designed a new rig for her. The result was a 58ft-high
deck-stepped mast (taken from an 8-metre called Spica)
positioned three foot further aft, with a much shorter
boom and a sail area of 650sq ft. A new set of sails
was paid for by the War Damage Commission.
Cynthia had another narrow escape in 1949. She
had a gas leak which Dick was trying to locate while
crew member Charlie Butterfield was smoking a pipe.
The resulting explosion lifted the deck but luckily
Dick’s concussion was the only human damage. After
Cynthia was repaired, she had her most successful racing
season to date in 1950 – Dick later called it her “annus
mirabilis” - with 19 flags (including nine first places)
in 26 starts. She was up against the radical Laurent
Giles-designed Myth of Malham but gave her a good run
for her money, finishing just three minutes behind her in
the Plymouth to Santander race. “Any race that Myth
was not raced that year, Cynthia won,” wrote Dick.
But, as Dick and Joe later noted, there followed a year
of obscurity so they converted her to an unusual gaff
sloop rig. The tall mast and short boom were retained,
and she was given a gaff that was so short the mainsail
and topsail leaches blended into each other in a fair line
which allowed her to keep the fixed masthead backstay.
It was effectively, in all but name, still a Bermudan rig
but it allowed her to gain a rating advantage while still
maintaining a competitive performance to windward.
The result wasn’t entirely satisfactory, however, because,
as they wrote in a magazine article: “The irony of the
situation is that the precious reduction in rating has been
whipped from under our very noses by that rapacious
measurer, who finds that Cynthia has put on weight
in her old age and qualified for an extra freeboard
penalty!” It is thought that she only kept this radical gaff
rig for a season or two before reverting to Bermudan.RIG REDUCTION
Sometime in the 1960s the rig was reduced in height by
12ft “to improve her handicap rating and be kinder to
a now aging old lady,” Dick wrote. “And this gave her
many more years of enjoyable day sailing and Round
the Island races and other Solent-based day racing.”
During the 1970s – during which, in 1975, she took
pride of place alongside Jolie Brise at the RORC’s half
centenary celebrations in St Katherine’s Dock – her
ownership changed. Firstly, John Hoult (Joe’s cousin)
bought a share, and then Dick and Joe’s shares were
passed on to Dick’s three sons. Of those sons it was
Richard Ritchie who sailed Cynthia a great deal from
the mid-1980s to the 1990s. “John was so generous.,”
Richard told me. “He trusted me to use her most
weekends in the summer with my university friends,