RAKET
ideal. Ellen was attending a boatbuilding school on
Skeppsholmen in Stockholm at the time and also had
five other boats to maintain. So Raket was left
standing in Ellen’s backyard waiting for her time to
come, while Ellen’s conscience gnawed.
Through friends, Ellen knew about the boat Loris,
one of Sweden’s most famous motor yachts, and
calculated that the owners, Mats Arrhénborg and
Joakim Irebjer, seemed to have an interest in antique
wooden yachts. “Do you want another one?” she
asked them. Still standing there with the dust in their
hair and holes in their wallets after the extensive
renovation of the just completed Loris, they looked at
Ellen with a crooked smile and said: “Sure”.
In their minds, too, the age-old struggle began
between reason, which told them not to take on such a
big project so soon after the last one, and the feeling
that they would never forgive themselves if they did
not. Reason, however, was swept aside when they
visited Ellen’s backyard and lifted up a corner of the
tarpaulin covering Raket. The boat changed hands
again, but this time things would be different.
At the bottom of the original lines drawing for
Raket (drawing number 561), designer Carl Gustaf
Pettersson’s wrote: “9.75m x 1.50m high speed boat
for client C Wikström.” In those days, at the very start
of the 20th century, high speed meant that with a 30hp
Buffalo engine she could hit 12 knots. The boat was
open and had two cockpits, with rounded coamings up
front and in the stern. The client, a young man called
Carl Wikström, who studied at the Stockholm Faculty
of Philosophy, contracted the Tysslinge Yard just
outside Södertälje with the commission.
Philosophy may have been his degree, but after a
few years he became a wholesaler and timber factory
owner. Possibly he now led a more comfortable life
financially and so he ordered a new cabin top for
Raket. Once more this was to a design by Pettersson
and built by the Tysslinge yard. The result is what we
see today as the boat’s semi-open saloon, a little more
practical for summer journeys to the island of Maderö,
near Ingarö in the Stockholm archipelago, where he
had a summer house. Until 1931 Raket is listed in the
annual yearbooks of the Royal Swedish Yacht Clubwith Wikström as her owner, before she disappears
from both the records as well as history. Two
generations later she emerges again, somewhat faded
but just as beautiful, on a trailer on a small
country road near Värmdö.
Their new find gave Mats and Joakim renewed
energy and they began working in their workshop in
Gustavsberg, where Loris had also received her facelift.
Boat builder Greger Andersson was responsible for the
overall work and planning and worked along with
Kasper Enge. A new keel, 40m of planking, a number
of deck beams and beam stringers and a few metres
gunwale and deck later, everyone was surprised and
overjoyed at the result. “Varnishing and painting her
was like a reward for the hard work,” Mats said.
I join Mats on a trip aboard on a chilly but sunny
autumn day. Mats acknowledges that not everything is
original. The chart light, for instance, did not exist, but
a period lantern, a rare find, does good service and
blends nicely into the environment on board.
A boat like this must have her luxury touches and
Mats opens a little wooden door on the port side of
the cabin. Voilà – out pops a convenient glass holder,
modern, but well hidden behind the old mahogany
when not in use.
The steady rumbling from beneath the foredeck is a
pointer to the biggest change. Where once Raket
housed a 30hp petrol engine, there now sits a
Chevrolet V8. This gives her a maximum speed of
about 25 knots, which is double what she would have
reached when she was young. Top speed is reached at
just over 3,000 revolutions per minute, whichTop, left to right:
A joy to drive but
no tight corners
please; the later
addition of the
semi-saloon
Above: a
modern flip-out
drinks holderBelow: As well as
work up top, she
has a new keel
and 40m of
fresh planking