35 ft West Solent One Design W-23 1928/1995

The Berthon Boat Company’s West Solent Class of beautiful and fast 35 ft sloops has always ticked so many boxes in perception of what a classic yacht should be: elegant sheer; simple, clean deck layout and rig; basic but adequate accommodation; so seaworthy, despite low freeboard, that at least one has completed an Atlantic circuit, returning during the 1979 Fastnet Race storm. NATICA is one of the special ones that enjoyed keel-up restoration by Peter Brookes during the mid-1990s class revival. Subsequently that desirability has attracted owners prepared to keep her just so. In current hands, NATICA has been professionally maintained, and recently received a completely new spruce rig, new sails, and neatly installed inboard engine.

2019-2022 by NAUTICA PELAEZ, S.L. CIUTADELLA, MENORCA
- Installation of new Yanmar 1GM10 engine
- All new associated equipment
- New engine beds
- New fixed 3-bladed propeller
- Teak deck repairs at aft deck

2019 by SUFFOLK YACHT HARBOUR, LEVINGTON , UK
- New spruce mast, boom; associated fittings and sails

2014 by PASQUI, VILLEFRANCE-SUR-MER
- Routine maintenance refit

1993-1995 by PETER BROOKES, MALDON, ESSEX, UK
- Major Rebuild/ restoration
- As described in construction
- Including all new teak deck structures

BERTHON BOAT COMPANY BUILD NO. 309

The West Solent Restricted Class (known in its early years on the East Coast of England as the Burnham Restricted Class) had become very well established by 1928 with up to 15 boats from both fleets racing at that year’s Cowes Week. For the class’s designer and builder, Berthon Boat Company of Lymington, this would have been a godsend; perhaps giving them the confidence to build batches speculatively, it being more profitable to build more than one at the same time. It is furthermore possible that Berthon’s well-connected owner, Harry G. May, was able to persuade local friends and yachting acquaintances to support this speculation by sponsoring a build confident that the boat would be snapped up on completion.

This could explain the fact that the commissioning owners listed in Berthon yard records for the two West Solents they built in 1928, ANN (W-23, now NATICA) and CARMELA (W-24), differed from the owners published in that season’s racing results. The Berthon yard list records Edmund A. Browne, a seasoned cruising yachtsman with homes in Shropshire, England and Argyll, Scotland, as first owner of ANN (W-23). But she appears to have been owned and raced during the 1928 season by Lt. Col. Glyn K.M. Mason, D.S.O: the Member of the UK Parliament for North Croydon, the future Baron Blackford, Deputy Speaker of the House of Lords and chairman of the Midland Bank.

ANN’s owner in 1929 and 1930, Edward A. Brown - comfortably retired at 40 to Pennington, Lymington on the back of his Dorset-born, Glasgow-based family’s huge successes in pioneering industrial trade with and for Japan - was stepping up as an ace helm in the X One Design Class with his PETIT POUSSIN. In Brown’s ownership ANN’s mothership was the very pretty Alfred Mylne/ R.A. Newman 46 ft centreboard bermudan yawl BELLE POULE. There was obviously a French Connection…

From 1931, ANN joined the Dartmouth/ Torbay West Solent fleet, her name changing to NATICA in the ownership of retired shipowner Vernon W. MacAndrew of Dartmouth. Her motherships became the 22 ft William Osborne petrol launch RAVEN and, from 1934, the first of MacAndrew’s stylish Norman Hart-designed motor yachts, the 90 ft CAMPEADOR. MacAndrew replaced NATICA in 1937 with his new Charles Nicholson 12-Metre TRIVIA.

NATICA remained a Torbay boat in the 1937 to 1957 ownership of retired far eastern mining engineer Thomas Windeatt, her tender becoming the more modest but powerful 26 ft Richardson Boat Company (New York) motor launch LILIANNA.

By 1957 a fledgling post- war West Solent fleet had been gathering as part of South Caernarvonshire Yacht Club’s eclectic flotilla of ex class racers at Abersoch. NATICA joined her class sisters there, SQUIRREL (ex FENELLA), SUVRETTA, and perhaps more, in the ownership of retired cotton waste merchant and Nantwich gentleman farmer William Charles Jones, followed from 1960 to 1961 by J. Fildes of Manley Knoll, Cheshire.

NATICA’s first fling in the north didn’t last long. In 1962 she returned to the Solent (Hamble) with The Hon. Robin Dixon, then a career soldier (who would win the Gold Medal at the 1964 Innsbruck Winter Olympics in the Two-man Bobsleigh as brakeman to Tony Nash, and later become the 3rd Baron Glentoran) and David John Keeling German.

Thereafter, NATICA’s UK ownership and location changes were:
- 1963-1968 Ernest Mark Hatcher, Gravesend
- 1973-1976 Peter Andrew Spence, Glasson Dock, Lancashire
- 1976-1980 Peter Andrew Spence & T.L.H. Farnell, Glasson Dock,
- 1981-1987 Rosalie Warburton, Glasson Dock
- 1987- c1993 Roger Hammond Sargood, Bexhill-on-Sea/ Hamble

As found in 1993 prior to restoration commencing, NATICA had become a bermudan ketch with her beautiful counter sawn off. She’s come a long way since, including - according to the West Solent Class website - being shipped to New Zealand in 2002.

By 2007 NATICA was back in Europe in the ownership of the Rouget-Luchaire family and based at Cannes. Since 2018 she has been in current ownership in Spain's Balearic islands.

©2024 Iain McAllister/ Sandeman Yacht Company Ltd.

- Carvel red pine (original) and iroko planking
- (Iroko garboards and sheer strake)
- Topsides planking spruce splined
- Laminated oak frames
- Bronze screw fastened
- 2 x Steamed oak timbers between
- Steamed oak timbers copper fastened
- Douglas fir bilge stringers
- Longer than original mast step
- Laminated iroko floors
- Bronze chainplates fastened fore and aft to frames
- Lead ballast keel
- 25 mm Aluminium bronze keelbolts
- Douglas fir deck beams
- 2 x Oak deck beams in way of main sheet
- 15 mm Plywood sub deck
- 7 mm Teak laid deck

GENERAL
- Laid teak deck on marine plywood substrate
- Varnished mahogany covering boards, taffrail and toerails
- Bronze fittings
- Varnished teak deck structures

FROM AFT
- Bronze mooring fairleads port and starboard
- Backstay lead under deck via bronze pipe fitting
- Central aft deck bronze and teak bar mooring cleat
- Bronze padeyes port and starboard
- Bronze main sheet horse
- Tufnol mainsheet blocks
- Bronze rudder head and hinged wooden tiller
- Running backstay padeyes
- Antal running backstay jammers

COCKPIT
- Varnished teak coamings faired to companionway
- Slatted raw teak benches port and starboard
- Raw teak grating cockpit sole
- Raw teak solid sole hatch over engine
- Large lazarette access aft
- 2 x Bronze Lewmar 30 self-tailing sheet winches
- 2 x Bronze Lewmar 16 self-tailing line/ halyard winches
- Harken main sheet jammers
- Engine panel and control

Combined varnished teak companionway and skylight house
- Double doors to accommodation
- Sliding hatch
- Butterfly skylight

SIDE DECKS
- Bronze genoa sheet tracks with 2 x cars port and starboard
- Antal line jammers port and starboard

MAST POSITION
- Line lead Tufnol blocks port and starboard on bronze padeyes
- Short bronze jib tracks and cars port and starboard
- Spinnaker pole stowage chocks port and starboard

FOREDECK
- Raised forehatch
- Spinnaker pole control padeyes
- Samson port
- Bronze mooring fairleads port and starboard
- Bow roller to starboard of stemhead

GROUND TACKLE
- Fortress anchor and 50 m chain
- CQR anchor and 50 m rope

- Sliding hatch and double door access over engine casing to accommodation
- White and varnished deck head
- Electric isolator panel
- Benches with stowage under port and starboard
- Short semi-bulkheads forward
- Settee berths port and stbd
- Raw teak solid and grating cabin sole
- Fo'c'sle for sails, sheets and anchor stowage

RIG
- Fractional sloop rig
- 2 x Sets spreaders and jumper strut
- Spruce mast and boom (Suffolk Yacht Harbour 2019)
- Bronze fittings
- 'Spartite' mast partners seal
- Older Oregon pine mast and Sitka spruce boom
- Spruce spinnaker pole (Suffolk Yacht Harbour 2019)
- Standing rigging new 2019
- New rigging screws 2019

SAILS
No 1 Sails (2019)
- Mainsail with 2 x reefs
- No 1 Genoa
- No 2 Genoa
- No 3 Genoa
- Spinnaker

CANVASWORK
- Companionway hatch and skylight cover
- Mainsail boom cover
- Forehatch cover
- Whole boat cover

MECHANICAL
- Yanmar 1GM10 10 hp/ 6.6 kW inboard diesel (2019)
- Fixed 3-bladed propeller (2019)
- Installation designed by Guy Ribadeau Dumas, 2010

ELECTRICAL
- 2 x 12 V 74 Ah Batteries (2020 & 2021)
- 20 A Battery charger (2020)

TANKAGE
- Aluminium 20 L fuel tank

- Steering compass
- Raymarine wind and log

- 12 V Automatic bilge pump
- 12 V Automatic bilge pump 750 G/h (2020)
- Manual bilge pump

- Raw teak boom crutch
- Stainless steel and wood swim ladder