SPIRIT OF TRADITION
50 CLASSIC BOAT NOVEMBER 2017taken great delight in: “There is a glorious moment in the
build of any wooden yacht when the finished hull is rolled
over, but the interior is not yet fitted.
“At this stage, the purity of the core structure of the
boat is seen for the first, but regrettably the last time, as
the interior starts to break up the space. I have thought
more times than I can remember that it would be
wonderful to build a yacht with no interior so the beauty of
the hull can be appreciated and celebrated in its own right.
You can imagine our enthusiasm when we were
commissioned to build a Spirit 52 as a totally maxed-out
race boat – without carrying the weight of any interior!”
Oui Fling, coming in at a mere 6,750kg, was second
overall in the highly competitive fleet at Panerai British
Classic Week, among her conquests McMillan’s own Spirit
52, Flight of Uord, a similar design but almost two tonnes
heavier. “But I think we gave her a decent scare!” he says.
The boat owes something to Metre boat design up top,
albeit beamier, but with a shallow body and deep fin keel
with spade rudder below the waterline, she embodies the
idea of the modern classic.
“The inspiration has been the heritage of long, low,
easily driven, beautiful boats. What Mick Newman [Spirit
Yacht co-founder, who died nine years ago] and I did when
we first started was to get rid of the long keel.
“Don’t be a slave to the long keel when it’s an obsolete
shape and form. With fin and bulb and a spade rudder,
you can get a perfectly balanced boat. On a long-keeledboat, your rudder is only acting as a trim tab on the keel,
rather than as a foil in it own right. When you combine
that with a super-light construction it is a pretty
seductive combination.”
Weight saving came through the lack of an interior
(“The owner said he doesn’t ever want to sleep on the
boat, he barely wants to go down below,” says McMillan),
as well as carbon fittings throughout including a carbon
keelblade (made by Eeles Boatbuilders in Brightlingsea),
not uncommon in modern grand prix racing but a
departure for the modern classic world.
Power winches mean she’s ‘a doddle’ to sail and the
word is that Oui Fling should be seen at Solent and Med
regattas next year.
McMillan is a strong supporter of the classic racing
scene and says: “It is extremely healthy and probably the
only growing racing scene in the world. In the classics
people see a way of going racing in a boat that isn’t going
to lose its value, unlike the latest grand prix race boat, and
it also has a certain visual charm.”
Pointing out that racing was the reason many of today’s
classic yachts were built, McMillan says: “If you look at a lot
of the boats we revere now as classics, many of them had
an early history in racing and then maybe were adapted to
be cruiser-racers.
“That original motivation for these boats is what we’ve
tapped into with the 52D. We were designing an out and
out race boat, with no apologies, made to fit into a certain
genre of racing, in this case the classic regatta scene.
“It’s an exciting thing to have done and I think it’s taken
the classic boat movement forward. We are doing it in a
way that some people will not approve of and that
is a shame. I don’t think anything like that should be
pickled in aspic. If you’re building something new, it’s
perfectly valid to maintain the aesthetic and the grace, but
also embrace the 21st century.”Above: Oui Fling
in action o
Cowes for
Panerai British
Classic Week“Don’t be a slave to the
long keel when it is an
obsolete form”CB353 SoT_Oui Fling.indd 50 26/09/2017 13:01