Adventuress - Rockport Marine

Adventuress
American beauty
After a near-drowning in the wreck of his classic,
Victor Janovich needed a new project. He found an
82ft Fife. By Kathy Mansfield; photos by Alison Langley
ADVENTURESS
KATHY MANSFIELD
KATHY MANSFIELD
A
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CLASSIC BOAT NOVEMBER 2012
ALISON LANGLEY
PREVIOUS SPREAD ALISON LANGLEY; KATHY MANSFIELD
KATHY MANSFIELD
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and above right:
Adventuress
spreads her wings
in a rare Maine
breeze
Left: Detailing has
been kept as
authentically Fife
as possible
n extraordinary boat, an extraordinary
owner, an extraordinary group of craftsmen – that sums up the story of Adventuress as she slipped into the water at Rockport, Maine, on 21 July. It’s a story that ties
together an 83ft (25.3m) schooner
designed by William Fife III in 1924, commandeered as a
German patrol boat and scuttled at the harbour entrance
of Villefranche-sur-Mer; an owner from Istanbul who
followed Herman Melville’s edict to stay true to
childhood dreams; and a group of skilful and
sympathetic craftsmen who carried out the work on the
hull, deck, interior and rig, as well as updating the
yacht’s systems.
The tale begins 88 years ago, when Adventuress was
launched at Fife’s Fairlie yard for Glasgow resident
Norman Clark Neill. He had six boats built by Fife over
the years, including the 6-Metre Marmi, which sailed in
the 1920 Olympics, and another taken to the US for the
British American Cup of 1922. Adventuress was his next
yacht, built the year after his uncle Kenneth MacKenzie
Clark commissioned Kentra. In 1929 Neill also
commissioned Maryk, a cruising 12-M.
He sold Adventuress in the mid-1930s and she was
taken to the Mediterranean, but it was there that she was
seized by the Germans for use as a patrol boat during the
Second World War. Who knows where she was taken
ALISON LANGLEY
during that time, but she was doubtless used hard, and it
was only her strong construction and teak planking that
kept her salvageable after the war and several years at the
bottom of Villefranche harbour.
She was raised and refitted as a stemhead ketch with a
bermudan main, a rig she carried for the next 50 years.
Renamed Isabelle, she then had several French and
Italian owners, one of whom used her in the Med during
the summer and had her delivered annually to the
Caribbean. Though her ship’s logs have been lost, it is
said she crossed the Atlantic 15 times.
From the mid-1970s she had several American owners,
eventually passing to Steve Vaitses of Clinton, Connecticut,
son of boatbuilder and writer Allan Vaitses. In 2000, she
was purchased by Jim Lynch of New York who restored
her original name of Adventuress and undertook a refit
with the goal of returning her to her original form.
That is the official history of Adventuress, but she has
another story: Kenny Coombs of Antigua Classics has
mined the rumour mill and it seems the captain back in the
1930s was murdered by a guest for sleeping with his wife.
His ghost is said to remain on board. “I have not met the
ghost yet,” Kenny told me, “but I know people who have.”
The boat was part of the well-known Nicholson’s
charter fleet in the Caribbean in the 1970s, where Janie
Easton, who ran a boutique in Nelson’s Dockyard, fell in
love with her and married first the captain, and later the
CLASSIC BOAT NOVEMBER 2012
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ADVENTURESS
ALISON LANGLEY
ALISON LANGLEY
“He found Adventuress and decided that her restoration
would be his donation to yachting history”
KATHY MANSFIELD
ADVENTURESS
Length Over spars
99ft 9in (30.4m)
Length On deck
82ft 2in (25.1m)
Waterline length
57ft 6in (17.5m)
beam
17ft (5.2m)
Draught
9ft 8in (3m)
Displacement
123,200lb
(55.8 tonnes)
Sail area
3,430sqft (318m2)
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CLASSIC BOAT NOVEMBER 2012
Above left: A coal
stove found in
Mallorca sets off
the sumptuous,
panelled interior
Above right: White
ceilings and a
huge skylight;
owner Victor
Januvich helms
owner, Hank van Beaver. She chartered in the Virgin
Islands in the 1980s, and Kenny spotted her in Newport,
Rhode Island during that time.
A new owner and direction
Victor Janovich grew up in Istanbul, studying philosophy
in the US and later turning to commodities and ethicallygrown coffee. He arrived in Newport on a mission, borne
out of the pain of losing his yacht in a terrible accident,
and needing a new project, as he explained to me.
“In the summer of 2009, on a bright, sunny day, five
miles southwest of the island of Mallorca, sailing under
full canvas in 25-knot winds, I was rammed on my port
quarter to windward by a fishing boat under way at full
speed but not under command. Lilli sank immediately,
and miraculously, I escaped with my life.”
Lilli II was the 60ft (18.3m) wooden yawl that Victor
had bought from the president of Istanbul Yacht Club,
built in the shipyards of the Golden Horn in its heyday.
He’d fixed her up, sailed her to Barcelona and fully
restored her on the Costa Brava over five years.
She was eventually traced at a depth of 607ft (185m),
her sails still set, but too deep to salvage. Victor was
devastated, and began to hunt for a project to assuage
his loss. One month later, he found Adventuress, and
decided her restoration would be his donation to
yachting history, and to his dreams.
The first task was to find the best boatyard for the
job, and Victor was prepared to look worldwide, from
New Zealand to Maine. In the end the decision was made
over a beer and a handshake with Taylor Allen of
Rockport Marine, a man Victor had known for less than
an hour, but whose confidence he instinctively trusted.
The initial plan was for a winter’s work, but once the
deck was off, it was clear that all the beams needed
replacement, and when they were removed, there was rot
in the beamshelves (sheer clamps). Both stem and stern
were going to need work soon, and a reassessment of the
job ahead was called for. Victor had been there before
with his previous yacht, and accepted with equanimity
that instead of a multi-stage process, a full restoration
would be necessary.
a different perspective
Sam Chamberlin had been put in charge as designer on the
project, and knew that the rebuild stretched to everything:
rig, interior, systems, deck layout. “Victor’s directive was to
build a ‘Fife schooner’, which meant to bring back many of
her original features, but we were not bound to the exact
condition of Adventuress at the time of her launch.”
This process is what lead Sam to Europe. From the
beginning of the project, Fairlie Restorations was
involved as a consultant, and of course the source of the
original plans. “As I started to get into the design work
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ADVENTURESS
ALL PICTURES BY ALISON LANGLEY
“In many ways, Fife yachts are very similar to the
American yachts of that period”
and think through many of the details, it quickly become
apparent that pictures alone wouldn’t be enough to
understand how these boats worked.”
Paul Spooner at Fairlie helped to put together a trip to
visit Altair and Mariquita in France, and Kentra at
Fairlie’s yard on the Hamble. “These visits proved to be
an indispensible part of the process,” Sam said, “as they
allowed me to really understand how all of the Fife
details came together to make a whole.
“In many ways Fife yachts are very similar to the
American yachts of that period, but my first reaction was
to look at individual details and think: ‘Oh, we know how
to do that better over here.’ Only after you step back and
look at the whole yacht, the sum of all the details, do
you understand how well they work together.”
right team for the job
Restoration was far-reaching. About two-thirds of the
teak planking was still good, plus the ballast keel and
keelson, but there were significant repairs to the white
oak frames, there was a new stem and forefoot, and the
entire stern counter was rebuilt. Taylor Allen at
Rockport Marine bought seven teak logs for the project.
There were new beamshelves, deck and deck beams, a
new deck structure, a new interior, systems, rig and rigging.
Original Fife construction plans were followed as closely as
possible for the hull and deck, including wood species and
scantlings. Details were scarce for the interior and rig, so a
lot of research and work was needed in those areas.
Paul Spooner was an invaluable consultant on Fifes and
provided some of the bronze parts. Brian Englander and
his crew solved many puzzles, Tom Ward of Traditional
Rigging worked with Nat Wilson Sailmakers to bring a
fine new gaff-rigged schooner to life. There are 14 sails –
the gaff main, fore, staysail, jib, three jib topsails, the main
and fore gaff topsails, jackyard topsail, two fishermen, a
drifter and a trysail.
Adventuress carries her Fife pedigree with pride, but
on such a major restoration there is a need to integrate
practical and useful electronic technology unobtrusively.
Spending the time early on to configure electronics
lockers, to house the engine control panel and autopilot
within a traditional-looking wheelhouse and to find
discreet places to mount the antennae, can make the
difference between a good and a great restoration.
Updated technology includes the bronze winches
– actually hydraulic Harkens with a bronze custom
housing, to cut down on crew numbers. The interior had
to be designed from scratch as well, looking at other Fife
yachts, with crew quarters forward, a spacious saloon aft
of the galley, guest cabins and a light, airy master cabin
aft of the main hatch; the engine room just before.
Martha Coolidge sourced period features for the
interior, focusing on a William Morris artichoke design
Above right: A
rare moment with
eight sails aloft
Above left:
Rockport’s joinery
is only outshone
by the lustre of
the varnish
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ALL PICTURES BY ALISON LANGLEY
ADVENTURESS
in a tapestry silk on the antique Biedermeier chairs in the
saloon, with dark-grained walnut panelling and lights
made to an Art Deco design. I particularly liked the
antique coal stove in the saloon that the owner found in
Mallorca. Other Morris designs brighten the cabins.
Adventuress sets sail
I was invited to sail on Adventuress for Maine’s trio of
classic events: the Castine Regatta, the Camden Feeder
and the Eggemoggin Reach Race. Castine was my first
chance to see the boat under sail, and she was in good
company, including the Fife yachts Belle Aventure and
Sumurun, plus the small Fife R-Class yacht Fifi.
I stepped over the varnished bulwarks onto the new
teak decks, so bandbox new they were almost slippery.
Everything, from the lines and fittings to the varnished
hatches and comfortable cockpit, had that pristine look of
a new yacht that hadn’t yet been to sea. But she will soon
settle down. Adventuress exuded strength and grace, and
she’s already shown her mettle over the last eight decades.
I met some of the crew, including my friend Kenny
Coombs, organising the sail-handling, and skipper
Alastair Doyne-Ditmas, flanked by Sam Chamberlin,
who was having a crash course on the navigation
equipment. Soon Kenny had parcelled out jobs and the
sails were going up – despite the hydraulic winches
there’s no substitute for human input when the
intricacies of tacking all these sails are involved. The
topsails add to the excitement.
There was a palpable sense of achievement, helped by
Kenny’s encouragement, as the boatbuilders aboard saw
Adventuress gather speed and begin to heel to the breeze.
Sails were adjusted and halyards were heaved until the
set was just right. We all longed for the wind to strengthen,
to put her through her paces, but that will happen in
time. Meanwhile we were quiet, mindful of the fog, the
race, the other boats and those frustrating lobster pots.
They plagued us throughout the races, those lobster
pots, and we snagged more than our fair share. At one
point, Rockport designer Brendan Riordan had to dive to
cut one from the bottom of the rudder. Lobstermen are
king in these waters – even during a major regatta the
course is studded with their bobbing, coloured floats.
We never did get enough wind during the three days
to give Adventuress a chance to show her strength: she’s
not a light-wind boat, but she picked up speed nicely
when the breeze did freshen, particularly during the
Feeder Race, when eight of her sails were flying.
Next day, we tackled the Deer Isle Thoroughfare, lined
with the clapboard houses of Stonington, rocky islands,
lobster boats and lighthouses. It was with excitement that
we watched the huge main gaff going up, then the foresails.
We had become a crew, each enjoying the moment as the
sails billowed above us. It doesn’t get much better.
Her owner brought another element to the day’s sail
when he joined us in Camden – his calm happiness was
infectious. Victor was obviously delighted, hauling a sail
with the crew, stretching out on deck to watch those sails
and enjoy his boat under way. His words from the
launch of Adventuress perhaps entered his thoughts:
“John Keats, in one of the most memorable lines in
English literature, says that ‘a thing of beauty is a joy for
ever’.” Still going strong after 80 years of enchanting
looks, Adventuress embodies that spirit perfectly.
Clockwise, from
top left: There
were new deck
beams throughout;
shaping a beam
for the
companionway;
launch day at
Rockport; the
keelson was in
good condition,
but one third of
the planking had
to be replaced
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