LOA: 24’0” / 7.3m – LWL: 18’0″ / 5.5m – Beam: 4’0” / 1.2m – Draft: 3’0” / 0.91m – Displacement: 910 lbs – Ballast: 300 lbs – Designed: C. Raymond Hunt – Original Hull material: “Harborite” Plywood Construction – Original Contract Cost: $480.50 – Upwind sail area: 157 sq ft – Spinnaker sail area: 100 sq ft – Mast Height: 23’0″ – Crew: 2 – In production: Yes – Class Website: International 110 Class – Approximate number built: 750+
Historical:
In 1936 Raymond Hunt along with engineers Bror Tamm and Gordon Munro decided to build a 36’0″ prototype at the Lawley Yard in Neponset, Massachusetts. Although there were doubts about her potential sailing abilities, she quickly proved doubters wrong. But, at the time, no one seemed to want one, the prototype was too peculiar, and slab-sided for her size.
After much thought and consideration the Raymond Hunt brain trust decided to scale down the 36′ prototype twelve feet. The new yacht was called the International 110, and with it a new era in yachting was ushered in.
After the 1938 Hurricane “A Wind To Shake The World” yacht construction prices were skyrocketing. Through Hunt’s association with George Lawley & Sons in the mid to late 30s, Raymond began experimenting with a new boat building material Harborite Plywood. The miracle overlayed fir plywood, offered “Armor Plate” protection with two tough, abrasion resistant surfaces of plastic resin impregnated fibres that are permanently welded together, creating a seamless easy, and cost effective way to build a boat. The 110 was built with four 12 foot sheets of Harborite laid over laminated oak frames and would use a simple rig with a rated sail area of 110 square feet, hence the name.
The International 110 was introduced at the 1939 Marblehead Race Week Regatta. Ray Hunt raced the boat around the coarse beating everyone boat for boat except the International One Design. With a price of $480.50 with sails the demand for this vessel began in earnest.
Ray Hunt would forever change the sailing world, hundreds of his new 110 design were being delivered as fast as they could build them. Unheard of for the time period, where other ship yards at best were producing 6-8 yachts a year, there were over 400 hulls built in a two year time period. Today as true testament to Hunt’s abilities, the 110 is still in production, and recently the class celebrated its 75th anniversary in Marblehead, Massachusetts, the place where things all began in those depression years prior to World War II.
Other innovations that were created through the nimbleness and speed of the 110 was the creation of a trapeze system. A simple wire and harnessing system that allowed crew weight to extend outboard. The one ten was iconic in the harbors there were used in, ultimately claiming namesake to today’s ultralight sport boat concept.
Through the initial aesthetic development of the 110, it was believed that painting the hull in such a way that would accentuate the roundness of the edges was absolutely necessary, if the shape of the hull is to look well. The new painting schedule was encouraged, but was often overlooked, in favor of more budget friendly all in one color paint scheme.
The Internation 110 is still in production, the current builder is Westease Yacht Service, Inc., 66th St & 135th Ave N, Saugatuck, MI 49453, Phone: (616) 394-0076. There are active racing fleets across the US in Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Jersey, Illinois, Michigan, California and Hawaii.
Photo Credit:
James W. Laws Photography – Location: Inverness CA Blake Jackson – MarbleheadStudios.com Marblehead, Massachusetts Leslie Jones (1886-1967)
It all started back in 1903 when railway magnate Morton Plant (Commodore of the Larchmont Yacht Club) called Nathanael Herreshoff with a simple order brief for a winning Class B schooner to race & cruise American waters and head over to Europe to win the much coveted Cape May Cup. Until that time all Herreshoff designed racing yachts had been single mast and with Ingomar the Wizard of Bristol turned out the first of nine extraordinary successful schooners. In his notes Herreshoff calls Ingomar “a wonderfully good schooner that easily proved to be the fastest of her type”. He wrote that he sailed her a few times and was well pleased. Charlie Barr, by then 3 time America’s Cup winner, became Ingomar’s captain and he too was well pleased. After crossing the Atlantic in 15 days he wrote to Herreshoff; “Ingomar is as good as cruising yacht as you will find anywhere”. Little did he know then because when he started racing Ingomar that extraordinary cruising yacht brought home 17 trophies in a single season. Only the legendary schooner America has ever campaigned with more success.
Ingomar was built side by side with Reliance, the greatest of all America’s Cup yachts. With Lipton’s 1903 Challenge to lift the Cup, the pace of construction for Reliance prevailed but Ingomar surely benefitted from the incredible development and refinement of this quintessential racing yacht. Her fittings were light, elegant yet immensely strong, her deck lay-out and set up of the rig reflected all that was learned from the past Cup yachts and much admired. Such was her perfection that Ingomar’s rig served as model for all Herreshoff schooners to follow.
Ingomar’s first outing in 1903 proved to be a sign of things to come and with great dominance she won the Astor Cup for Schooners and from there on she took the schooner world by storm winning every yacht club run in her first season. Morton Plant had a mission to race the big class in Europe and win back the Cap May Cup which the English yacht Genesta won in 1885. Since then this prestigious trophy was raced for and held in English hands. The trophy was last won by King Edward’s Britannia in 1893 however to embarrassment of the trophy was lost. Winsor castle was ransacked to no avail until the trophy was found at the Royal Sandringham estate, but by then it was to late and with profound apologies it was returned to the New York Yacht Club. Apologies were naturally excepted in the best spirit and later that year the Cup was raced for in American waters and won by the 3-Masted schooner Atlantic.
Ingomar raced both British and German waters and was met by the best schooners and cutters of her time. Her performance was so dominant that she received an arbitrary handicap allowing other yachts some silver too. Even under those circumstances she won 12 firsts, 4 seconds and one third. Had she been built under the Universal Rule then her racing career would have extended for many years but when the NYYC adopted that new rating rule her competitive days where over and she resumed her life as a fast & luxurious cruising yacht.
Rosentfeld 1908
Sadly, while on a private cruise On November 10th, 1931 Ingomar was lost upon hitting the Frying Pan Shoals, off Cape Fear, North Carolina. Her sinking as reported by Taylor, William H.
“With nine men aboard, under Captain Leif Sparre, Ingomar sailed from Oxford on February 18th, bound for Charleston, S. C, to pick up Mr. Hoffman and a party. Fog delayed her inside the Capes, but she passed Cape Henry bell buoy at 4.00 p.m. on the nineteenth and headed down the coast under sail and power. On the evening of the twentieth, with a moderate N.N.W. breeze, she was logging nine or ten knots when the skipper went below, leaving the mate in charge. At 11:20 that night the mate picked up two lights which he believed to be the lightship and gas buoy on the Frying Pan, and the course was presently altered. As it turned out, the lightship had been moved offshore since Ingomar’s charts were printed and one of the lights they saw was the lighthouse on Cape Fear.”
“At 12:10 a.m. Ingomar struck hard on the tail of the Frying Pan, slid over into deep water, and then, with a heavy sea driving her, went on again and began to pound. For six hours the seas lifted and pounded her on the shoal and washed her decks, smashing in her skylights and hatches and gradually beginning to fill her. Soon there was enough water below to set the heavy cabin furniture adrift, and as she rolled and pounded, the furniture smashed the bulkheads out of her until she was one seething, open room from stem to stern, with wreckage batting about so that no man dared go below decks, though it was scarcely less perilous on topside as the seas washed her. This loose debris, the captain believes, broke off some of her plumbing or other openings through the hull and hastened her filling.”
“Despite the hammering, the old ship refused to break up and at six o’clock in the morning she had washed clean over the shoal and was afloat in the deeper water to leeward. They anchored, but with the motor pump out of commission, the water gained two inches an hour despite desperate work with hand pumps and buckets, and at 10.00 a.m. they made sail again and headed for where they supposed the lightship to be, hoping that if they reached her she could signal help to them.”
“Failing to sight the ship as expected, and with Ingomar settling under them, they finally headed her for the beach, but by then she was almost unmanageable and settling faster than ever, with her smashed portholes now awash. At 4:30 they launched the lifeboat.”
“By great good fortune Mr. Hoffman had equipped Ingomar with a big, new, steel, motor lifeboat which he intended to use for fishing when he got south. The motor was soaked and useless, and they hove it overboard to lighten her and bent to their oars. The schooner sank a few minutes after they left her, in the deep water to the southward of the Frying Pan, and there she will lie as long as the steel lasts.”
“Twenty-two hours of rowing brought the shipwrecked crew to the beach at Cape Fear where the Coast Guard station took them in. The keeper of Cape Fear Light had reported seeing flares that Captain Sparre sent up after the wreck, but had misjudged their distance offshore so that two Coast Guard boats that had set out to investigate had gone only as far as the slue and failed to see her. Had they found her in time and towed her to shelter, Ingomar might still have made that trip abroad this summer.” (Source: Taylor, William H. “Vale Ingomar! A Yacht Long Famous in the Annals of Yacht Racing Meets Her End.” Yachting Magazine, May, 1931, p. 63-64, 132, 134, 136.)
Ingomar today
With the fleet of large classic yachts growing every year the scene for schooner racing is becoming one of the most attractive and exciting in the Mediterranean Sea. Here you will find Mariette, Elena, Eleonora, Orion, Altair and many others. Ingomar was not designed to any rating rule and her designer Nathanael Herreshoff was therefore not restricted in hull shape or sailplan. The result was the quintessential hybrid between a fast cruising yacht and a winning racing schooner. In today’s classic fleet she fits right in the slot, on deck slightly shorter than Elenora but her sparred length and sailarea exceeding that of her bigger sister. Her low relatively low displacement with large sailplan will undoubtedly make her the ultimate light air flyer of the fleet, and light air is the predominant condition in the Med.
But Ingomar is not an all-out racing yacht, who could better state this as the legendary Charlie Barr, who wrote to N.G. Herreshoff; “Ingomar is as good as cruising yacht as you will find anywhere”. And that is the concept on which Ed Kastelein modelled Ingomar. Ingomar was built for Ed Kastelein, she is his fourth large schooner and all and everything he knows goes into this project. Of course she is built in steel Graaf Ship of Dordrecht, Holland, known as one of the best Dutch shipbuilders. Her hull is strong and among the fairest ever built. A wonderfully elegant and comfortable interior for both guests and crew, a large galley to cater the guests but also dockside parties. Not adopted but recreated to sail with guests and enter a successful charter career. A traditional, authentic yet simple to operate rig with a deck crew in full service of no more than eight.
Construction will continue once the owner sells Atlantic. In the meantime, she is for sale for anyone interested in finishing her. Ingomar presents an opportunity for anyone that wishes to gain from the owners experience in building his recently recreated schooners such as Eleonora, Elena and Atlantic. Thorough historical research has revealed some 160 original building and construction plans, all highly detailed and complete. Her beauty and success made her one of the best documented yachts of her time and many of the original images have survived and will help recreate this yacht to her original glory.
Note: The boat is currently lying in Holland with the hopes of bringing her to America for completion.
In 1937 there was something approaching 12m fever in Germany. Walter Rau, owner of a whaling fleet and his friend John T Essberger, owner of a shipping company each ordered a 12m yacht from the famous shipyard of Abeking and Rasmussen in Lemwerder near Bremen. These yachts were to be named Anita and Inga. At the same time Henry Burmester was building another 12m, Ashanti, for himself in his own yard. In the early summer of 1938 both Abeking and Rasmussen yachts were launched just in time to compete in the Kieler Woche. Anita (yard no.3241) received sail no 12G2 and Inga (no.3242) her identical sister, the sail no 12G1. In addition to the two sisterships a 3.6m motorboat tender was delivered. As was usual in those early years neither yacht was fitted with an engine. Construction was Mahogany on forged steel frames. Decks were laid Oregon Pine. The masts were built of Spuce.
As Henry Rasmussen reported at the time: “Anita was launched shortly before the Kieler Woche, where she sailed against Inga and the English 12m Blue Marlin. The English boat went round the buoys like a dinghy but the two German 12s’ with their inexperienced crews were left at the buoys with their sails flapping” At the Kieler Woche in 1939 things were very different. The Sphinx, another 12m built by the A&R yard for Norddeutscher Regatta Verein ranked consistently first. Anita, Inga and Ashanti took turns at 2nd, 3rd and 4th. During the summer of 1939 the German 12s’ sailed a race series near Copenhagen. The coming of WWII stopped all sailing activities. Anita was laid up at A&R and had to wait for better times.
After the war Inga and Sphinx were renamed Westwind and Ostwind and sailed under the flag of the German Navy. 2006 they were sold to private owners. Ashanti burned up in a big fire in the Burmester shipyard. Anita was sailed only once in Kiel. By 1951 she had been re-rigged as a yawl and the interior modified for cruising, but still in the following years she was used on only very few journeys.
Provenance (The Wall of Remembrance – The Owners, Crew & Notable Guest):
Owner: (1938-1947) – John T. Essberger, Hamburg Owner: (1947-1948) – David Ryder-Turner Owner: (1948-1958) – John T. Essberger Owner: (1958-2006 ) – Kommandrur Marineschule Murwick, Flensburg – renamed: Westwind Owner: (2006) – Alexander Böhning, London – renamed: Inga
LOA: 56’8″ / 17.27m – LOD: 56’8″ / 17.27m – LWL: 40’0″ / 12.19m – Beam: 12’6″ / 3.81m – Draft: 7’8″ / 2.33m – Displacement: 22 tons – Sail Area: 1,200 sq f / 111.48 m2 – Original Name: Impala – Original Owner: James Farrell – I Current Owner: Alfred Sanford – Year Launched: 1954 – Designed by: Sparkman & Stephens – Design Number: 1056 – Built by: Abeking and Rasmussen, Lemwerder, Germany – Hull Material: Wood – Documentation No.: 268522
Historical:
Impala was designed by Sparkman & Stephens in the tradition of Stormy Weather and the long line of full keel ocean racers. Impala is a bit beamier, and wider aft, than many of her sisters. Her draft of 7’8” is a bit less than the customary 8’ to 8 1/2’. She is flush decked with a small house aft. Her interior is reminiscent of an Alden–off center companionway, owner’s cabin aft, and galley forward. A & R built her to a high standard in double-planked mahogany.
Sanford Boat Company – In 1965 Impala was re-rigged by Sparkman & Stephen. Her mast and boom were shortened and her headstay raised. She was given a staysail which was set on a removable inner headstay, which eased tacking the genoa when that was used. She was given a set of Barent winches, two #35s for the gen-and and two #28s for the staysail.
Provenance (The Wall of Remembrance – The Owners, Crew & Notable Guest):
Owner/Guardian: (1956 – 1971) – James Farrell, Edgartown Owner/Guardian: (1971 – ?) – Bob Larsen Owner/Guardian: (1986 – current) – Alfred Sanford, Nantucket
LOA: 51.83′ / 15.80m – LWL: 37.5′ / 11.43m – Beam: 11.48′ / 3.50m – Draft: 7.87′ / 2.40m – Hull Number: – Designer: Jack Laurent Giles – Original Owner: – Current Owner: – Year Built: 1967 – Built By: Cantiere Beconcini, La Spezia -Italy – Hull Material: Mahogany longitudinal strip and diagonal planked – Gross Displacement: 17 Tons – Ballast: – Engine Volvo Penta 80 HP Turbo (2008) – Location: Italy
Historical:
Marconi cutter designed by Jack Laurent Giles was built in 1967 by the Beconcini yard in La Spezia, following the experience of NINA, MIRANDA IV and MIRANDA V
Restoration History:
Completely restored and refitted by Beconcini in Italy in 2001 , then always serviced there in 2002 ,2006, 2008 negli anni 2001, 2002, 2006, 2008; 2010
Prrovenance. (The Wall of Remembrance – The Owners, Crew & Notable Guest):
