Clarionet: famous meticulously restored yacht

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Clarionet is one of the original Sparkman & Stephens ‘terrible twins’ that started the performance fin keel yacht trend, Nic Compton comes aboard

At just 36 feet 9 inches, the sloop Sparkman & Stephens Clarionet is an unassuming yacht, often overshadowed by bigger competitors on the British classic racing circuit. Again Clarionet helped change the course of yacht design and influenced the shape of most boats since the 1960s.

It’s no wonder, then, that its current owner has gone to the trouble (and expense) of returning it to its original configuration – even if the work has almost certainly ‘de-optimized’ it for racing. His winning days may be over, but something bigger was achieved in the process.

Clarionet was built during a major turning point for yacht design. Designers had been experimenting with fin keels since the 1890s, but the concept only really took off after the resounding success of Bill Lapworth’s Cal40 design in 1963.

Sparkman & Stephens quickly entered the scene, designing their first “daggerboard and fin” design, the 40ft Deb (now sun stone), in 1964. But it was the success of a pair of boats designed for the RORC’s One Ton Rule that convinced Olin Stephens to fully embrace the concept.

Clarionet (S&S drawing no. 1856) and Roundabout (No 1857) were designed for former Admiral’s Cup pals Derek Boyer and Sir Max Aitken. Both yachts had fin keels, centerboard rudders and tailstocks with small inverted crosspieces.

Both were traditionally built at Clare Lallow’s shipyard in Cowes, in mahogany planks on larch frames. They were lightly fitted, mostly in 6mm ply to reduce weight. Or, as Olin Stephens delicately puts it: “The layouts below are similar, simple and clearly geared towards offshore racing.”

After years of development to keep it competitive on the racing circuit, Clarionet has now been restored to its original specifications. Notice the ‘plank boom’. Photo: Nic Compton

Difficult to manage

Both boats took the UK yacht racing scene by storm in their first year, with Clarionet winning Cowes Week and the RORC St Malo race in 1966, and Roundabout winning the round the island race two years in a row in 1966/67. Despite their success, however, they were not without flaws and sometimes proved difficult to control, as Stephens later admitted:

“Despite sharing manifest fault, Clarionet and his close sister Roundabout quickly showed their capability as two of our most successful yachts. They became known as the “Terrible Twins” both for the speed they showed and for their frequent pinouts on rough tracks. Thus, in a single shot, they demonstrated the value – and the danger – of something new: the pioneering use of the separate rudder and keel.

Despite these reservations, the performance of both boats encouraged Olin to use a similar keel on one of Sparkman & Stephens’ most successful designs, the 12-Metre Intrepid. It’s the end of the America’s Cup long keel configuration and, by extension, sailing racing in general. Sailboat design would never be the same again, thanks in part to the exceptional performance of these “terrible twins”.

ClarionetThe career of has not been easy. After her triumphant first year, racing results were decidedly mixed, including finishing 13th out of 21 boats in the 1967 One Ton Cup at Le Havre. Perhaps that’s why, just 18 months after it was built, Boyer took the drastic step of asking Lallows to raise the bridge.

At that time, the RORC racing rule included a mast height factor which was measured from the deck to the top of the mast, and Boyer hoped to gain an advantage by reducing this measurement.

A first photo of Clarionet as it was when first launched

The lallows duly increased the camber of the deck beams so that the foredeck was raised approximately 4 inches in the middle, creating a turtle back effect. As a result, the sides of the cabin were reduced to an ugly corner only 2 inches high in the front, and the two forward portholes had to be removed and blocked off. It was a blunt change that turned out to be unnecessary because within 12 months the rule was changed anyway.

Boyer sold the boat in 1971, and it went through a succession of owners. One of them was JJ Rainworth, who entered her in the first AZAB race (Azores and back) in 1975, finishing a respectable 9th out of 52 boats – two places ahead of Robertson. Goly skippered by Claire Francis.

Two years later she was purchased by George Playfair, whose son, Nick, entered her in the famous 1979 Fastnet race. Clarionet had then been fitted with wheel steering, which locked up shortly after the start of the race. Undaunted, her crew set up the emergency helm and battled within 55 miles of Fastnet Rock before retiring – along with most other boats in their class.

The modern clutch system has been replaced with dedicated halyard winches to original specification with their own “damper” cleats. Photo: Nic Compton

In the mid 1980s the yacht was purchased by John Breakell who based her on the River Orwell in Suffolk. He undertook an extensive refit, including replacing the raised deck and upgrading the boat’s sail wardrobe, adding a new Mylar genoa, Dacron mainsail and some tri-radial sails.

Under Breakell’s tenure, Clarionet returned to winning form, becoming EAORA (East Anglian Offshore Racing Association) overall champion for three years, as well as class winner of the 1987 Fastnet Race.

Her victories continued under her next owner, Paul March, who based the boat in Brighton, taking part in several Fastnets and at least one race around Britain and Ireland. Clarionet was a five-time RORC points champion, even winning her class at Fastnet 2001, when she was 35.

Spinnaker brings a touch of color – otherwise the new sails are in Classic
Cream. Photo: Nic Compton

By 2013, Clarionet had acquired classic status and, under new owners, joined the Solent circuit, winning 1st place at the 2013 Panerai British Classic Week and 2nd in 2014 and 2015.

The difficult choice

The moment Andrew Harvey spotted Clarionet, she had all the trappings of a modern racing yacht, including an aluminum mast, automatic tail winches, laminated sails, ball bearing blocks, a rigid vang and a retractable bowsprit for a spinnaker. asymmetric. It was the natural development of a yacht that had raced hard for decades under multiple classification rules and was destined to win rather than look pretty. But Harvey had other ideas.

“Initially, I thought we would just replace the aluminum mast with a wooden mast,” he says. “But then I looked at the original blueprints and saw how beautiful she originally was. So we had this discussion that, if we just want her to be competitive, there’s a lot of things that we don’t need to do. But my point of view was to make it as original as possible. It would be less competitive and it would be more unwieldy, because of winches, blocks, sails, everything would be more difficult, but who cares?

Clarionet was in the expert hands of Paul Spooner and Mike Barnes, who have extensive experience in restoring yachts designed by William Fife, GL Watson and others, but had not tackled a project built as recently as the 1960s.

The couple researched the boat’s history and, using archival photos and the original drawings – miraculously still filed away in a cupboard at the Lallow shipyard – pieced together what it would have looked like when first laid down. in the water in 1966.

Turning their research into physical reality was the work of Paul Kendall and Tim Frearson at Traditional Shipwright Services in Poole. The biggest job was to lower the deck, which involved installing new deck beams with less camber for the forward three-quarters of the boat, as well as replacing the cabin sides.

But it’s the level of detail achieved by the restoration team that is truly impressive. For example, the plastic tops of the stainless steel uprights were no longer available, so they were painstakingly recreated in CAD and made on a 3D printer. The self-tailing tops were removed from the winches and replaced with single tops machined from solid bronze.

There were a few surprises along the way, including the four halyard winches on the coachroof with their odd one-armed wooden cleats. Although they seem less efficient than the multi-clutch system that replaced them, they have been lovingly reproduced according to the original designs. Likewise, the experimental plank boom, which has been accurately recreated by Collars, as well as the new wooden mast.

Digital readouts were all discontinued in favor of analog gauges supplied by Brookes & Gatehouse. Photo: Nic Compton

As for the sails, all the sophisticated modern sails accumulated over the years have been replaced with a narrow panel mainsail and mitred headsails in ‘Classic Cream’ by Bainbridge Sails.

Retro look

Below decks the original plywood interior had survived remarkably well and just needed a lick of paint, although the search for authenticity saw the modern heads discarded and replaced with a refurbished Blake. The hull also needed little work, despite all the years of racing, but the veneer applied to her transom a few years earlier was removed and repainted, as it was originally.

The simple, utilitarian interior has been constructed primarily from 6mm ply to help reduce the weight of the boat. Photo: Nic Compton

It’s an extraordinary job to make a boat less capable than it was, but having achieved classic yacht status, authenticity was always going to be the holy grail. It’s a process that could give her an advantage under the CIM handicap rule used on classic yacht races in the Mediterranean, but doesn’t find much favor in the IRC system used by the British Classic Yacht Club. In effect, Clarionet finished 6th in class at British Classic Week last year. She did, however, win another accolade: the trophy for best new entrant presented – the closest thing to the regatta to rewarding authenticity. Sometimes the story is more important than the win.

Clarionet Characteristics:

LOA: 11.20m / 36ft 9in
LWL: 8.10m / 26ft 7in
Beam: 2.99m / 9ft 10in
Disorganized: 1.90m / 6ft 3in
Shift: 6,400 kg / 14,110 lbs
Sail area: 51.4m² / 553ft2


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