The highest quality fleet is anticipated for the 24th British Classic Week wide variety of yachts expected: from pure classics of all shapes, sizes and ages, to modern classics such as early GRP yachts, to modern classics by Spirit Yachts. Taking place from Cowes Yacht Haven over 20-25 July, competitors will enjoy a programme of races, run by the Royal Yacht Squadron, including a race around the Isle of Wight and a novel pursuit race, as well as the event’s popular social programme, both ashore and on the dock.

Every yacht in the British Classic Week fleet has its own lengthy and illustrious history. Here are five:

NORTHELE

Anthony O’Leary, patriarch of the Irish sailing dynasty, is well known in the UK for his Antix modern race boats. Famously he led Ireland’s RORC Commodores’ Cup team to victory in 2010 and 2014.

“The fly caught the fish,” he says of his being lured into classics, but it was a lengthy fight. From his and wife Sally’s home in Cork he had admired Northele on her mooring for a decade. She had come on the market, and he had watched her price slowly drop. There were also family ties – Sally’s grandfather, Sir Owen Aisher, had raced against Northele during the 1950s in Yeoman II. Previous owners had taken Northele to the Caribbean and raced her around Britain.

Finally in 2018, the O’Learys succumbed and this beautiful mahogany/teak classic, designed to the 10mR class rule and built in 1949 by Berthon, became theirs. Over the course of three years Northele was restored by the Currans at Castlepoint Boatyard in Crosshaven where much planking and her stem was replaced with iroko.

According to O’Leary, Northele’s deck layout and her interior, which has the galley in the fo’c’sle, are almost identical to the original, save for the addition of a quarter berth. He has replaced her mast and sails, the dimensions of her fractional sloop rig, and her Doyle sails as the originals , with a new kite acquired this season.

Northele was relaunched in 2024, and this year is coming to the UK for her first competitive outings: Round the Island Race followed by British Classic Week.

At 15.5 tonnes, Northele is some three times heavier than O’Leary’s Ker 40 racer Antix, but intelligence from the 1950s suggests his latest steed is a weapon in the light. “She was quite quick, particularly below 14-15 knots,” says O’Leary. While this will be Northele’s first British Classics Week, O’Leary himself has previously taken part on Jamie Matheson’s Opposition (originally Sir Edward Heath’s Morning Cloud II).

EAGER

During the 1960s, GRP overtook wood in popularity for yacht construction, thus early examples are now 60+ years old and deemed ‘modern classics’. Ten such yachts are permitted to enter British Classic Week.

In the UK, Camper & Nicholsons had introduced its first GRP model, the Nicholson 36, in 1961. Following this in 1970, came the Nicholson 55, the first of which, Lutine, was campaigned by the Lloyds of London Yacht Club for the next 30 years. Now named Eager, she has been owned for the last decade by leading superyacht broker Chris Cecil-Wright, who will be making his British Classic Week debut with her in July.

In her present form, Eager is the most developed of the 26 Nicholsons 55s built. Under her previous owner she went through a major reconstruction and ‘turbo-ing’, including the fitting of a 12ft taller carbon fibre mast, bowsprit and North 3Di sails. Her deck, superstructure, and rudder were replaced and her deck and interior layouts redesigned.

Under Cecil-Wright, Eager has taken part in the Rolex Fastnet Race and cruised and raced in the Caribbean. In the Med, she resided in Barcelona for the 37th America’s Cup (Cecil-Wright was involved with the British team), Marseille for the Olympics, and cruised extensively around Sardinia, Sicily, and the Balearics.

This year, Eager will take part in six events the Solent culminating in the 200th anniversary Cowes Week. However, Cecil-Wright says the competitive highlight will be British Classic Week: “I expect it to be the best regatta of the year. It’s most appropriate for us: At Cowes Week, we end up racing against X-35s which plane downwind, while we're lumbering along with our 20 tonnes. We're not a racing machine by any stretch of the imagination. We just like using the boat and this is a great opportunity to get out with mates.”

Typically, Cecil-Wright sails with family and friends, including BT Global Challenge skipper Manley Hopkinson and hopes his daughter Grace will be on board to steer for British Classic Week’s Pursuit Race in which helms are either female and/or under 25 (now 19, Grace won Ladies’ Day at Cowes Week when she was 16.).

Eager is now in ‘racing mode’ with her larger sails, asymmetrics, and bowsprit removed to lower her IRC rating along with cruising essentials such as her bow anchor.

SUNMAID V

A masterpiece of varnished mahogany, the 1967 vintage Sparkman & Stephens One Tonner Sunmaid V is not new to British Classic Week, having been campaigned previously by Lawrence and Mary Wride. However, last year she was acquired by another familiar face of the regatta - Phil Hutchinson. Having taken part previously (and nearly won two years ago) on board son Harry’s Lymington-based Swan 36 Annamae, this will be the first occasion Hutchinson Senior will be taking part on board his own classic. As he admits: “I'm getting a bit long in the tooth, so before I leave this world, I thought I'd have the pleasure of owning a classic boat. We’re pouring money into it...!”

Hutchinson has long been a fan of S&S designs. As a tender 19-year-old, and not really knowing who his eminent guest was, he spent most of a day with Olin Stephens, who was visiting Bembridge to measure a freshly delivered Swan 47. He would become a big fan of the New York design house’s work in the 12mR class and subsequently raced a number of Swans and other S&S designs.

A more substantial evolution of the One Tonners Roundabout and Clarionet, Sunmaid V was also built by Clare Lallow in Cowes. In her first season she won 17 first prizes and, under Ted Heath’s skipper Owen Parker, finished 10th in the One Ton Cup. She went on to spend most of her life racing out of the Royal Northumberland Yacht Club in Blyth.

Currently work is being carried out on her at the Elephant Boatyard. Having sourced her original spec and lines drawings, they are set to step a new shorter alloy Sparcraft mast and North Sails, of similar dimensions to the original, as Hutchinson admits that she is “quite tender.”

“We're not confident we will do well, but she's a very classic, beautiful-looking boat. We're trying to keep her as she was when she was built. She's very good in very light airs - in fact traditionally in lights airs, she's unstoppable. But when the wind’s over 15 knots, she's on her ear…” This perhaps explains why an early Beken photo shows two crew trapezing off her.

On board he will be joined by son Harry and his wife Abigail plus their young crew from Annamae.

DIDO

A very different proposition to the trio above, is Dido, Drsrs Daniel and Suzie Anthony’s Spirit Yachts 46, first launched in 2003 and acquired by the Daniels nine years ago. While she might have classic lines, wood construction and a similar ethos to a boat built 50 years earlier, in every other respect she is a modern yacht, best demonstrated by her 4.5 tonne displacement; one third to a quarter that of an equivalent ‘true’ classic, thanks to modern engineering, build and equipment.

“Compared with the traditional classics, she's very different and sails much more like a modern boat – she handles very well and is manoeuvrable, unlike traditional classics,” says Suzie Anthony. “Although she's 46ft long, she has a waterline of 34ft, so doesn't really act like a 46 footer.” Famously a Spirit 46 starred in the last James Bond film No Time to Die.

Under original owner Tom Hill, Dido raced far and wide, competing in the RORC Caribbean 600 and even winning the 2013 Three Peaks Yacht Race. The Anthonys race their Hamble-based treasure less intensively, although British Classic Week is a family fixture so cast in stone that daughter Rebecca’s marriage was scheduled around it. Perhaps the most serious sailor in the family and helm, who can often be seen on the helm, Rebecca was proposed to while passing Calshot Spit on a RIB en route to a classic regatta last year.

On Dido, they resist professional crew, but as Suzie puts it: “Maybe that's what we love about the sport of sailing: you can do the America's Cup or hire a boat on the beach, and you're still on the water enjoying it.”

While working in Southampton years ago Daniel lived on a classic yacht, which they kept for 12 years. The Anthonys then spent a few seasons campaigning a modern Grand Soleil 39 before returning to classics with Dido. “We very much like the feel and pace of classic boats,” says Suzie. At the dock, Dido is renowned as one of the fleet’s top party venues, with unfeasible numbers attempting to shoehorn themselves below.

And the attraction of British Classic Week? “There's not a lot of opportunity elsewhere to race similar boats to ours,” Suzie explains. “At the British Classic Week there's usually quite a large Spirit class and we have a Spirit Trophy as well…”

ENCHANTED

Oldest of these five stand-out yachts is Enchanted; Claire Locke’s beloved West Solent One Design. Like Northele, she too was built by Berthon in Lymington, only 35 years earlier, in 1924, to a design by Harry May - great grandfather of Berthon’s current owners Brian and Dominic.

The WSOD began life as a one design cruiser-racer for the Lymington Yacht club – a cost-effective alternative to the 6mR, examples finding their way as far afield as Argentina and Burma. At present, the Solent fleet is resurgent with Enchanted, hull #1 Suvretta (owned by former-RYA Chairman Chris Preston), and Harlequin, a regula racer, and a new example recently launched, Erin. Two or three more are currently being restored.

Claire Locke came to sailing in her 40s to fill the void after selling her business. She learned to race on her Folkboat but firmly caught the ‘classic bug’ navigating the 58ft Laurent Giles yawl Lutine of Helford (the Lloyds of London YC’s long-term predecessor to Eager). “I hadn't really had anything to do with classics before and I totally fell in love with it. I knew I really wanted a classic boat.” After something like a Folkboat with a heads and an engine, she was steered towards the WSOD. She found Enchanted in Mahon, repatriated her and put her in for restoration.

The West Solent One Design is not very one design: rigs differ and there is a full array of interior fit out, a few like Enchanted, having engines, some having a galley. Enchanted is only ever used for racing so she is sparce below. Older versions had a longer boom that overhung the transom and no vang. “We are pragmatic,” Locke says on her approach to originality. “We want to race it. We want to keep the aesthetics looking A1, but we use modern fittings where they work best. We combine that with the use of wooden blocks and classic fittings.”

Having acquired Enchanted in 2022, Locke won her class and the smaller division overall at British Classic Week last year. “We were really pleased with the results. It's a great tribute to everyone who's worked on the boat to get her as competitive as possible. We try to be well prepared and practised. I'm very lucky that I often sail with my two sons, who are very good yachties.”

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