Alfred Mylne 43 ft Bermudan Sloop 1909 - Sold

ALINE is a thoroughbred Edwardian cruiser/ racer of impeccable pedigree, manners, looks and authenticity. Her designer, Alfred Mylne, was more than a decade into very successful life on his own account after his training with GL Watson when she was built by one of his favourite smaller yards. Unhindered by any rating rule, she is everything a classic yacht should be, and is a remarkable survivor - even sphinx-like, having survived a 1980s boatyard fire. Ready to use and sail exactly as she is, or refine with care to like original appearance, ALINE is a gem - and a fabulous opportunity.

ALINE sails like a witch. I have cruised her on the west coast of France and Brittany and whether running before a gale or gentle sailing, ALINE has always behaved impeccably.

2020
- Mast and boom wooded and re-varnished
- New running rigging

2014
Mast taken back and repaired with a five foot scarf at the head, rudder pintles replaced, keel bolts pulled to check condition and found to be good

2012
- New standing rigging, new toe rails

2010
- New Vetus 25hp engine

2005
- New rudder, new floors, rebuilt stern tube

1990
Major refit
- Hull taken back to bare wood
- Stem timber and counter re-built
- New garboards
- Hood end fastenings replaced in silicon bronze
- New keel bolts in silicon bronze,
- New toerails
- Recaulked
- Yellow pine deck sheathed in nylon cloth
- Re-rigged

ALFRED MYLNE & CO. DESIGN No. 167
According to Scottish author John Buchan ('The Thirty-Nine Steps'), when ALINE's first owner, British colonial service diplomat Gerard Craig Sellar, inherited the vast Scottish west highlands estate of Ardtornish in 1909, its potential for water-borne sport interested him much more than the hunting, shooting and fishing usually associated with such places. In his 1929 Spectator obituary of his great friend, Buchan wrote:

"For shooting and fishing he did not care consumingly, his prime interests lying rather in public affairs and the human comedy. The one exception was sailing. The 'wet-bob' tastes which he had learned at Eton and Balliol never left him."

Not only did Sellar inherit a beautifully wild 40,000-acre estate set in the magnificent sailing waters of the Firth of Lorn and the Sound of Mull; it came replete with the stately 1902 Cox and King-designed 180 feet, 555-ton steam yacht RANNOCH – so stately that in later life she would become the Italian Royal Yacht.

Sellar wasted no time in creating his own flotilla with the addition of this beautiful Alfred Mylne-designed gaff cutter, ALINE - like RANNOCH, named after one of the two estate rivers that flow into wonderfully sheltered Loch Aline - and the 43-ton Forrest & Co of Wivenhoe steam yacht MORVERN. Both smaller yachts were launched in 1909, with MORVERN acting as tender to ALINE and servicing the relatively remote estate as transport, and tender also to shooting parties - especially when RANNOCH cruised in warmer climes.

During the later years of her long period of residence on the Firth of Clyde into the late 1970s, ALINE was assumed by many (and in fact still appears thus in handicap tables) to be one of the “Clyde 30s”, a restricted Linear Rating class of such local popularity in the early years of the 20th Century that the International 8-Metre (8mR) class never truly came to the fore there until well in to the 1920s. The best known modern survivor of that class is the Fife designed and built MIKADO, well known on the Solent and as a regular attender at The Fife Regatta. Although there are in fact many similarities, ALINE was not built to race with the Clyde 30s, but her design seems undoubtedly influenced by them; like a “Cruising Clyde 30”. It makes sense: at the time of her design, the Mylne office was vying for Clyde 30 orders and honours with designs by William Fife Junior (III), and even their in-house designer (later Sir) Thomas Glen-Coats’s own efforts. The fact that Glen-Coats’s brother, Alexander Harold, became ALINE’s owner from the early 1920s until his death in 1935 may suggest a connection.

ALINE was originally a beautifully-proportioned gaff cutter with a modest jackyard topsail and kept that rig into her 7th ownership when in 1938 Alfred Mylne designed the equally handsome Bermudan cutter/ sloop rig she still sails under. Mylne was a master of rig design, and her present owner reports that she “sails like a witch”. ALINE is immortalised tramping across the Clyde off Gourock under this rig in Ian G Gilchrist’s book of late 1930s Clyde sailing portraits, “Call of the Wind”.

Apart from that rig change, and the earlier addition of a sensibly offset 2-cylinder Kelvin petrol auxiliary by post-World War One owner, Belfast Harbour Trustee William J. Jackson, multiple owners over her 110 years have thankfully altered ALINE little. Even 1980s damage from a Portsmouth boatyard fire, and the necessary restoration work undertaken under present ownership, did little to take away from ALINE’s wonderful patina of authenticity - so that she remains an Edwardian gem.

Owners 1909 - present:

1909 - 1912 Gerard Craig Sellar, Ardtornish, West Highlands
1912 - 1914 T. Gerald Tait, Girvan, Ayrshire
1914 - 1919 George H. Ross, Cultra, Belfast Lough
1919 - 1922 William J. Jackson, Cultra, Belfast Lough
1922 - 1934 F.P. Rankin, Clyde
1934 - 1939 James C. Guthrie, Clyde (who commissioned the 1938 Mylne Bermudan rig)
1939 - 1946 Walter Diack McRoberts, Clyde
1946 - 1947 TD & GW Cartwright, Clyde
1947 - 1947 Willie M. Mackinlay (prominent in International yachting administration)
1947 - 1955 (later Lt. Col.) John Cameron Jr. (later O.B.E.), Clyde
1955 - 1956 Alex McGlashan, Clyde
1957 - 1963 Dr Andrew Tindal, Clyde
1963 - 1969 Hugh Stevenson & Simon A.P. Tindal, Clyde
1969 - 1980 Hugh Stevenson, moored Crinan
1980 - ? D.A. Yates
1990 - Present ownership

©2023 Iain McAllister/ Sandeman Yacht Company Ltd.

- Pitch pine carvel planking on oak frames
- Yellow pine deck, sheathed with nylon cloth

FROM AFT
- Galvanised iron backstay chain plate
- Bronze cup for ensign staff
- Bronze tangs each side
- Bronze mushroom vents
- Bronze fairleads each side on toe rail
- Bronze mooring cleat on centreline
- Painted mainsheet horse
- Demountable wind generator
- Bronze rudder cap
- Iron tiller
- Teak lazarette hach
- Cockpit with teak coamings and 2 x teak sheet cleats each side
- 2 x Bronze winches on pedestals outboard one each side
- 2 x Chromed Lewmar 43 winches on pedestals outboard one each side
- Running backstay Highfield levers outboard
- Teak grating seating each side
- Teak grating on sole, access to shaft under
- Morse engine control Whale Gusher bilge pump

TRUNK CABIN
- Teak sliding hatch and double door access with bronze lock and fittings
- Teak handrails on coach roof each side
- Teak and bronze butterfly skylight
- Bronze vents on teak dorade boxes
- Bronze chimney
- Characteristic Mylne curved fore end of trunk cabin

MAST AND FORWARD
- Mast and fittings; for detail see “Rig” below
- Raised teak hatch with bronze framed glazed port
- Thomas Reid and Sons bronze manual windlass with warping drum
- CQR anchor in chocks on deck
- 60ft/ 20m Galvanised anchor chain
- Bronze mushroom vent
- Inner and adjustable forestay in lever
- Galvanised chain rollers to hawse pipes each side for’ard

- Double door and sliding hatch access to trunk cabin
- 3 x Steps down to starboard of engine box
- Quarter berth starboard outboard
- Engine box with chart table lifting top to port
- Isolator panel
- Vetus engine controls
- Bronze paraffin lamp fwd
- Mahogany cabin sole
- Mahogany settee berths port and starboard
- Shelving above berths outboard and stowage under
- 4 x Bronze ports each side of which 2 are opening
- 2 x Deck head lights
- 2 x Reading lights
- Paraffin oil lamp to port fwd
- Teak semi bulkheads

GALLEY TO PORT
- Taylor paraffin 2 x burner hob and oven stove
- Stainless steel sink in work top over stowage locker
- Bronze saltwater tap
- Bronze hand fresh water pump
- Plate racks over and outboard


CHART TABLE TO STARBOARD
- Locker and drawers under
- Drawers and instruments over
- Pascall Atkey heater to starboad on forward bulkhead
- Paraffin oil lamp, barometer and clock

- CURTAINED ACCESS TO FORE CABIN
- Mast
- Line stowage to port
- Single berth to starboard
- Fore hatch and glazed port in deck head
- Deckhead light
- Baby Blake WC with hand pump on pedestal fwd
- Shelving starboard
- Stowage for saloon table fwd to starboard
- Anchor locker fwd

RIG
- Bermudan cutter/ sloop rig to 1938 Alfred Mylne design
- Spruce main mast with double spreaders and jumpers 1938
- Spruce boom
- 2 x Bronze Lewmar halyard winches
- Galvanised standing rigging (2012)
- Running rigging renewed (2020)

SAILS
- Mainsail
- Jib
- Cruising chute
- Storm jib

CANVASWORK
- Mainsail boom cover

- Vetus M3.09 25hp Diesel (2010)
- Offset with A-bracket 2 x bladed propeller

- 12 V Electrical system
- 1 x House battery (2017)
- 1 x Engine start battery (2017)
- Charging by engine alternator and Rutland 913 wind generator with regulator

- Galvanised fuel tank 15 Gal / 68 L
- Flexible fresh water tank 50 L/ 11 Gal

- Depth sounder at aft cabin bulkhead stbd
- VHF by fwd chart table
- Car audio/ radio

- 1 x Manual bilge pump
- 1 x Electric bilge pump with float switch

- Drawings: Mylne Archive
- Clyde 1912: courtesy Clare McComb
- Clyde 1930s: Ian G Gilchrist