ANNA
Anna was at the tip of an evolution. Her beam was
markedly wider than others I saw that day. Her transom,
still refined and elegant, a touch wider too. But her
proportions spoke of the powerful lines of S&S and the
deck joinery revealed the finest the British could attain at
the turn of the century, a standard often unmatched in
contemporary attempts.
Anna is considered a spirit-of-tradition yacht: modern
fin keel, rudder and underbody, with an efficient rig and
sail controls, but with a layer of aesthetic charm and
precision, craftsmanship and history, that connects the
object to the beauty of a past the world is not yet ready
to forget.
Launched in 2017, she was supposed to be bigger. She
was supposed to have a finer transom. She was supposed
to look a lot like a Fife. But she nears perfection. And in
the 20-year-old genre of the spirit of tradition, she is the
state of the art.THE ART OF COMPROMISE
Anna’s owners and designer Bob Stephens of Stephens
Waring Yacht Design don’t shy away from the fact that
this grand and elegant, large yacht, is actually a “really
big daysailer.” The type can be confusing. Do you need
65 feet of boat to enjoy a day on the water? But Anna
actually started out, in her first iteration, much bigger- closer to 80 feet.
Stephens says that thoughts of extended cruising in
the Caribbean drove the size to include comfortable
accommodations for owners, guests and crew. Visiting
five yards in Maine to select a builder, the owner saw a
65-footer being built and it made more sense to him than
the 80-plus footers. “He asked me, ‘Why can’t the crew
just stay in an apartment?’” recalls Stephens, who has
helped design the archetypical spirit of tradition yachts
Goshawk, Isobel and the W-46. “It became evident that
the real use was for daysailing.”
With an updated design brief for daysailing as often
as possible, some classic racing, and short offshore hops
S
howcasing a boat at any classic yacht regatta in
Newport, Rhode Island is not for the faint of
heart. “Blending in” means being perfect, in
every way. We are not just talking about the
lustre of endless layers varnish or brightly polished
bronze, or even matching white lines and crew uniforms.
The proportion of staysail to yankee to mainsail and
mizzen must be flawless. The sheerline cannot waver
from the exceptional lines of Stephens, Alden and
Burgess. And if a boat has all this, then it must be sailed
balanced, barely disturbing the cobalt blue ruffles of a
Narragansett Bay sea breeze.
Late last summer, in a 15-knot breeze, one such
regatta was underway as a parade of yachts sliced their
way upwind towards the finish line off the tip of Rose
Island and its diminutive, homely lighthouse. Every boat
was sailed to perfection, toerail just kissing the white
foam created by the bow wave and occasionally buried
for a few seconds as a puff of wind rolled down the
Jamestown hills and pressed the mostly slender 1920s
and 30s boats on their ears.
I was sailing our portly little schooner (Magic, last
month’s CB) downwind, as we like to sail, that day,
admiring these beauties, all famous in the annals of
sailing history, until one steed turned us around, literally.
I stared and instinctively turned the helm like one
catching a spontaneous street concert by, say, The
Rolling Stones (you decide). The 65-footer was Anna,
and I had heard about her.
What stopped us literally in our tracks was not just
her sheer, not just the slightly modern, but no less perfect
proportion of main and jib, but her balance. And her
balance in those sneaky little puffs hitting the fleet from
up over the hills by the Newport Pell Bridge. Her toerail
came to the sea, a curled bow wave rolled along it and
pealed off a few feet before the transom and she rumbled
evenly along. Steady. Quick.
As I caught the stern view that the rest of the fleet will
be seeing more of in the coming years, I realised thatBelow left:
Engraved wheel,
sign of a new
classic
Below right:
Hydraulic
boarding ladder
takes a
traditional
feature to a new,
contemporary
level