If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then Dublin Bay sailors can walk very tall indeed. Their selections over the years of various One Design concepts have spread worldwide among discerning owners, who appreciated that the Dublin Bay sailors’ ability to coax designs out of international names such as William Fife III and Alfred Mylne provided ready access to genuine gold standard plans for construction anywhere in the world by capable shipwrights.
And in truth it didn’t stop with the boat designs for DBSC by Fife and Mylne in the 1890s and early 1900s. The 1900-version of the world’s 1887-founded oldest One-Design class, the 14ft Dublin Bay Water Wags by Dun Laoghaire boatbuilder J E Doyle’s talented daughter Maimie, was the blueprint for an able boat which was taken up elsewhere, some of them in very distant sailing centres.
The Maimie Doyle Water Wag design of 1900 spread from Dun Laoghaire to North Wales and other much more distant sailing centres. They are seen here racing on Lough Ree.
In those days, female yacht designers were rare, and in the claustrophobic world of Kingstown sailing, Doyle used to get mocked for the fact that his daughter created elegant designs from his own original rough ideas. In fact, he was so riled by it all that he refused to allow the designs to be published unless they were credited to J E Doyle. But sailing journos were as contrary a bunch in those days as they are now, so they always found a way of letting everyone know that it was Maimie’s creation, regardless of what was said in the official records.
Thus when one of our secret agents in Australia - Lee Condell, originally of Limerick – came up with the news that the 52ft Granuaile of 1905 Dun Laoghaire origins was up for sale Down Under, all bells rang and all lights flashed to remind us that this was one of Maimie Doyle’s finest creations.
A masterpiece. The lines of the currently Australian-based 52ft Granuaile, designed in 1905 by Maimie Doyle and built by her father J E Doyle in Dun Laoghaire
But a recent search for something else altogether revealed that in 1948, a shrewd Australian owner secured the Alfred Mylne plans from 1938 for the Dublin Bay 24, and the result was Wathara. And in her early days, Wathara was much the same as the standard DB24, as spectacularly revealed in this photo of the Martin brothers with Adastra doing a spot of showing off as they head seaward into the gusty westerly curling round the end of the West Pier in Dun Laoghaire.
The DB24 Adastra showing all she’s got as the Martin brothers drive her through a gust of wind curling round the end of Dun Laoghaire’s West Pier.
But over the years, Wathara has been up-dated with mods, including a cute little retroussé transom which might well have been inspired by the 12 Metres of Australia’s great America’s Cup-challenging days. The coachroof has been replaced and lengthened, and she has been given a more modern fractional rig, while the owner has been unable to resist demonstrating that he knows a very skilled stainless steel fabricator, as the formerly elegant stemhead has been given an unsightly shiny protective snout, though thankfully that could be disguised by a lick of white paint.
Vintage parade in Sydney Harbour – Wathara (foreground) with (left) an Arthur Robb-designed Lion Class sloop (twice winners of Sydney-Hobart Race), while beyond is one of those Oz flyers which made Rolly Tasker famous.
Wathara is for sale at Aust $30,000, which is a very modest €19,000, and it suggests she may not be worth bringing back to Ireland. But why bring her to Ireland? After all, these days you’ll find many of the classiest new Irish boats in Croatia. So why not acquire the only DB24 in Australia, and keep her there. For in these WFH days, you can work from anywhere, and avoiding the depths of the Irish winter with two or three months of sailing your own little bit of Dublin Bay in Australia might be just the ticket.
Be warned, however, that it isn’t always sunny. In searching out some images of Wathara, we came across this one of her in a boat-hoist being overseen by the owner, who is sheltering from a Sydney downpour under an umbrella. Is this climate change? It’s certainly the first time we’ve seen a photo of the Australian sailing scene in which an umbrella is actually being used as a shield against rain.
Wathara in the boat-hoist clearly reveals that she’s a Dublin Bay 24. And it is also revealed that – just sometimes - it rains in Oz.
In fairness to the other great Scottish designer who was used by Dublin Bay sailors, it has to be said that the designs of William Fife for DBSC were also re-purposed, although the best-known DBSC re-purposing was the Mylne-designed Zanetta, which was built in Scotland in 1918 and was a DB21 with a simpler rig – she ended her days as a Bermuda-rigged cruising sloop in the Clyde in the 1960s.
But it has only recently been revealed that the lovely Rosemary III, a Fife-designed Bermuda-rigged 9-ton cruiser built by Fife of Fairlie in 1925, is basically the hull of a Dublin Bay 25 with a plank added to the topsides, and the long classic counter finishing with a more clearly-defined and elegantly-curved little transom. She’s lovely. Those Dublin Bay sailors of around 1900, they certainly had an eye for a boat.
The Scottish-built Zanetta of 1918 was a 1902-designed DB21 with a simpler rig
The classic 1925-vintage 9-ton Fife cruiser Rosemary III is actually the 1898-vintage DB25 design with a plank added, and the counter stern slightly modified in the curved transom.
