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Are you a schooner enthusiast? Do you own or sail one?
We'd love to hear all about it.
Tell us all about your schooner and why you favour this type of yacht over the
alternatives, if you do.
What are the advantages and disadvantages under sail?
How did you come to be sailing a schooner?
Tell us your funny, or tragic, stories involving schooners.
Don't worry about your writing skills, we can help with the editing.
Just tell us, in your own words. It'll be fine. We're looking forwards to hearing all about
it.
Pictures are welcomed too, and just to illustrate the point, here's
a photograph of the traditional local schooner 'Friendship Rose' lying in Port Elizabeth, Bequia in
May of this year - just click on the miniature photo to see the
full-sized version.
She was presented with a brand new staysail while we
were there, we joined a crowd watching the process and listened while
conflicting advice of all kinds was shouted to the crew. Very sensibly, the crew
calmly got on with doing the job, neither arguing nor agreeing with anyone and,
before long, the new sail was in place and looking very seamanlike. Bequia is
famed for building just this kind of vessel and the tradition is very much
alive, we're glad to say.
'Fram' - Polar Conquerer
'Fram' is a three-masted schooner of 402
tons, with auxiliary steam power. She was the first vessel designed to
winter in polar pack ice, her hull being so shaped that, no matter how
strong the pressure of the ice, she would be lifted free of it.
Brain-child of the Norwegian polar explorer, Fridtjof Nansen, she was
first employed on his famous drift across the Arctic Ocean in the years
1893 to 1896.
From 1898 to 1902, Otto Sverdrup used her to explore the islands northwest
of Greenland. In 1910 the Fram was taken by Roald Amundsen to the
Antarctic where he and four companions successfully reached the South
Pole.
Today, the Fram is preserved as a
national monument in a building especially constructed for her near
Oslo.
The Schooner "Coronet"
The International Yacht Restoration School is working to restore the schooner
Coronet, their largest vessel.
Built in 1885 in Brooklyn, New York, Coronet measures 133 feet on deck with
a 27 foot beam and 12 foot draft.
When fully rigged with bowsprit, main boom and jib-boom, her length overall is 190 feet
and she carries 8,300 square feet of sail.
We heard, in 2000, that students and master shipwrights planned to repair the
hull, refinish the interior and replicate missing pieces to return Coronet to her original
condition.
The project would, we heard, take place in full public view. When complete, Coronet
would have
no engines, electricity or modern equipment.
She will maintain an active sailing life as the school's flagship and be used as a good will ambassador on historical
voyages.
IYRS's unique and valuable educational institution is located on a 2 1/2 acre waterfront wharf on Thames Street in downtown
Newport, Rhode Island, USA.
You can read more about the school in A
Real Education in the Technical
Section.
If you have been to see this work in progress and
would like to tell us all about it, we'd be delighted to hear.
Meanwhile, we thought we'd give you a few details on MarineZine's
floating headquarters:
The Schooner Leopard Normand III
The home and headquarters of MarineZine, and its principal
editors, is a 71' staysail schooner, the Leopard Normand
III, built in Valerie Sur Somme, Normandy, in 1976.
She was originally built for one of France's most famous modern day
adventurers, Jack Grout, who had Leopard Normand III (the Leopard of
Normandy, so named because the flag of Normandy carries two leopards)
built for the purposes of circumnavigating with a crew of twelve. Probably not
in quite so much comfort as modern crew have come to expect... if you'd
like to see more about her, you'll soon be able to, on her own little
site in this magazine!
She has taken a few beatings in the course of her three circumnavigations
and twenty-eight Atlantic crossings but
is still strong, seaworthy and very comfortable. We took to calling our occasional
charters 'Scruff
Hall Tours'! She went to the Caribbean for a refit in 1998 and returned to Europe to get a proper
refit in 2000, but that's another story...
Whether as editors of MarineZine or as fellow
cruisers, we'd love to hear from you!
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