SAILING
ON THE
SCHOONER
ELEONORA
Sailing Westward’s replica today
takes all the seamanship that
skipper Charlie Barr would have
demanded of his crew in 1910
WORDS AND PHOTOS TOM CUNLIFFE
Y
ou can say what you like about America’s
Cup foil yachts and lightweight Volvo flyers
rattling off 25 knots all day, but until you’ve
sailed rail-down on a 200-ton schooner under
jackyard topsail and gollywobbler, you’ve led a sheltered
life. Schooners have always stirred the romantic in a
seaman’s heart. From the blockade runners of the
American wars through the noble fishermen of the
Grand Banks, they’ve been the stuff of legend, but the
greatest were the racing schooners of the Golden Age
before the outbreak of WW1. Everybody who cares
about yachting has been delighted by the Beken
photograph of William Fife’s Susanne booming down the
Solent with every stitch set. That’s what a schooner
should look like, but she’s long gone. So were they all,
gone with the wind – until Ed Kastelein built a perfect
replica of the Herreshoff masterpiece, Westward.
At 135ft on deck, Westward swept across the Atlantic
in 1910 under Captain Charlie Barr to take eleven firsts
in eleven starts against the pride of Europe. She whipped
the Royal Yacht Squadron and hammered the Kaiser,