Craftsmanship
CLASSIC BOAT SEPTEMBER 2016 85SECTION HEAD
SUB SECTIONEdited by Steffan Meyric Hughes: +44 (0)207 349 3758
Email: [email protected]
Yard NewsROWHEDGE, ESSEX
Stella to the Med
It is more than 50 years since Kim Holman drew the
26ft (8m) Stella sloop for east coast sailors, taking its
first Burnham Week by storm, writes Beryl Chalmers.
Stella restorations have gathered pace in recent
years. One that we missed a few years ago, but which
has been making waves racing ever since, is L’Etoile,
found by Tim Wood aged just 16 in a mud-berth at
Rowhedge on Essex’s River Colne. At that time he had
just enrolled at the IBTC in Lowestoft, where he took
L’Etoile and worked on her in his spare time, replacing
frames and planks and sorting the deck and cabin trunk.
After graduating, then a two-year stint as shipwright
on Allegra Gucci’s 213ft (65m), three-masted wooden
schooner Creole, he returned to L’Etoile to finish the
job, rebuilding the interior, rigging and mast. Since
then, she has taken firsts at West Mersea Week and
Suffolk Yacht Harbour classics and a third at last
year’s Panerai Classic Week.
This September, Tim will head for L’Etoile’s first
overseas regatta in Cannes (Régates Royales) with
winning crew Ian Bloomfield, Becky Robinson, Stef
Goodwin and Chris Bash. Henri Lloyd has offered
some crew clothing as sponsorship. Even better, the
restoration of L'Etoile has led to more work restoring
and fixing Stellas. Contact [email protected]BERYL CHALMERSFINLAND
CB helps launch
new business
In January, we shortlisted a clinker dayboat simply called J10
in our annual awards (Traditional New Build under 40ft). Her
builder Jari Vanhatalo recently emailed us to say that after this
accolade, he “finally got some courage and established a
boatshop – Miilu-Boats Ltd. We have now launched the first
new build of our company.” The boat is a Columbia dinghy,
designed in the early 1900s by Nat Herreshoff. She’s clinker-
built, 11ft 6in (3.5m) long, 4ft (1.2m) wide and weighs about
150lb/68kg (Herreshoff liked light boats). She has a 60sq ft
(5.6m^2 ) mainsail by WB Sails in Helsinki.
The khaya planking is copper riveted, and sternpost,
transom and keel are in white oak. The ribs are steam-bent
ash and the seating is walnut. The mostly bronze hardware is
from London’s Davey & Company. The proud new owner will
keep her in southern Finland.
She’s such a little slice of perfection that even her bespoke
beach trailer, in laminated ash, looks period perfect.NETHERLANDS
Adele says ‘Hello’ to Royal HuismanThe aluminium-hulled, globe-trotting 180ft (55m) ketch Adele has become the first
boat to benefit from the extended refit hall at Royal Huisman’s Huisfit division for
superyachts. She was designed by Andre Hoek for long-range voyaging and built by
Vitters in 2005. Since then, she has thoroughly fulfilled her design brief under her
original, and now her current owner, but the hard use meant that the refit was a big
one, involving a new teak deck, much caprail replacement, a complete re-paint and
re-varnish inside and out, and an overhaul of all systems.IBTC
Portsmouth’s
first graduates
The first 10 students studying
for their Practical Wooden
Boatbuilding Diploma at the
amazing Boathouse Four
building (Yard Visit, CB337),
have now graduated.JARI VANHATALOC/O HUISFIT