Below: the dining table on the
aft deck is from the Princess
Grace era and the Wotherspoons
like eating outdoors. Bottom: the
main salon features a rosewood
and chrome Pieff table and
Merrow Associates side tablesless space. The large teak box in the pilothouse
that held the old SSB radio has become a
handy wine cellar. Large and cumbersome AC
units have been removed to free up cabin space
and smaller, more efficient units have been
installed directly into existing furniture.
A former AC cover in the main salon now
houses a retractable flatscreen TV and Sonos
sound system. One old fashioned feature that
the Wotherspoons kept, much to their captain’s
delight, are the sturdy Caterpillar engines. “No
electronics,” he says with a grin.
Once the hull, systems and wiring
were up to standard, Janet could get
started on the interiors. “When we
bought Stalca she had been ‘done up’
on an awful royal theme – lots of gold
and purple; tassels, chandeliers and
things. It’s very romantic that this
yacht is almost 50, but I didn’t want
to do it as a ‘princess yacht’ because
I don’t think that the Grimaldis lived
on it like that. The galley is huge and
very comfortable. I can really see
Grace in there, getting a meal ready herself. Even the
pilothouse is big, the whole family could have been in
there, helming, talking and watching the world go by.
While there is a lot of me in the interior now, I tried to
keep her as original as possible, respecting her patina.”
Keeping the patina meant sanding off layers of
varnish that made banisters sticky, but waxing the teak
paneling; cleaning up the portholes, but respecting their
original finish; deciding that chrome, rather than
brass, would be the metal finish of choice throughout.
Stripping back the princess effect meant removing a
bookcase, a formal dining area, and other fussy touches
from the main salon. “Stalca is a girl from the 1970s and
so am I, so I decided to embrace it,” Janet says. “It was a
wonderful time to be a teenager, after the barriers had
been broken down in the 1960s and before computers.
We really enjoyed the sense of freedom. I’m about the
156