Alfred Mylne 57 ft Gaff Cutter 1903/2012 - Sold

KELPIE is a race and regatta winner designed by Alfred Mylne, and one of the most beautiful and fastest classic yachts of her size. At the close of the intense 2018 Mediterranean classic regatta season she notched up 1st overall in the Vintage Gaff Class at both Régates Royales - Trophée Panerai, Cannes and Les Voiles de Saint-Tropez, while still looking in start of season condition. Only typical of the way this superb Golden Age of Yachting survivor has been cared for and campaigned under present ownership, including undergoing three major winter refit/ restorations 2009-2012 at Fairlie Restorations - probably the last such work by the illustrious team involved in landmark rebuilds of yachts like TUIGA, THE LADY ANNE, KENTRA, MARIQUITA and HISPANIA - all whilst continuing to sail by summer. More recently KELPIE has enjoyed a major rig makeover 2017-2018, and is ready to continue sailing, racing and thrilling. Her recent success has been achieved crewed mainly by family and friends - are you ready?!

Under present ownership, KELPIE has competed at classic regattas ranging from Oslo Fjord via the Clyde and Cowes to Saint-Tropez. Through 2017 and 2018 - working closely with German classic rig designer and naval architect Juliane Hempel, carpenters and spar builders Manos del Mar, Palma de Mallorca and Ventis of The Netherlands, and Guido Cavalazzi of North Sails Italy - KELPIE has been highly successfully yet sympathetically optimised, and sailed to perfection by her crew of mostly friends and family. Her 2018 results speak for themselves, and her crew consider her “the fastest gaffer on the water!”

2009 The Mylne Regatta, Clyde; BCYC Regatta, Cowes
2010 Mediterranean regattas
2011 Mediterranean regattas
2012 Mediterranean regattas
2013 Mediterranean regattas
2014 Europe Week, Oslo Fjord; Danish Classic, Svendborg; German Classic, Laboe
2015 RYS 200th Regatta, Cowes; Falmouth Classics; Classic Channel Regatta
2016 Mediterranean regattas
2017 Mediterranean regattas – increasingly better performances
2018 Mediterranean – 3rd in class at Imperia; Class winner at Cannes and Saint-Tropez

At Fairlie Restorations 2009 - 2012
- New stem, wood keel and sternpost; some of counter timber
- Various frames had to be removed and replaced to do this
- Some went back as original; some laminated
- Engine and drive line altered from C/L to offset
- Aperture filled
- Rudder post (iroko) and rudder (mahogany) replaced at same time
- Very few new planks were needed, except aft for safety
- New deck beams and ply aft of deck structures, therefore new teak decking aft
- All new deck structures back to original shape and size
- All new interior back to near original
- Various new deck fittings in bronze
- Electrical system mostly new

Born to race, KELPIE’s roots offer sure proof that her still relatively young designer’s light was shining very brightly far from home waters five years after his breakaway as understudy to mentor, GL Watson. So much so that a group of south coast of England yachtsmen would commission a Scotsman not called Fife to design an important, large-dimensioned one design class for Solent waters – the South Coast One Design.

The Alfred Mylne story is also intertwined with that of KELPIE’s commissioning owner, George Coats, one of Scotland’s serial yacht owning “Paisley thread Barons”, with addresses in Ayrshire, Aberdeenshire, Park Lane and Mayfair. Coats’s nephew (later Sir) Thomas “Tid” Glen Coats worked with Mylne and designed yachts in his own name, and his uncle’s social whirl revolved as much around the south of England as it did the west and north east of Scotland; a daughter would marry the 5th Duke of Wellington. Perhaps it was inevitable that one of the new class would be owned by a Coats.

They owed their origins to the genesis of many one design classes: dissatisfaction with the rating rule of the day, and a desire among a group of keen Solent racing yachtsmen for a wholesome but fast yacht that would offer comfortable accommodation and not tear itself apart after a couple of seasons. An earlier Mylne commission from Clyde yachtsmen similarly less than enamoured by the rating rule, the successful, slightly smaller Clyde 20-Ton One Design Class, may have led to Mylne getting the job. Certainly, his result for the Solent was an untrammelled work of art: free from the bounds of any rating rule, with a hull form true to the “Britannia ideal” and everything else the designer had learned working closely with Watson on the design of America’s Cup challengers and famous big class yachts.

The South Coast One Design Class winter 1902-03 builds were spread among three of the best contracting yards of the time, using the finest of materials, to robust but not heavy scantlings. Thus it is something of a surprise that KELPIE is the only survivor of a class of seven boats by Fay of Southampton (CAPRICE and KELPIE), Stone of Brightlingsea (EILUN and HARMONY) and Forrest of Wivenhoe (GRACIE, HEROINE, and JEAN – still remembered at Crosshaven, Co. Cork, Ireland, from her last days there before death by misadventure as ELSA). But there is a story of a yard fire that may have destroyed most of them...

After but a few races on the south coast, KELPIE sailed most of her seven seasons under George Coats’s blue and white chequered racing flag on the Clyde, eventually being sold in 1908-09 to Glasgow jute merchant James Paterson. By this time the new International Rule metric classes were gathering momentum and Kelpie had earlier had her rig adjusted to rate as a 12mR on the Clyde in some of the earliest races sailed in that class anywhere. Before the sale to Paterson, George had taken delivery of his new Fife 12mR ALACHIE, and the days of racing as a class by KELPIE’s sisters 'down south' were numbered.

After a period of ownership by Glasgow brassfounder Thomas Burt, in 1922 KELPIE returned to the south coast where Austin O’Connor raced her with the still mostly gaff-rigged 12-Metre class during the mid-1920s, before conversion to an auxiliary cruising yawl in 1925 by London-based Donald G Freeman. She remained a yawl through various 1960s to 1980s south west, and south coast of England ownerships, moored at Dartmouth and on the River Yealm - even owned briefly by sailing school - and at Cowes - in the care of shipwrights Adrian Stone at Cowes and Nash & Holden at Dartmouth.

KELPIE’s gaff cutter rig was restored in relatively recent times, and when owned by Richard Bendy in the first half of this Century she became well known again at Solent regattas. Her restoration and refit under present ownership is recorded under “RESTORATION 2009 - 2012”, and her 2009 - 2018 regatta history is discussed above.

©2023 Iain McAllister/ Sandeman Yacht Company Ltd.

- 1¼ in pitch pine planks below waterline
- 1¼ in yellow/white pine (Pinus strobus) topsides planking
- On grown oak frames at c13 in centres with 2 x steam bent rock elm timbers between
- Iron dump fastened to grown frames
- Copper fastened to steamed timbers
- Some laminated frames (see 'REFITS')
- Lead ballast keel fastened with bronze keelbolts
- Iron strap floors at the grown oak frames
- Solid laid teak on ply composite deck

Teak deck structures, covering boards and rails
- Bronze mooring fairleads port & starboard on taffrail
- Bronze mooring cleats
- Ash, bronze and Tufnol tackle for topmast backstays
- Bronze cleat for topmast backstays
- Ash and bronze mainsheet blocks
- Bronze cleat for mainsheet
- Bronze rudder head
- Tiller
- Raised varnished teak cockpit coamings
- Cockpit seating is a continuation of the deck within the coamings
- Access to entire counter area lazarette via aft cockpit hatch
- Lockers under port and starboard cockpit seats
- Engine control to starboard in foot well
- Manual bilge pump
- Engine access in cockpit sole
- Teak and bronze tackle for main running backstays
- Bronze cleat
- Sestrel steering compass in ‘bridge deck’
- 4 x Cleats port and 4 x starboard mid deck for tackles
- Mylne style companionway hatch and butterfly hatch
- 3 x port and 3 x starboard ‘Lemon squeezer’ side deck prism lights
- 8 x fixing points for padeyes/ nuns' cape fairleads
- Tufnol tackles for headsails
- Butterfly hatch over saloon
- Gas locker
- Pin rail at mast base
- Raised hatch over focsle
- Deck prism
- 4 x fixing points on deck for fairleads
- Bowsprit bits (teak?)
- Bronze fwd mooring fairleads port and starboard
- Mushroom vent

Mahogany joinery aft and saloon
Pine joinery fwd
- Access via companionway ladder in two parts over engine box
- Quarter berth to port
- Chart table to starboard
- Instruments and ship’s isolator panel

Moving fwd to saloon
- Settee bunks port and starboard
- Pilot berths port and starboard
- Lockers port and starboard
- Butterfly hatch in deckhead
- 4 x deckhead lights
- 4 x reading lights
- 2 x ‘Lemon squeezer’ deck prisms in deckhead

Moving forward to galley to port
- Deckhead light
- 2 x stainless steel sinks
- Bronze deck manual pump
- Smev 2x burner hob and oven
- Isotherm fridge
- Lockers
- Large food/ stowage locker to starboard
- Butterfly hatch in deckhead
- 2 x ‘Lemon squeezer’ deck prisms in deckhead

WC to starboard: Jabsco manual

Fwd to focsle
- Sail stowage
- 1 x deckhead light
- 1 x Lemon squeezer deck prism

Spars
- New hollow Sitka spruce racing spars to improve weight aloft (-25-30%) and performance (2017 - 2018)
- ‘Marconi’ racing mast (Hempel/Ventis 2018)
- Bowsprit (Hempel/Ventis 2018)
- Spinnaker pole, stowed at leading edge of mast (Hempel/ Manos del Mar 2018)
- Gaff (Manos del Mar 2017)

- Hollow boom (nd)

Rigging
- Dynema standing rigging
- Bronze bottle screws

North Italy racing sails (2017/18)
- Main
- Staysail
- Jib
- Jibtop,
- Topsail
- Genoa #1
- Genoa #2
- Balloon Jib.

- Full set of cruising/ delivery sails

- Volvo Penta D1-30F 29hp Diesel engine
- Offset drive train
- Simple 12v Electrical system with 220v shore power charging and supply.
- 40 L Diesel tank
- 60 L Water tank

- Chartplotter Garmin GPSMap 557
- Furuno GPS Navigator
- B&G Hydra 2000
- Raymarine wireless instrumentation
- ICOM VHF IC M411
- LED Nav Lights

Equipment as per RYA recommendations
- Electric and manual bilge pumps
- Fire Extinguishers throughout
- 15 x Life Jackets
- 2 x 6 man life rafts
- EPIRB
- Flare Pack
- 1 x CQR Anchor, chain and warp
- 1 x Fortress anchor and warp

Sailing photos 1-10 by James Robinson Taylor