C/O OLIVER ORPHAUS6 CLASSIC BOAT AUGUST 2016BLITZEN
Above: the skeletal stage of the re-build, with new frames in place
Right: the stripped-out (by 1937 standards) interior, in Brazilian mahoganyT
o the general observer of today, the
iconography of 1930s America must
surely revolve around the great
depression and New Deal, the Hoover
Dam, the Labor Day hurricane – even
the tail end of prohibition. Here was a
nation of seekers stuck between the frying pan of poverty
and the fire of war, but it was not without at least two
unstoppable forces: the industrious brilliance of Olin
Stephens and the rising popularity of smoking. It was
this marriage that created the yacht Blitzen.
The firm of Sparkman & Stephens was only seven
years into its ascendancy at this point. In time, Olin
Stephens would become the greatest yacht designer of his
age, planting his flag, with brother Rod, at the summit of
the evolution in long-keeled yacht design. Among the
Stephens’ singular achievements was the design of every
America’s Cup winner bar one, for four decades straight.
In 1937, the 31-year-old RJ ‘Dick’ Reynolds Jr, heir of
the Reynolds tobacco firm, asked Olin Stephens to draw
him a yacht. Reynolds Tobacco is a name largely
forgotten now, but the company was responsible for the
famous Camel cigarettes, the first popular cigarette
brand in the world. By the age of 28, young Dick had
inherited US$25 million from the early death of his
father, an immense sum that enabled him to lead a life of
Gatsbian excess, enjoying horses, booze (too much of
that vice as it transpired – he caused a fatality while
drink-driving in England), cigars, parties, grand houses
and, of course, yachts. He had more than a few over the
years, but Blitzen was the one he bought to try his hand
at racing. He named the yacht after his first wife
Elizabeth ‘Blitz’ McCaw Dillard – he would have a few
more of those too, before his death in 1964. The word is
also German for ‘lightning’. Dick Reynold’s life is a tale
of commercial astuteness, personal and public generosity,
huge political influence – and raw hedonism. From hisbiographer Heidi Schnakenberg (Kid Carolina, published
2010) we discover a philanthropic democrat who is
widely thought to have secured Roosevelt’s third term by
his campaign funding. He was a shrewd investor in the
technologies of the day, like colour motion pictures, and
is credited with rescuing Delta Air Lines from oblivion.
During the war, he served as a navigator with the US
Navy, earning distinction for his valour. He was also, it
would transpire, a determined and skilled yachtsman.
Blitzen, S&S design number 221, is based on design
number 85, Avanti, herself a marriage of Dorade and the
considerably beamier Stormy Weather, a proposition
that was sanctioned by tank-testing. Stephens, around
the 1930s, became a proponent of tank-testing, although
by his own admission he is “not so sure” that Avanti
(and thus Blitzen) was so trialled. The consensus is
‘probably’. Nevertheless, he added that “Avanti’s hull
form was one of those that was hard to improve.”
Blitzen was given the same lines “with some minor
snubbing at the ends to save measured length and the
incorporation of a centreboard. Aside from such small
details, the real hull improvement came only later with
the separation of keel and rudder.”
The real difference was in the rig. Avanti flew the
inboard yawl rig that Stephens famously introduced for
his first offshore yacht (and only fourth ever design)
Dorade in 1930, and is clearly identifiable as belonging
to that family of yachts that are enjoying such a strong
resurgence in classic racing these days. Blitzen though,
was ahead of her time. She’s a bermudan cutter with a
175 per cent genoa and relatively short-footed mainsail.
To control this beast of a headsail, Stephens specified a
large coffee-grinder winch on the aft deck. Other features
that mark her out as a racing yacht are relatively light
hull construction (although nothing outside the usual
parameters) and in another progressive stroke, a fairly
stripped-out interior, something that would still have