Classic Boat – July 2019

ANNA

saloon below flow effortlessly together, connected by

purposeful but refined wood detailing that came together

with great effort.

“I must have gone through 20 interior drawings,”

recalls Coolidge. “This involved a lot of hand-carving.

At the end of the day it’s a carpenter carving to a

drawing.” She added that she had never drawn hand-

carved details. “It was fantastic. Really exciting. We were

pushed to be particularly excellent.”

MOVING TRADITIONS FORWARD

If you don’t know who Joel White is, you should. In his

1997 New York Times obituary, John Wilson summed

up his influence on global sailing boat design by stating

“In a world gone crazy for gadgets and goo-gaws on

boats, he preserved a sense of elegance and purity.”

When White’s two W-Class 76-footers, White Wings

and Wild Horses, were launched in the late 1990s, the

yachting world was speechless. Fanciful yet sparse sheer

lines, towering 95ft carbon masts, sleek varnished cabin

houses and powerful, trim underbodies with bulb keels

and spade rudders. The spirit of tradition type had

arrived in earnest.

Anna is a descendant of White’s brilliance. And

though, side by side, the boats would draw some

commonality, Stephens has hidden much of his

development under the skins of the hull’s wood veneers.

“In the early days of spirit of tradition, we were still

drawing from the pretty narrow design window of the

early 20th Century Universal and International rule

boats,” says Stephens, who designed the W-46 after

White’s death. “These still had long overhangs and

Building with all

the ancient and

modern tools, the

team used

precision and

creativity in

3D-modelling,

joinery and

finishing details