Wooden weekend wonder
Artisan Boatworks, well known for their beautifully-crafted daysailers like the Herreshoff Buzzards Bay 15 and 18, are well under way with their biggest project to date: the 39ft 6in (12m) bermudan yacht Wisp. Wisp has been designed by Maine spirit-of-tradition maestros Stephens Waring in the manner of yachts that offer easy, modern sailing, with some luxury, yet with the timeless draw of mid-20th century design – above the water at least: the definition of SoT in fact. The 39ft length was a “calculated choice” to ensure standing headroom in both galley and heads. She features a saloon to seat four and a queen-size forward berth. The rig is described as ‘Solent rig’ by the designer, slightly confusing to those of us who maintain that Solent rig is engine and main! It’s a dual furler arrangement with a quick choice of either working jib or large, multipurpose reacher. “This vessel is optimised to shift gears with ease,” says the designer. Everything is push-button, the mainsheet travels under the deck and the upholstered cockpit is divided into two areas: helming aft and relaxing forward, an arrangement made possible by the easysinglehanding nature of the boat. The drop-leaf table conceals a wine cooler and glasses. Although a sizeable yacht, Wisp’s design places her in a category popular in these parts… the high-end dayboat/weekender. The hull is cold-moulded in wood, with the increasingly popular method of the deck, together with cabin trunk and cockpit, being built separately and dropped on towards the end of the build. Auxiliary power comes from a Yanmar 3JH40 40hp.
SPIRIT OF JESTER
It’s not one, but two one-off new-builds for Artisan, as they are nearing completion of a highly unusual 20ft micro cruiser called Ha’Penny, designed by Tom MacNaughton of Eastport, Maine. Like Blondie Hasler’s famous modified Folkboat Jester, she’s junk rigged, and draws 3ft 7in with a displacement of 2.5 tonnes, so clearly she’s a ‘little big’un’. The owner, although he has not as yet announced any concrete voyage plans, has read more than 200 books about ocean voyaging, beginning with Dove, by Robin Lee Graham, who became famous in the 70s for sailing around the world aged just 16. This design, the Ha’Penny 20, has been seven years in gestation, with input from the owner. It has just one junk sail on an unstayed mast, with a large rudder, servo windvane and lead keel. There is no cockpit to flood, and at the owner’s insistence, no through-hull fittings. Construction is sheathed strip wood and epoxy. Spars will be carbon fibre. The tiny pilothouse has 6ft 6in (2m) headroom, and the deep lines and low cabin sole give 5ft 8in below decks too. Simplicity extends to supplies: all water will be stowed in plastic bottles on purpose-built shelves, reducing free-surface effect inherent in large tanks. More luxurious features are a charcoal-burning stove, proper galley, two 6ft 6in bunks and plenty of stowage. Hardware is mostly bronze and a Torqeedo electric outboard will be used for entering ports and so on, and with solar panels, maybe a bit left over for the doldrums.