52 CLASSIC BOAT AUGUST 2016
south. Her complete restoration, to Lloyd’s, like Tuiga,
took two years; in the meantime, the Klauses also had
Fulmar restored. Kentra was relaunched in 1995 and
duly made her circumnavigation.
Those projects eased Fairlie into a more commercial
way of working, but it was still practically unique in
being dedicated to restoration. Work on Belle Aventure,
Madrigal, the 8-Metres Osborne, Carron II and the
Morgan Giles Siris, and the complete restoration of The
Lady Anne followed in the 1990s. A strip-plank new
build of the gaff cutter Nomad designed by Ed Burnett
and Nigel Irens was in some respects anomalous, but
pointed to the future. There were some difficult periods
but its work was widely recognised for its high quality
and it retained a reputation for authenticity and
attention to detail. Agnelli, the head of Fiat at the time,
had seen Tuiga’s deck and admired it; when he came to
build his Frers carbon race boat Stealth at Green Marine
in 1996, he requested that Fairlie lay the deck, which it
duly did, along with building and fitting what was then a
radically light carbon/nomex interior. Based as it was on
the core of time-served craftsmen who had done their
time as apprentices at Camper & Nicholsons in the
1970s, the working environment at Fairlie was often
gritty, not to say old-fashioned; and over the years a few
failed to make the grade. The many who did had an
excellent grounding in traditional boatbuilding skills,Above: Quite a
legacy – Mariquita
and Tuiga on the
racecoursestencils of the period rather than use their famous red
semi-circle badges on the tacks of her sails; and, most
remarkably, to hand-stitch the entire mainsail. Looking
back it is easy to forget just what a brave idea it was to
rebuild a First Rule 15-M boat, 75ft (22.8m) on deck, tiller
steered with no winches and the best part of 4,000 sqft
(371m^2 ) of sail to control. Walker and his team reached
out to the likes of Harry Spencer and Spencer Rigging,
and thankfully found the skills were only dormant and
not totally forgotten. Heading out on to the Solent for
her first sail trails in the autumn of 1992 most people
understood Walker’s decision to fit her with (removable
but unoriginal) stanchions and lifelines (Obrist, when he
saw them, was said to be less understanding).
Alongside Tuiga there was a growing collection of
yachts awaiting restoration including Miquette
(12-Metre), The Lady Anne (15-Metre), Fulmar
(8-Metre) and Mariquita (19-Metre). Even by Obrist’s
standards it was an audacious scheme and as soon as
Tuiga was finished in 1993 she was for sale. Eventually
she was bought by the Yacht Club de Monaco, where
she has been a perfect figurehead for the club ever since.
Friends of Obrist, Ernst & Doris Klaus, then
approached Fairlie, keen to have a yacht restored for a
round-the-world trip. Duncan was following the
stop-start work on Kentra, a 1923 Fife ketch in Scotland,
and finally managed to buy her at auction and bring her