ronnie Teacher, who became so synonymous with the yacht that it was wrongly assumed he was the first owner. William Fife meanwhile retreated into relative peace and created a 53ft pot boiler which was promptly snapped up by Ivan Carr of biscuit maker's Carrs of Carlisle, and so she became Solway Maid.
PADDY BARRY'S ST PATRICK
Paddy Barry's Galway hooker St Patrick returns to Dun Laoghaire after her voyage to New York in 1976
As for Paddy Barry's Galway Hooker St Patrick, she was in the middle of her succession f extraordinary voyages, and we weren't to know that many years later, she was to end her days when an unusually ferocious southerly gale broke her from her morning in the outer anchorage at Glandore.
METHUSALEH MADCAP?
In those days Adrian Spence's ancient Pilot Cutter Madcap was thought to be from 1875, but subsequent research put her further back to 1873, thereby precisely rivalling the Lefroy family of Killaloe's Waterford-built 56ft iron steamship Phoenix for the title of oldest boat in commission in Ireland. The Nita of Lough Gowna pre-dates them all by being built by Bewley & Webb of Dublin in 1868, but she is now an iron shell and it's unlikely she'll ever be in sailing commission again.
Adrian Spence's 1873-built Pilot Cutter Madcap in Greenland waters in 1998. She is now in French ownership, and raced in 2023's Gstaad YC Centenary Yacht Regatta at Cannes
Obviously missing from the lineup is another singular classic, Don Street of Glandore's 1905-built Iolaire. In 1994, Iolaire was Caribbean-based, but in Glandore Don had persuaded his old mate Paul Adamthwaite to bring along his continually-voyaging Sparkman & Stephens 1935 classic Stormy Weather, winner of that year's Fastnet Race and countless other majors, with more than a quarter of a million miles of ocean voyaging logged under Paul's ownership.
THE SING OF THE CLASSIC YACHTS
It has been said here before that we only have to hear the beginning of Frank Sinatra singing The Summer Wind to visualise the best very American designs of Olin Stephens, Phil Rhodes and John Alden slipping sweetly along. But as the origins of that music came from Germany, you'll seldom hear it promoted in the collected songs of Sinatra.
Equally, the vision of the completely restored Stormy Weather as evoked by hearing The Summer Wind was best captured photographically by James Robinson Taylor in the Mediterranean, and not along the coast of New England. So be it. For there's a sacred universality about Stormy Weather that gives her a special relevance wherever she may be. She is somehow both Everyboat, yet utterly unique. Long may she sail.
The Summer Wind - Stormy Weather in all her glory. Like Solway Maid (photo 3) she is seen here sailing Mediterranean Classics style, with no guard-rails. Photo: James Robinson Taylor
The Atlantic wind of southwest Ireland – Stormy Weather carries guard rails to take on the 2015 Rolex Fastnet Race. Photo: Rolex/Kurt Arrigo
