48 http://www.yachtingmonthly.com November 2017
Jester: Hasler's
solo pioneer
The boats we sail reflect trailblazing designs of the past.
Clare McComb investigates what made Blondie Hasler’s
Jester such an innovative and important yacht
W
ashing a seasickness
pill down with a
celebratory swig of
gin at the start of the
second OSTAR in
1964, Lieutenant Colonel ‘Blondie’
Hasler (DSO OBE) was feeling quietly
confident about the voyage ahead.
Everything had been ocean-
tested this time. Last time, he had
fought opposition and indifference
for over three years to organise his
‘brainchild’, the inaugural single-
handed transatlantic race in 1960. The
original half-crown challenge accepted
by Sir Francis Chichester had always
been underpinned by their intention
‘to develop suitable boats, gear,
supplies and techniques for single-
handed ocean crossings under sail’.
Blondie’s own-design, Jester, had
risen to the challenge perfectly then,
and he was sailing her again now,
heading from Plymouth to Newport,
Rhode Island, via the more dangerous
northern route, which, though shorter,
is visited by icebergs and thick fog.
Blondie never shirked danger, just as
when he led his ‘Cockleshell Heroes’,
commandos paddling camouflaged
canoes up the Gironde river in pitch
darkness to fix limpet mines to
German shipping in the Second World
War. He thrived on adventure.
Jester was extraordinary, not
just because she was painted bright
yellow. Her Folkboat hull, (25ft LOA,
displacement about 2.5 tonnes), was
equipped with a 240 sq ft junk rig, a
Chinese-type battened lugsail on asingle unstayed mast. The rig could
be controlled from amidships via a
vertical whipstaff, which was then
connected to a short tiller projecting
through the transom. There was a
halyard, a sheet, a line to close the
yard up to the mast and one to haul
down the sail. That was it.
She was steered by a wind vane,
mounted on the stern, which adjusted
a small trim tab on the trailing edge
of the rudder, keeping the boat at
a constant angle to the wind, night
and day. There was no engine. A
circular hatch, with its rotating spray
hood, allowed the helmsman to fine
tune things standing with his head
poking out, like the commander of
a miniature submarine. The lack of
cockpit and curved coachroof addedHeritage
When the original Jester was
abandoned after storm damage on her
way back from the 1988 OSTAR, the
Jester Trust was formed to raise funds
and build an exact replica for her
heartbroken skipper, Mike RicheyJester defined: junk rig, Folkboat hull,
circular hatch and windvane steering