Sailing Sunday – Mystery Yacht

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Sailing Sunday – Mystery Yacht
photo ex Keith Ottaway

Keith was having a clean out & found the photo below, he presumes it’s a contact print from one of the glass plates he has from his wife’s great grandfather Collins collection.

Not sure of the date – but the collection starts around 1895, looking at that ship that is dressed in the background – this looks later than that  – possibly up
to  1920.

So todays mystery is – name the boat and the date. The name most likely starts with a T or a W 😉

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11 thoughts on “Sailing Sunday – Mystery Yacht”

  1. Yeep.
    Just to note – I raised this independently of George’s views.
    However George jokingly said, when I mentioned this to him, “he couldn’t believe his grandfather wouldn’t have brought mullet aboard her”
    She was set apart in looks.

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  2. Well, Robin Elliott and I have spent a considerable part of the last 30 years trying to get this right in publications and books a yard high. MANOLA was the grandfather (grandmother?) of ALL racing mullet boats, none of which were shorter than 20ft loa, incidentally.

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  4. She was a 24ft ballasted centreboarder of “mullet boat stamp” ie a “mulletty”, the first of them to be built exclusively for racing and not wholly or partially for netting mullet.

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  6. Pole masts were coming in around 1894. YVONNE was launched with one in December 1893 and AORERE converted in January 1894 but there was a fuss over ratings which is too boring to traverse..Once that hurdle was overcome, MOANA had one a year later and many yachts progressively converted, even centreboarders like MANOLA.
    I guess THELMA had a fidded topmast as late as October 1897 because a. the Jaggers were conservative, and b. she carried 1900 sq ft of working sail which they may have considered beyond the limits of a pole mast as then constructed. Even so, she snapped that mast off at deck level in the 1903 Anniversary Regatta.

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  8. She still had her topmast in 1912. I’m picking that the pole mast went in during the winter of 1914 when a 12hp Gardner auxiliary was fitted and she had a major make-over, or it could have been done when she was damaged in the cyclone of February 1917 while on the beach at Torpedo Bay and repaired by Chas Bailey.

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  9. Was going to agree too, but then I noticed that the yacht in the picture has a fidded topmast, and the only photo I have readily to hand shows “Thelma” in 1935 with a pole mast like most of her NZ contemporaries. Did she have a topmast as originally rigged?

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