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The International 8-Metre Class yacht Saskia, surely the most graceful yacht to compete in the Royal Sydney Yacht Squadron’s Division 1 fleet in recent years, is returning to the place she was built 76 years ago – The Clyde in Scotland.
Saskia’s owners, John and Michael Stephen, are shipping Saskia to Great Britain to take part in the Celebration of 100 years of Metre Rule Sailing.
Saskia will compete in the 8 Metre World World Championships on the Clyde
hosted by the Royal Northern and Clyde Yacht Club on a waterway regarded by many as the mecca of 8 metre sailing.
“The 8-Metre Worlds start on 16 July with an expected fleet of 35-40 boats in various classes – gaff rigged 8-metres; classic 8s with wooden hulls and spars; and classic wooden 8s but with aluminium masts, carbon fibre working sailings and modern gear, “ John Stephen explains. “There are also of course, the modern eights with separate keel and rudder”.
A unique concentration of the finest classic racing yachts, 2.4m, 5m, 6m, 10m, 12m and 23m, are travelling from the corners of the world to take part in the Centenary Regatta on The Solent at Cowes from 24-27 July.
The event, conducted by the Royal Yacht Squadron, is a celebration of the metre rule, not a metre class championships, and related classes have also been invited to attend – such as the 5.5 metes, the Darings (a frozen design of a 5.5 metre) and the J-class yachts (for instance, Candida was converted from a 12mR to a J).
Before the great gathering of classic yachts at Cowes, the 6-Metres will contest their World Championship on the Solent whilst the 8mR boats will race for their World Championship on the Clyde. Shortly afterwards, the 12mR will be off to their Worlds in the Mediterranean.
The Stephen brothers, John is an orthopaedic surgeon, Michael a vascular surgeon in a family of three generations of medical practitioners, have raced Saskia successfully with the RSYS since 1997, firstly under charter from the Palmer family and subsequently purchasing her.
“Now she is going home…to the Clyde in Scotland where she was designed and built by William Fife in 1931 for what will be an historic event in the history of the Metre Class,” says John Stephen.
The late Sir William Northam brought Saskia to Australia in 1954 with the specific objective of winning back the Sayonara Cup which had been symbol of pre-eminence in big-boat, round-the buoys racing in Australia since 1904.
Saskia won the Cup for the Royal Sydney Yacht Squadron ending 34 years of dominance by the Royal Yacht Club of Victoria, and subsequently retained for the Squadron.
“Saskia had, of course, achieved significant international success in the Northern Hemisphere before being brought to Australia,” explains John Stephen. “She won the famous Seawanhaka Cup in the United States in 1931 and later sailed for Britain at Keil in Hitler’s 1936 Olympics”.
The Stephen brothers, guided by project manager Mick York, ably assisted by Doug Sturrock, have given Saskia an extensive re-fit, including new carbon fibre sails by Ian Short.
She is due to be road-transported on a special cradle designed by Mick York and built at the Sydney Maritime Museum at Rozelle to Melbourne in early May, then shipped gratis by the Hamburg Sud Line to Tilbury in England!
From there the 8-metre will be transported again by road to the Royal Northern & Clyde Yacht Club at Rhu. Immediately following the 8mR World Championships, Saskia will again ‘hit the road’ south to Southampton and across The Solent to Cowes.
“Saskia is wonderful condition considering her age and the amount of hard sailing she has done.
“However, the Halvorsens gave her a complete refit for Joe Palmer under the direction of Warwick Hood in the 1970s. We have continued to carefully maintain her since the late 1990s.”
Joining John and Michael Stephen in sailing Saskia in the 8mR World Championship will be Doug Sturrock, the well known yacht chandler, sailmaker Ian Short, ocean racing navigator Lindsay May, who navigated Love & War to victory in the 2006 Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race, Glenn “Hedgey” Cooper, the sail designer developer with Ian Short Sails, and New Zealander Stuart Milburn.
For the Celebration of 100 years of the Metre Rule on The Solent, local yachtsman and Conservative Member of Parliament Richard Ottoway will join the crew of Saskia to provide local knowledge.
The Metre Rule was first drawn up in 1907, marking the beginning of an era of competitive racing, the most well recognised being the America’s Cup which was raced in 12-metre yachts between 1958 and 1987, including the victory by Australia II at Newport, Rhode Island, in 1983.
The 8-metre yachts have always been considered as elite, very fast, very beautiful and very expensive.
So what does 8 metre stand for? 8 metre is no more than the outcome of a mathematical formula which incorporates the main dimensions, which have influence on the speed of yachts and to which the yachts are designed and built.
As the first-ever true international sailing class, the formula of Metre yachts has been of paramount importance to the development in yacht design.
Over the years, including the post-World War II days of Sayonara Cup racing through to 1962, 8-metre yachts have raced with distinction on the Hobart’s River, on Melbourne Port Phillip and on Sydney Harbour.
Some of the better known 8s have been Saskia, Erica J, Norn, Vanessa, Francis, Josephine and Defiance.
Saskia is probably the only Australian 8m being raced actively as weekly competitor in the RSYS’s summer pointscores and the summer and winter Wednesday races conducted by the Royal Prince Edward Yacht Club and the RAN Sailing Association – where is she was still winning only a few weeks before heading home to The Clyde.
Peter Campbell
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