CLASSIC BOAT NOVEMBER 2015 CLASSIC BOAT NOVEMBER 2015 69The Laurent Giles sloop is the boat to beat in the Solent. We joined owner Giovanni
Belgrano and crew during Cowes Week
STORY MARINA JOHNSONSAILING WITH
WHOOPERONBOARDI
will always remember the first time I sat up and really noticed Jurassic coast off Dorset on a 38ft yacht last Whooper. I was cruising along the
summer on quite a lively reach but not in any particular hurry, when another yacht came over the horizon and slowly caught us up. A similar
size, she gradually slipped past us, so we had plenty of time to get a good look at the gleaming varnish work, and the distinctive hull shape and transom. She seemed
to use every wave for a bit of extra performance, and was cutting effortlessly through the sea without any movement other than forwards. I remarked at the time
that she looked like she was racing, because of the way that she was so expertly sailed. But there was no racingfleet about in the area at that time. It turned out that Whooperretired from the RORC Myth of Malham race due to the did have a race crew on board – she had
heavy seas, and was making her way back to her home port of Cowes from Weymouth. It also turned out that she was on the angle of sail that suits her most and at
which she excels, a beam reach.WhooperFrom that point on I was a committed admirer of , and that admiration turned to awe this year
when for the second time in her life, the first being in 2004, she won the JP Morgan Asset Management Round the Island Race on corrected time. To underline
the victory, she won the EFG Round the Island Race during Panerai British Classic Week in July. Last year,she won Panerai British Classic Week overall, winning every race. If it hadn’t been for her owner’s prolonged stint working abroad, there would no doubt have been
even more victories. So when the invitation came to sail on board during Aberdeen Asset Management Cowes Week for a day, it was a no brainer, a chance to
experience the yacht up close.that morning at Cowes, dubbed Wet Thursday, the first Ignoring the pouring rain which persisted through
thing that struck me about combination of all things traditional and modern on the boat. The decks are of teak, as you would expect, while Whooper was the
the mast is of spruce. Yet the boom is pure black carbon, and so are the state-of-the-art North racing sails.Italian who has spent most of his career in the UK, with a nine-year spell abroad supporting America’s Cup I’m introduced to owner Giovanni Belgrano, an
campaigns. He explains the set up. “When we are racing the modern yachts, our goal has to be to beat them. So to be competitive we use our modern boom and sails.
When we race against the classics we use our wooden boom and Dacron mainsail. It doesn’t change our rating either way, and we might be marginally slower against
the classics, but it is important to sail in the spirit of tradition when we are amongst them. I am as strongly committed to racing with the British Classic Yacht Club
as I am going head to head with the modern IRC fleet.”Whooper was designed by Laurent Giles and waswooden boom and Dacron mainsail, Whooper with
the set-up she uses for classic eventsGUIDO CANTINI / SEASEE.COMLETTERS
Send your letters (and also any replies, please) to:
Classic Boat, Jubilee House, 2 Jubilee Place,
London SW3 3TQ
email: [email protected]Whooper’s history
I have just opened the November issue of Classic Boat to fi nd an
article on the Laurent Giles-designed Whooper.
Coincidentally, I recently purchased from a secondhand bookshop
here in Hobart a copy of The Yachtsman’s Annual and Who’s Who
1938-1939, inside of which I discovered a brokerage listing that
appears to be for the same yacht.
The LOA and draft are diff erent but everything else seems to point
to this being the same yacht and I wonder whether the “serving
offi cer who has been posted to East Africa” and is said to have “sailed
her to the Baltic and to the eastern Mediterranean and back” and to
have “lavished money on” the yacht, was Cdr Arthur Johnson RNVR,
referred to in the article. If so, he must have owned the yacht for at
least 24 years. The listing shows the engine as having been
overhauled in 1963, so must have been made some time after that.
Philip Jackson SC, Barrister, Hobart, TasmaniaIt may not be strictly true for Theo Rye (Classic Boat, October
2015) to assert that William Fife and his assistant Robert
Balderston took “little or no account” of any rule when
designing Hallowe’en in the autumn of 1925.
The newly published measurement rule of the recently
formed Off shore Racing Club made scant input to the overall
concept, but its stipulation that yachts for the club’s races
could not be more than 50ft (15.2m) LWL or 70ft (21.3m) LOA
was what decided Hallowe’en’s basic dimensions.
Thus her designed waterline length of 47ft (14.3m) allowed
for three feet of ‘insurance’, as she would probably be a little
longer in seagoing trim when measured afl oat before the
Fastnet Race of 1926. But how she seems to have acquired an
extra foot of overall length since 1925 is a matter for
speculation – would she originally have been measured on
deck within the bulwarks?
Certainly she was a startling leap in off shore racing design,
so much so that many ORC members thought it unsporting to
have a boat of maximum size, let alone one designed for
speed by William Fife. With her clearly defi ned keel profi le,
Hallowe’en was even an advance on the ‘Britannia ideal’ which
may have fi rst appeared in 1893, but still was thought of as
much too modern for seagoing by many in 1925.
W M Nixon, Cork
A leap in design
We hope that CB readers will be able to enlighten us as to the current whereabouts of an L Frances Herreshoff -
designed, 71ft (21.6m) ketch named Landfall, completed in 1931 for Paul Hammond of Boston by Abeking & Rasmussen
in time for the Transatlantic Race of that year, and subsequently owned at diff erent times by members of our
respective families. This vessel has a long and illustrious history, including being captained in the late 1930s by a
little-known but extraordinary British World War II SOE operative and war hero, CMB “Mike” Cumberlege. She was
salvaged from Marseille harbour after the war, entered the Med charter trade, and appeared in the Ava Gardner and
Humphrey Bogart fi lm The Barefoot Contessa. We have managed to trace her as far as an advertised sale in Florida in
1987, but there the trail goes cold. Any information regarding her current location would be greatly appreciated, as
time is short for several elderly persons who, for sentimental reasons, would like to go aboard her one last time.
Derek Michalski, executive editor, classicsailboats.orgWhere is Landfall?