Sonas, an idyllic state with occasional panic

Twenty five years ago I was busily engaged in building this slippery little daysailer in a disused industrial unit I had rented for the purpose. I decided to call her Sonas, a gaelic name for a state of happiness, which has graced a number of yachts over the years.

By 1992 I had built three boats, a Joel White Nutshell and two of John Gardner's designs, the Quincy skiff and the Swampscott Dory. I was looking for something to venture farther afield and had bought plans for the Joel White Haven Class when Don Costanzo asked me why I didn't build something designed locally and mentioned David Ryder-Turner as someone who might be interested.

A few weeks later David clumped up the drive at our house in Argyll very early one Saturday morning and we met for the first time. He must have left the Clyde before dawn. He had under his arm a loaf of bread which he had baked, a bottle of wine and a set of drawings. Number 41 was a little centreboard canoe yawl, very long and slender. The lines and sail plan were pinned on the sitting room wall and studied in great detail over the next few weeks. After the visit we kept in touch by phone. The new design became number 42.

David's idea was that we would build two identical boats, one for each of us, with me providing the labour and much of the materials in exchange for his design input. After I had committed to the unit and purchased enough timber for two hulls he decided not to proceed with his own yacht, which certainly saved a lot of effort, but left me with a hefty overhead. David was an utterly lovely, inspirational and funny man, but one of life's perpetual dreamers.

Over the winter of 1992 moulds were made, the stems laminated and David got on with the drawings. I started working out the building schedule and wondered how to build a boat while keeping on top of a demanding day job. Eventually this led to shifts of 8.00am to 4.00pm in the office followed by 5.00pm to 11.30pm in the workshop a couple of days per week and two full shifts at weekends. David would turn up from time to time, exert some quality control and advice and leave me with a list of instructions for the next stage.

The build was to consume about two thousand hours of work, from me mainly but also my dear friend the late Duncan McKay, who had returned from life at sea rather unsettled and got himself a taxi, which left him free to attend almost daily.

The hull was constructed upside down over MDF moulds from Western Red Cedar strips, fastened to a Douglas Fir skeleton, a great way to turn out a lovely hull quickly and accurately, then given an outer shell of epoxy saturated woven glass roving. (Originally the hull was to be covered with mahogany veneer and I bought enough for two hulls from McGruers, another of David's dreams that evaporated, as it would have been a dreadful, messy task.) WRC is rot-resistant, very light and strong, but the stuff I got from a well known supplier was very mixed in quality. A lot had been machined with no regard for the grain and was discarded. It is poisonous and if you get a little skelf you really feel it a few days later. It had been machined with concave and convex profiles, which made it very difficult to ensure that the spaces were truly full of glue. Doing the job again I would use Douglas Fir or Honduras cedar and get it specially milled with straight edges. Of course this would also be heavier, but you would reduce the dimensions to compensate.

Once the hull was turned, at a special party organised by David, the job became more fun.

I found a single log of ancient yellow pine, which I got machined for deck planking. It was epoxied in strips on top of 7mm ply giving a finished deck thickness of about 16mm.

Covering-boards and kingplanks were made from mahogany, as were seats and other internal furniture, all hand-sanded to David's exacting standards.

The keel was cast in Cornwall by Henry Irons from a piece of lead saved from Kentra’s old one. William Fife’s wonderful creation of 1923 was losing a little weight to balance the installation of modern equipment. The new keel was delivered to Scotland on the back of a Cornish cream lorry.

Sonas got the very best of rig and equipment, spars from Collars, sails from Gayle Heard, blocks from Harry Spencer, and Classic marine and rigged by Iain Gillies.

Construction was finished in Argyll and she was duly launched in 1994, the late Duncan on the left and me in pink teeshirt on the day.This photograph, taken by David, carries the caption on the Classic Marine website:

"Designed and built by David Ryder-Turner. Words fail me, just look at it. Photo: Owner" 

I immediately discovered that Sonas was seriously over-canvassed in all but the lightest conditions. I found that the hull was basically a scaled-down model of Fife's Latifa, a yacht that David had long admired, but he hadn't appreciated the need to re-engineer it by increasing the displacement as the size went down. I generally sailed her with one reef, as can be seen from the photographs below. When I eventually parted with her the new owner was fully aware of this and that he should consider having the sail plan remodelled.

Sonas looked absolutely stunning and attracted quite a bit of interest, some of which looked like producing requests for the plans. I suggested to David that he should significantly widen the hull, add more lead and include a centreboard, which I felt would make her easier to handle ashore.

David's original design no 41 had the yawl rig and I had rejected it, because I considered it fussy in such a small boat. This would have been better, with Bermuda rig, as it would enable you to sail home comfortably under foresail and mizzen when the wind got up.

Overall the project was highly educational in more ways than one. The UK yachting press showed no interest in the finished yacht, probably because there would have been nothing in it for the commercial interests that dominate the glossies. Oddly she was written up in Classic Boat in June 1993 before she was built, but they showed no interest at all when offered a follow-up article. Wooden Boat later ran an article on the modified design, based on my suggestions.

One from the archives

Right now I don't have time to construct new posts, so here is one from the archives, posted to Woodenboat.com in 2005:

Canoe Yawl Sonas by David Ryder-Turner

I built my first boat in 1988, a Nutshell pram, having confined my efforts before then to maintaining Stroma. In 1990 I built the Swampscott dory, a sixteen foot racing dory to a design from about 1880 redrawn by John Gardner of Mystic Seaport. In 1992 I built an eighteen foot Quincy boat, another old American design.

In the late eighties Stroma had been difficult to maintain because I could not get her under cover in winter in Argyll. I feared that rot was getting a hold and was conscious of her historical significance. The Scottish Maritime Museum offered what seemed a good deal. I would lend them Stroma, they would renovate her professionally and she would be available for me to sail as a working exhibit. I did not then know that they had no carpenters among almost one hundred employees, but that is another story. By 1992 I no longer possessed Stroma and the boats I had built could not sail outside of Loch Melfort. Stroma and I are now re-united, but that is a story for another day.

In 1992 I was acting for one of the people involved with Kentra on the Clyde. There was a flurry of litigation of enormous complexity and I got to know my American client very well. Having built some American designs I had decided to build Joel White’s Haven class. My client persuaded me to look closer to home. He told me about David Ryder-Turner’s design number 41, which he had admired. I had never heard of D R-T.

A few weeks later D R-T clumped up the drive at Kilmelford very early one Saturday morning. He must have left the Clyde before dawn. He had under his arm a loaf of bread which he had baked, a bottle of wine and a set of drawings. Number 41 was a little centreboard canoe yawl, very long and slender. The lines and sail plan were pinned on the sitting room wall and studied in great detail over the next few weeks. After the visit we kept in touch by phone. The design became number 42.

Design number 42 was basically Sonas. D R-T was offering to supply drawings and help if I would build two boats, one for each of us. It was drawn in three sizes and the largest was selected. This meant the boat would not fit in my workshop. A redundant industrial unit was found, which I could rent for one year before the owners needed it. This meant that many parts would need to be prefabricated. By October 1992 I was persuaded to make a start.

Over the winter moulds were made, the stems laminated and D R-T got on with the drawings. I started working out the building schedule and wondered how to build a boat while keeping on top of a demanding day job. Eventually this led to shifts of 8.00am to 4.00pm in the office followed by 5.00pm to 11.30pm in the shop a couple of days per week and two full shifts at weekends. D R-T was to visit, do some work and supervise. Early on he decided against having a boat of his own. This meant that the overhead got a bit heavy for one boat, moulds etc were only used once, but saved on the amount of work involved.

Sonas was to consume about two thousand hours of work, from me mainly but also D R-T himself and the late Duncan McKay, who scheduled his work as a taxi driver to allow him to attend eventually almost daily. Boats have that effect on people. With the experience I now have I could build the hull very quickly, but finishing would always take a lot of time. As the man said, building a boat is ninety percent sandpapering.

The bow and stern stems were laminated Douglas Fir, an excellent wood used for the keelson, beam shelves, deck beams and much else besides. The stems were set up on a ladder, which supported the blockboard moulds. The beam shelves were temporarily slotted into the moulds and protected by plastic to stop them becoming glued in. The moulds were taped up for the same reason.

Originally the hull was to be covered with mahogany veneer and I bought enough for two hulls from McGruer. I should have realised they were only selling it because they had machined it too thinly and it was useless. I was left with enough wood to make model boats for about two centuries. However experience is a valuable commodity. The hull was eventually planked with red cedar from Joe Thompsons of Sunderland. This was machined 18mm thick with a concave/convex profile, a product now largely replaced by Speedstrip. The strips were glued with Balcotan, as the prospect of mixing epoxy hundreds of times was daunting.

Western Red Cedar had the advantage of being rot-resistant, very light, long-grained and strong. It glues beautifully with Balcotan or epoxy. Thompsons’ product was very mixed in quality. A lot had been machined with no regard for the grain and was discarded. It is poisonous and if you get a little skelf you really feel it a few days later. I think it was probably used for arrow heads at some point. Thompsons’ strips had a lot of splinters. Doing the job again I would use Douglas Fir or Honduras cedar and get it specially milled with straight edges. These could easily be planed, or epoxy squeezed into the spaces. Of course this would also be heavier, but you could reduce the dimensions to compensate.

D R-T insisted that the individual strips be scarf-jointed to get the complete lengths, most needing to be about 27 feet. To do so I built a scarfing box through which I could run a portable circular saw. I also made a jig in which I could glue up five at once. D R-T called sometimes and condemned a joint here or there. About 150 joints passed his test and were used. This work was quite unnecessary. Butt joints would have been quite adequate. Planking up should have taken about 100 hours and took about 300 because of this.

At the end of 1992 the hull was complete, epoxied, glassed and faired while upside down, then left to cure over the Christmas break. In January 1993 I held a turning over party to get the man and woman power to lift Sonas safely. She was so light she nearly flew up to the roof.

I had glued MDF boards to the outside of the hull, octagonal in shape, to facilitate turning over. I found that I could roll the hull over unaided, which meant that later I could do all sorts of jobs single-handed. For example, drilling for keel bolts was done with the boat on her side, checking the drill bit with a spirit level.

I decided to build the floors from scrap Bruynzeel ply stacked to form blocks, which were spiled and fitted. Had they been shaped when the moulds were set up a lot of time would have been saved. The inside of the hull was cleaned off (horrid work) epoxied and the bilges glassed. D R-T instructed that the glass should be fitted between the floors. Doing it again I would glass throughout, then fit them. This would be easier and I think stronger. What was done has proved very strong however.

The beam shelves, which had been only loose-fitted originally, were now freed from the building moulds, finished and glued into the hull. They are massively built and much over strength. The boat was set up dead true to her waterline and the sheerline faired down, a process which took lots of time and was enormously satisfying.

The ring frames were cut from 25 mm Bruynzeel ply, spiled and fitted. Again they should have been fitted and shaped earlier. Spiling added about 50 hours.

I found a single log of ancient yellow pine, not in the sawmill’s inventory, which I bought and got machined for deck-planking. It was epoxied in strips on top of 7mm ply giving a finished deck thickness of about 16mm.

Covering-boards and kingplanks were made from mahogany, as were seats and other internal furniture. After some experiments with machines these were hand-sanded.

The keel was cast in Cornwall by Henry Irons from a piece of lead cut from Kentra’s old one. William Fife’s wonderful creation of 1923 was losing a little weight to balance the installation of modern equipment. Thus Sonas has a physical connection with her inspiration. The new keel was delivered to Scotland on the back of a Cornish cream lorry.

The bronzework came from a variety of sources and some was quite indifferent. I would never again buy bronze fittings without inspecting a sample. I suspect there are gentlemen out there who think that if you can cast bronze at all you are a craftsman. This goes for some very big names in the trade.

The blocks came from Harry Spencer and were a delight. They seem too nice to leave out in the rain.

The spars came from Collars and were beautiful. D R-T had supplied a spar drawing in great detail and this was complied with. The mast later proved so light that it had to be rebuilt. The lesson in this is not to tell the expert how to do his job. Had I asked Mr Collar for a mast to do the job and left the dimensions to him there would have been no problem.

Gayle Heard made the sails. They are pretty good.

The name Sonas is Gaelic for a type of happy experience and was the name of one or two famous boats in the past.

The boat proved very strong and virtually maintenance-free. She is extremely fast and must be reefed in strong winds. This was a deliberate part of the design as I did not want to bother with a spinnaker and our winds are usually light. She will scare the unwary and should be treated as a fine piece of sports equipment rather than a serious yacht. Her looks are quite outstanding and when you are on the water you had better be ready to have your picture taken.

With the experience gained in sailing Sonas I suggested to D R-T that he should draw out the design to twentyeight feet, widen the hull by nine inches and include a centreboard. This would have increased the displacement and made her more sea-worthy, as well as increasing the cockpit space. The centreboard, which I had discarded because we have plenty of deep water, would have made her easier to handle out of the water and enable easier transportation to sailing events. You could also explore shallow coves and picnic places more easily.

D R-T had originally suggested the yawl rig and I had rejected it, because I considered it fussy in such a small boat. I am now convinced that it could be very useful, as it would enable you to sail home comfortably under foresail and mizzen when the wind got up. 

The UK yachting press showed no interest in Sonas, probably because there would have been nothing in it for the commercial interests that dominate our publications. Oddly she was written up in Classic Boat in June 1993 before she was built. Wooden Boat ran an article on the modified design.

Ewan G Kennedy, Kilmelford, Scotland, April 2005.

In Germany with David Ryder-Turner

My former career had a few interesting moments, one of which was in the early 1990s when I arrested a ship, an unusual but venerable process invented in the days when a visiting sailing ship might run up bills in a foreign port and forget to pay them. An old friend and mentor who had worked in shipping law for decades without ever getting the chance to do this was extremely envious, and became more so when the case was eventually resolved with a judicial sale by public auction, unheard of in living memory, at least in our jurisdiction. The whole episode involved time spent in the faculty library studying precedents and working out how one should nail the writ to a vessel with no masts. Fortunately all went well and today the ship survives and has acquired some masts. Not so lucky was a racehorse that I arrested a few years later (I got a name for the practice) as someone shot him, but that's a story for a horsey blog rather than a boating one.

My client in the case introduced me to David Ryder-Turner, who lived a few miles away but whom I had never met, which in turn led to David designing me the little yacht Sonas, about which I have already written (Sonas, a Gaelic form of happiness) and whose image is above. She was built over a couple of years under his legendary artistic and very critical eye, ensuring a sweetness in the sheerline that I could never have managed alone.

David had spent time in post-War Hamburg and wanted to revisit some old haunts, so in 1997 I agreed to share the driving and keep him company on the trip. We managed to avoid killing each other and had what David would have described as a very jolly time. This trip and a number of subsequent ones resulted in a number of lasting friendships and in me a great love not just of the Baltic and Northern Germany as places but also German language and culture, studies which had not been encouraged in my childhood.

The landscape is very different from Scotland's, being all flat, well-cultivated and prone to fogs and the sailing entirely different, the Baltic being basically a huge, almost tideless shallow lake, throwing up short steep seas. Despite this I felt an eerie sense of belonging, as if my ancestors had been there before me, and maybe they had been, given the long trading links between Scotland and the Hanseatic towns. The long lost Luebeck Letter was being written about in the Press at that time.

What follows is a photo-essay based on some of these visits.

On our first trip we stopped off at Maldon, where the scene is already much different from the Scottish West coast. Where I sail we have plenty of deep water, if you keep an eye out for reefs and skerries.

On arrival at Laboe we were greeted by the sight of quite a few boats and typical atmospheric conditions.

David was attracted to someone nice and blonde on aboard Feolinn.

The next year we went back and found the weather a bit windier.

Here is Feolinn going like a rocket in about Force Seven

And an Eight Metre doing likewise

That year and later I sailed aboard the Ylva, built by Gustav Plym in 1930 and a ship that has enjoyed a fascinating life.

Ylva in earlier days

Racing in a Force Eight

On all of my visits I was struck by the wonderful standard to which the German yachts had been restored, sadly contrasting with the treatment afforded to a lot of the so-called windfall yachts, which were often neglected after being confiscated by the British armed forces.

This is the Abeking & Rasmussen Piraya, probably the loveliest yacht in the harbour, beautifully restored and maintained. And finally a detail of Piraya's bow, showing Henry Rasmussen's trade mark ash rail-capping and his double arrow signature.

Unique Boardroom Table by David Ryder-Turner

I am selling my boardroom table designed by well-known yacht designer the late David Ryder-Turner of Helensburgh and built by the professional cabinetmaker Jane Wright of Kilcreggan.

The table is a unique work of art, built to the highest standard of craftsmanship. It was made as a special commission from me and as an entry in a woodworking competition, which it duly won. It is oval in shape and measures 92.5 inches by 45 inches.

The top was made from a single log of Huon pine that David had brought back from Tasmania, to which a mahogany inlay was applied. The base was laminated from mahogany and sycamore.

The table is now surplus to requirements and is offered for sale at £2,000 (no VAT), but I will be happy to negotiate if it goes to one of David's friends. It can be seen in central Glasgow, from where the buyer would collect it.

If you are interested please contact me on ewangkennedy@gmail.com

Classics again - therapy please

A modern classic?

I admit that in the past I've suffered from it myself in the past, but I'm pleased to report that I'm nearly cured. I mean of course speculating about what is or is not a classic boat.

Every now and again a thread is started on a forum somewhere and the old craving to take part nags away, like the reformed nicotinic's inner compulsion to light up. Currently one is running on Classic Boat here and I'm trying to resist.

Matters aren't helped very much by the availability of magazines with names like Classic Boat, organisations like the Freundeskreis Klassiche Yachten and the British Classic Yacht Club and at this time of year events all over the place with that word in their name. Dammit, next week Stroma and I are off to the Crinan Classics.

Many years ago, before I was cured, I was involved a bit in the nascent European Classic Yacht Union and travelled great distances for meetings, where defining a classic became a major topic for debate. I became convinced that everyone regards his or her own ship, or the one he or she aspires to own, as a classic. Consciously or not we try to broaden the category to suit our subjective taste and exclude ships we simply don't like, or those made from materials we don't like.

My late friend, sometime mentor and gentle eccentric David Ryder-Turner provided a thoughtful piece on the subject for the Freundeskreis, which can be read here. He may have intended it to be the last word on the subject, but predictably it started yet another thread running. David was a Fife addict with a love of long overhangs and it shows in his article, despite his obvious struggle to be fair and objective.

British Classic Yacht Club also share the enthusiasm for long overhangs and it's easy to overlook that they were regarded as ugly when they arrived on the scene. They're not all that practical either, as they usually don't achieve their intended aim of extending by very much the immersed length of the hull. Personally I find some of the state-of-the-art racing machines attractive as having genuine functional beauty.

It's a lot easier to say what isn't relevant to being classic. Authenticity certainly hasn't got anything to do with it, because surely an incredible design from the past could be regarded as classic even if the actual ship didn't exist any more.  Whether a particular object is original, a rebuild, a restoration or a replica is only really of interest to those who regard these objects, like Barnato's Bentley, as investments rather than  aesthetically.

Easiest of all is just not to get involved in the discussion and to spend one's time doing something useful. I'm off to put some varnish on the toerails and if that doesn't work it'll have to be therapy.