File - Tumblehome Boatshop

R ei n t r odu ci ng th e Sound I nter C l ub
By Reuben Smith and Cynde Smith, Adirondack Chapter
ertain designs endure. If they’re beautiful, if they’re wellRadical Racing on Long Island Sound
built, if they are easy to own and easy to use, and if they
Of course, what is classic today was once radical departure. So
have a history that resonates, then they become classics.
often we hear of “traditional boatbuilding,” but in fact the tradition
The Sound Inter Club is one such boat. She was designed by
of boatbuilding and boat design is one of progress and innovation.
Charles Mower in 1925, then twenty-eight boats were built by
Thirty years before the Sound Inter Club was built there was
Henry B. Nevins, Incorporated, on City Island, New York, in 1926.
nothing on the water that looked like one. The idea of building a hull
The finest sailors of that era chased each other in these boats all
almost 30 feet long out of 5/8” white cedar planking, 7/8” square
across Long Island Sound and even regularly shipped them to race in
bent-oak frames, held together with screws, of all things, and then
Bermuda. So like any classic, these boats have pedigree and history.
stacking deadwood off the bottom of the keel so you could hang a
The Sound Inter Club was the product of an era when boaters
2,500 lb. lead casting—half the weight of the boat, mind you —
were reacting against
4 ½ feet below the waterfreakish racing machines.
line, and now raising up
In much the same way
a 42’ 3” mast, which was
as
the
Gentleman’s
4 ½” x 5 ½” at the largRacer speedboats of the
est point and hollow, and
1920s were developed in
carried 425 sq. ft. of sail .
reaction to the hell bent
. . well, you get the idea.
for leather hydroplanes
These technologies were
of the 19-teens, sailboat
still pretty new. Right
designers and builders
out of the gate, this boat
were developing rating
looked suitably racy.
systems that promoted
And she was just
class racing and handicap
what the representatives
racing in fast but
of a group of yacht clubs
wholesome boats. They
around Long Island
were boats that could be
Sound were looking for.
sailed by their owners
They wanted a boat that
and that didn’t require
would be the pride and
professional
crews.
joy of their members
They were meant to be
but wouldn’t be costthrashed around the
prohibitive. They were
marks for the Tuesday
looking for a design to
night races, and then
suit owners who wanted
sailed out to an island
to race but also had
for a family picnic on
families and could only
Saturday. The racing
have one boat. And they
Restored Sound Inter Clubs (iSc) Ghost chasing Caprice on Lake George,
rewarded the best skipper
also wanted an up-to-date
NY, their home port. This marks the historic re-introduction of the class,
and crew more than it
boat that their best sailors
designed by Charles Mower and built by Henry B. Nevins in 1926. It is
rewarded the owner who
could take elsewhere and
believed that only five remain of the twenty-eight total built.
could afford the most
compete on terms with
innovation. The boats
other yacht clubs.
also provided for family sailing where your kid could learn without
They looked at several designs, but it’s no surprise they chose
getting hurt. They rewarded excellent sailing with great speed but
the one from Mower. He was one of the preeminent designers of
didn’t overly punish a neophyte who was learning through mistakes.
the time and had been so for decades. His boats were fast, balanced,
Again, much like the Hacker and Crouch raceboats of the 1920s
and not too expensive to build. He’d had successes in daysailers,
have become everyone’s favorite for being thrilling yet safe, these
speedboats, and cruisers.
knockabout sloops are beautiful, fun, and forgiving. They’re as right
Henry Nevins was chosen as the builder, and he was perfectly
for sailors today as they were when they were built. They’re classics.
suited for it as well. Who else could have turned out twenty-seven
22
Sound Inter Club was
“theThe
product of an era when
boaters were reacting against
freakish racing machines.
”
boats in a single winter, all perfectly matched, under the cost limit,
and even fitted-out with more mahogany than specified?
The New York Times covered the racing in detail every week.
Morris Rosenfeld, the great yachting photographer, made certain
the racing was well documented. His pictures can be found at
Mystic Seaport and the early shots are absolutely awesome. Twenty
or more of these boats hitting the start line, all of them rail under
and charging hard. Another shot of two boats under spinnakers,
practically reaching with those sails, just boiling along, the two crews
throwing everything down to win. Another shot with a guy draped
over the windward rail, staying out of the wind but getting all his
weight as far outboard as possible. Altogether these shots underscore
that the only thing between the boats was the skill, and the wits, of
their skippers and crew.
There were a few kinks to work out. Shots from year one show
the boats on their ears a lot of the time, flopping as they rounded
the marks. Mower had planned for the weight of more crew in each
boat, and so to compensate for the lack of human ballast more lead
was added to the keel. This did much to stabilize the boats. And
then there is another series of Rosenfeld shots of the boats running
into Newport Harbor before a 40-knot gale. There’s whitecaps and
breaking waves everywhere, and sure enough there’s a boat broaching
and rounding, a backstay coming loose and then a shroud breaking
and there’s that skinny little mast, impossibly bent over, 30 degrees
at least. In the next shot the mast is broken, twenty feet above the
deck. Everyone’s okay. So, in the early 1930s, the rig was redesigned
with another set of spreaders and a set of jumpers, all to help support
the mast. The boom was raised a bit and it was shortened, allowing
a standing backstay, making gybing a far less hair-raising operation
than with the old running backstays.
Clearly, these men and women were having a ball. The names of
great families associated with all sorts of boating of that day were in
this fleet—Iselin, Morgan, Vanderbilt, as well as names that became
famous later on—Mosbacher, Knapp. The best sailor of all was
Corny Shields, the Silver Fox of Long Island. He wrote “The Book”,
a famous four-page treatise of local knowledge of the Sound. It has
notes like, “Cobwebs in the rigging is a sign that southwest wind is
imminent.”
A few of these men went on to race in America’s Cup defenders,
and in the late 1930s it was Corny Shields who understood that
after ten years, the Sound Inter Club as a racing boat needed
replacement if the Long Island sailors were still to remain supreme in
the races outside the area. He was deeply interested in the European
rule sailboats, with their finer hulls and higher aspect rigs. In the
end, the new design chosen to replace the Sound Inter Club was
the International One Design. This boat owes its lineage to the
International Six Metre as well as the Sound Inter Club. The IOD is
still raced as a class in clubs around the world to this day.
Caprice and Ghost sail together for the first time since the 1930s. The Sound Inter Clubs (iSc) raced on Long Island Sound throughout the
late 1920s by the who’s who of yacht racing. It is believed that as many as ten made their way to Lake George, NY, starting in the late
1930s. In the same era as El Legarto was charging around the lake, these boats were racing, too.
Sound Inter Clubs Move to Lake George
owners suspecting that, being the man who owned the marina that
stored and maintained all the boats, Hib was succeeding through
something other than pure skill.
By the 1960s and 70s, the fleet was pretty worn out. Two boats
remained sailing Lake George until the late 1980s. They were
expedition boats, owned by Canoe Island Lodge, and they were a
key attraction for that resort. When the boats had finally outlived
their usefulness, they were broken up and a new design was built for
use at the Lodge. But the ballasts slung under those new boats were
taken from those last two Inter Clubs.
The Inter Club fleet went on the market in 1937. Some boats
stayed on the Sound, some went to Mass Bay and points north, and
a few wound up and raced as a class in the Southern Yacht Club in
New Orleans (the last boat there was lost in Hurricane Katrina).
But at least eight and perhaps as many as ten boats went to Lake
George, New York.
Lake George has a long history as a place where great boats go
in their dotage, often enough to have a grander history than before.
Think of poor under-performing Miss Mary who on Lake George
became the world-beating El Legarto.
Stewards of a Piece of History
There was a group of folks with camps on the lake who had
In 2008 a customer called the new Hall’s Boat Corporation,
been racing Stars for years but who were on the lookout for a more
where we worked at the time. He had just purchased a 1936 Gar
substantial boat to cruise the lake with their families and friends,
Wood utility and wanted it restored. Since the plate under the
as well as a boat they could race. Hibbard Hall had been running
engine cover said the boat was sold new by Hall’s, he was looking to
his marina, Hall’s Boat
have the boat restored by
Corporation, for nearly
Hall’s.
ten years, selling Gar
In researching his
Woods and other power
boat, this owner came
boat brands. But he had
across old movies and
a passion for sailing and
photos of the family who
wanted to do what he
owned the Gar Wood
could to get more people
when she was new. The
sailing on the lake. When
original owner of that Gar
the Inter Club fleet hit the
Wood was a friend and
market in 1937, Hib and
neighbor of Hall’s, and
his associates jumped at the
clearly his pride and joy
chance.
was his sailboat. The new
These Lake George
owner of this Gar Wood
owners were quintessenbrought me a photo of
tially correct for the Sound
this sailboat and asked,
Inter Club. Sure, they had
“What is that? This is the
weekly round-the-marks
most gorgeous boat I’ve
racing off the posh Lake
ever seen.”
George Club, but there
I told him, “That’s a
are also old family photos
Sound Inter Club. And
showing the fleet at anchor
I know where there’s
in some quiet cove way up
one for free.” Of course,
the lake. There are campI didn’t let on that free
fires on the shore, swim
boats generally are the
ladders off the sides of the
So u n d I n t e r C l u b ( i Sc ) r a c e s t a r t,
most expensive in the
boats, towels hanging to
August 30, 1936.
end.
dry off the booms. These
There were other
Photograph by Morris Rosenfeld. ©Mystic Seaport, Rosenfeld Collection.
families clearly adored
Inter Clubs extant, as
these boats, and used them
well. There was one, with
as often as they could. While the boats look awesome in the photos
no keel and no rig, on stands on the shores of Lake George. There
as they crashed around Long Island Sound in all kinds of weather,
was another in Texas. There was one that had been sailing recently
the photos of them sailing in the lighter air of Lake George, where
up in Maine, and was in the WoodenBoat calendar a few years earlier.
the mountains fall into the lake, are majestic.
There was yet another, recently on the water, way out in Greenport,
The racing, meanwhile, was about as serious as before. Hib Hall
Long Island. All the boats were in need of complete structural
was dominant. A key to sailing well anywhere (as Corny Shields
restoration, but they all also had incredible histories, a coterie of past
knew well) is local knowledge; on a lake, where the winds are fickle
owners who were fanatical about them, and present-day owners who
and fluky, local knowledge is paramount. Hib was an aviator, and
regarded themselves as stewards of a piece of history. In the end, we
in flying over the lake he could see plainly how the wind bent
had the “free” boat and the Maine boat in the shop at Hall’s, where
around the hills. He put that knowledge to use in the racing, to
the restorations were started.
such effect that in the end he was excused from the results, certain
24
See these historic boats this
September at the ACBS
39th Annual Meeting and
International Boat Show in
Skaneateles, New York,
September 17–20, 2014.
Top: Registry of the first owners
of the fleet in 1926.
Left: Wringing every ounce
of speed out of Ariel #1,
1936. Photograph by Morris
Rosenfeld. ©Mystic Seaport,
Rosenfeld Collection.
Right: The fully restored Caprice
#12 sails on Lake George, NY.
Restoration of a Classic
Fortunately for these boats we had a client who wanted everything just
so. We were given the time to document the boats thoroughly. We also found
dozens of past owners, or their descendants, who remembered the boats and
gave us old photos, home movies, and remembrances of sailing. We’ve never had
so much public interest and involvement in a restoration project. Several strong
friendships have been forged over these boats.
In our studies, we realized that there were subtle differences between the
actual boats and the lines plan that Mower drew. This is not terribly surprising.
The process of having a boat built by a fine yard like Nevins was a little like
giving a score to a jazz trio. Mower worked out the plan and gave the offsets to
Nevins’ Swedish loftsman, Nils Halversen. Halversen’s job was to take the offsets,
correct any errors, and furnish the boatbuilders a set of patterns for a boat that
was straightforward to build. It was not uncommon for designer, loftsman, and
builder to agree to changes that only ever existed on the loft floor and never were
put to paper. The largest difference we found was a slightly different stem profile,
possibly in response to naval architects of the 1920s learning that reducing the
wetted surface at the entry, where the water passes the skin of the
hull with the greatest speed, was an imperative for a fast hull.
We also had the effects of eighty years of hard racing to correct.
A boat like the Inter Club, sailed hard, will have to stand up to
1 ½ times its displacement weight as thrust of the mast downward
against the keel. For this boat, that means roughly 10,000 pounds
of thrust trying to drive the mast through the bottom. Wood can
undergo millions of cycles of such a load before deforming. Yet give
it a constant strain, such as the tension of the shrouds, and wood
will deflect and then set to a new form. At the chainplates, where the
shrouds attach, the sheer was raised up nearly 3 inches.
In restoring any boat, but especially one of a classic design, the
process must return the boat to her original shape. At our boatshop
we go through a process of researching what that shape was, then
trueing the hull to that form. First, we take out any parts that are
holding the boat to an incorrect shape, be it a broken frame or a
poor repair. Then we systematically weaken the hull, making it
plastic enough that we can deform it back to the original shape.
We use molds, jackstands, shores weights, wedges, and whatever we
can think of to re-mold the boat. This all happens before any real
work can be done, and it may take months. The boat’s in the shop,
but we’re not really putting any hours into it as we work on other
projects. We just keep pushing and prodding it, and gradually the
boat sort of settles back into herself.
Once the shape is back we start adding structure, and that locks
the original shape back into the boat. On the first Inter Club (the
Maine boat, or Caprice,) we replaced all the floor timbers and the
frames, and then the bilge clamps, deck beams, fifty percent of the
deck and thirty percent of the planking, the transom, and the keel.
While we were working on that, other shops were contributing.
Adirondack Goodboat built a new house, JM Reineck & Son made
new hardware and repaired the old parts, Ben Sperry of Sperry
Sails built new sails, and Elco Motor Yachts built us a custom
modern electric motor that we could tuck under the cockpit sole
for auxiliary power.
Finally, after a few thousand hours, Caprice was loaded onto the
old rail car at Hall’s, and sent into the Lake. It was a day before
the Lake George Rendezvous, the ACBS Adirondack Chapter’s boat
show, and two days before Hurricane Irene. After the storm blew
through, we got the mast up and had a wonderful fall sailing.
Of the remaining five Sound Inter Clubs, this was the boat
known to be the most original. So before she launched but after she
had her shape back, we fully documented Caprice using the Total
Station laser technology, which is accurate to a tenth of a millimeter.
And now for the first time, there is an accurate lines plan for the
Sound Inter Club.
This information would be critical in completing the restoration
of the other boat, as well as provide data necessary for restoration
of the remaining three in the class. Perhaps as important, we have
a lines plan with which a replica Sound Inter Club, called the True
iSc™, could be built.
Reintroduction of the Class
Fast forward to early spring 2012. The two boats had been moved
to our new boatshop in the next town north. Caprice had been
launched but there was still finishing work to do. Ghost, the “free”
boat, still had several hundred hours to go before she would launch.
On a quiet but breezy beautiful fall day on Lake George in 2012,
the two sisters—a matched pair—sailed together for the first time since
the 1930s. This historic class had been reintroduced to Lake George.
Luckily for us, these boats really need a minimum of two crew
and do well with four. So we’ve gotten a lot of time sailing them,
as the owner has needed crew. The Sound Inter Club is remarkably
responsive. She’s fast and fun. Quiet and powerful. And that sail—
its 425 square feet of nostalgic, cream-colored but modern Dacron
sailcloth, is uniquely identifiable and just dreamy against the blue sky.
Today, an additional one of the five known remaining Sound
Inter Clubs has been reunited with her two sisters in the boatshop at
Tumblehome. And one more is on her way. Their restorations await.
The goal is to have all five remaining boats sail and race together
again, perhaps against (or with) their reproductions. Now that
would be historic.
Reuben Smith and Cynde Smith (Adirondack Chapter) operate
Tumblehome Boatshop near Lake George, in Warrensburg New York.
Visit www.tumblehomeboats.com. Learn more about the Sound Inter
Clubs at the boatshop website or visit www.soundinterclub.net.
A key goal of the restoration for these two boats was to preserve as much of the original fabric of the boats as possible, using original
construction methods and materials. That meant making small fussy repairs and fabricating custom fasteners.