CYGNET – CLASSIC 1931 WOODEN LAUNCH
The 32’ classic wooden launch – CYGNET recently popped up on tme (thanks Ian McDonald). A Sam Ford design built in 1931, but not sure is also built be Sam Ford. As per most Marlborough Sounds craft she is very well spec’ed and was re-powered in 2006 with a new 53hp Yammer 4JH5E engine that gives her an 8 knot cruising speed.
Can we learn more about CYGNET (if thats her correct name) and where she has been most of her life.
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I’m interested in what Cygnet started life as. She certainly started life as something else, much like Rehutai, Lillian and others which were opened right up, de-planked and raised/flared etc. A hint tends to be narrow but tall transom, and a transition in planking style/line as you go up the bow topsides. Also, the actual style is more 1950s compared with a 1931 Sam ford.
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Raked stem & oblong portholes were not around in1931 to my knowledge, & all in all she doesn’t seem particularly Sam F., & perhaps more Roy Lidgard to me, but of course I can always be wrong.
I would think she would be more around 1940s, with the way she looks now but there is mention of her being a bridgedecker, in the past, so she may have had “a cosmetician” on the job, somewhere along the way, to make her look as “modern” as she looks now, with the rake & oblong portholes. — KEN R
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Hello Karen
I sailed with Kaye along with Denis Ross and Ron Lusty on the yacht Fair Go.
Such a great man and so many laughs.
Kind regards Alan Houghton
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Always wondered where cygnet went too
this was my dads boat Kaye Thode
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Cygnet
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We bought Cygnet in 1987 from Kaye Thode, she was at Milford Marina and a bit shabby, powered by a 64hp Ford diesel. Our first launch so we loved our time on her and we’re very grateful for the use of a boat shed where we stripped her to bare wood and finished a complete exterior refit adding a wooden mast to replace existing aluminium one
She had been owned for a long time by R A Johnston and was originally a bridge decker, we were told that John Gladden did a lot of work on her. We sold her to a couple in Christchurch and she went to Lyttleton on a coastal ship
Nice to see her still alive and well
Steve and Rhonda Knight
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