charles dunstone sailing yacht

Wrecks to riches: Aboard the superyachts restored to their former glories

From shemara to kingdom come, step on board these revamped vessels.

Words: Gentleman's Journal

With many European shipyards now concentrating on turning out superyachts of ever-
increasing proportions, former superyacht Captain Michael Howorth investigates the trend of finding secondhand tonnage in poor condition and returning it to former glory…

This 65-metre superyacht, built in the 1960s, was rescued from decay and completely rebuilt in Britain by British businessman Charles Dunstone. Built by Thorneycroft in Southampton in 1938, she served in World War Two as an anti-submarine training ship with the Royal Navy. Shemara became famous in the 1950s for the many lavish parties hosted by the gracelessly gaudy Lord and Lady Docker. In 1954 the nation’s eyebrows were raised when 33 Yorkshire miners were invited to Southampton for a cocktail party on-board Shemara.

In 1965, Shemara was put up for sale for £600,000, and passed to the ownership of the reclusive property tycoon Harry Hyams for £290,000. He left her sitting in Lowestoft for 20 years where, according to rumour, crew prepared lunch for Hyams each day just in case he arrived, which he never did.

Charles Dunstone, the man behind Carphone Warehouse, is an avid sailor who enjoys racing sailing yachts. He decided Shemara would make a fitting mothership for him to attend and race in superyacht sailing regattas around the world. Having purchased her, the yacht arrived in Portsmouth and spent over a year in a multi-million-pound rebuild that saw her relaunched in a condition that far exceeds that of when first delivered in 1938.

Now owned by British inventor and industrial designer James Dyson, the 91-metre Nahlin was built as a steamship by the John Brown shipyard on the Clyde in 1930 and, at that time, carried a crew of 58. She was famously the yacht on which King Edward VIII conducted his affair with American divorcee Wallis Simpson – a love that ultimately cost him the British throne. The Romanian Royal family then owned her, but when that monarchy crumbled she fell to the State.

She served in various roles before being sold to yacht broker Nicholas Edmiston in 1999 and brought back to the UK, where she was docked in Liverpool. When Cammell Laird went into receivership, the yacht was towed to Germany where she was beautifully restored – four new diesel engines were installed to replace her original steam turbines. Each of the 2200 horsepower engines provides 1619 kilowatts of power and can now propel this fine old lady at speeds of around 17 knots.

Originally fitted out with six en-suite staterooms for guests, a ladies’ sitting room with sea views on three sides and both the library and gymnasium have been restored.

BBC reality TV show host Alan Sugar now owns a yacht named Lady A. She became famous as Southern Cross when she was built for the disgraced Australian business entrepreneur Sir Alan Bond. Famed for his rudeness about the crew on his last superyacht, Lord Sugar vowed at the time he would never own another superyacht. Time passed and the self-made millionaire had a change of heart, buying a yacht constructed in Japan in 1986 to the interior and exterior designs of Jon Bannenberg.

At 55 metres the yacht has also sailed as Indian Princess when she was owned by the Indian businessman Vijay Mallya. But Lord Sugar made it very much his own when choosing the independent ship repairer Burgess Marine in Portchester, Portsmouth to give Lady A her winter refit.

Burgess Marine, along with other British yards such as Solent Refit near Southampton and Pendennis Shipyard in Falmouth, are known for their ability to turn wrecks into superyachts of beauty. Britain might have lost its edge when it comes to building superyachts, but it seems the Brits are still strong when it comes to designing and refitting them.

Kingdom Come

The better the historical pedigree of the used tonnage purchased, the better return the owner gets after selling a refitted yacht. London-based yacht brokerage firm Cecil Wright & Partners recently sold Kingdom Come for around £14 million. The 60-metre superyacht was originally commissioned by a scion of the Mercedes-Benz dynasty and built in 1979 by Feadship in Holland. Mercedes ownership and Feadship both have good credence in the secondhand superyacht market – add in a political assassination and the yacht has real appeal.

In the case of Kingdom Come, she had been sold to the Lebanese prime minister, Rafic Hariri, who owned the yacht for over 30 years before being assassinated in 2005. The yacht then stayed within family ownership until she was sold some 10 years later.

For those inspired to follow in the footsteps of owners who have turned secondhand tonnage into fabulous superyachts, Solent Refit are offering Lady K II, a British-built 56-metre classic motoryacht dating from 1961, for just £1.5 million. Be warned, however, that her refit costs have been estimated in the region of £10 million. Elsewhere, Northrop & Johnson are marketing Delphine, a steam yacht built in 1921 for the US automobile magnate Horace Dodge, for in excess of £19 million. It seems old is the new new…

This article was taken from the September Yacht supplement. To receive Gentleman’s Journal extra publications, VIP subscribe here .

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The enduring appeal of the classic yacht

Classic yachts still draw a large number of owners to their charms and quirks. What is it about these historic craft that appeals so strongly to our inner Onassis?

What is it that makes a yacht a classic? There are plenty of  iconic superyachts; some launched in the past couple of years, some date back to the early days of designer Jon Bannenberg and beyond, but many would argue that for a classic to be a true classic it’s about age, a style, an ethos, and a harking back to the halcyon days of gentleman’s motor yachts and millionaire industrialists battling for honours in the America’s Cup.

It is certainly true that the late 19 th and early 20 th centuries saw a surge of famous names taking up the challenge for the one-on-one arms race that the America’s Cup has always represented, and at the time these leviathans represented the pinnacle of luxury yachting. From Lipton to Vanderbilt and Sopwith, challengers and defenders read like a who’s who of tycoons and magnates, and perhaps the golden age was the arrival of the J Class yachts in the 1930s. Slender, graceful, powerful and with towering single masts, the Js were the epitome of elegance and design. It is no surprise then that, when Elizabeth Meyer oversaw the refits of the three surviving Js – Shamrock V , Endeavour , and Velsheda – in the 1980s and 1990s, they once more rose to prominence, being hailed as among the most beautiful yachts afloat today.

Jackie Kennedy Onassis on board Christina

The same could be said for motor yachts of the period. Many were lost, have rotted away, or were seconded for military use during the Second World War, but images of glorious designs built for the likes of JP Morgan and Horace Dodge can’t fail to capture the imagination. A few do survive, admired and desired wherever they go.

For all the glamour of the Js and JP Morgans, it was perhaps self-made shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis who became the true progenitor of the modern superyacht lifestyle. His most famous yacht, the 99m Christina – which Onassis purchased as naval surplus for $34,000 in 1954 and then spent $4 million converting her – became the byword for glamour. This was no gentleman’s private cruising yacht – she played host to world leaders and A-listers, from JFK and Churchill to Grace Kelly, Marilyn Monroe, Greta Garbo, Richard Burton and Liz Taylor, and set the tone for the relaxed, barefoot superyachting lifestyle. It ushered in a time when yachts became measured not so much in metres, but in column inches, and Christina was queen.

Such was the allure of yachting that Burton bought Taylor a yacht of her own in 1967 in the form of 50m Kalizma – a classic in her own right even then, having originally been launched in 1906 as Minona . The black and white images of Burton, Taylor and friends on board Kalizma still evoke to this day that idyllic glamour, and it is this, in part, that continues to draw owners to true originals from the period.

Alongside the glamour, there are also the looks. Like a classic E-Type or a Spitfire, there is just something about the way yachts used to be designed that holds allure. In the early days of naval architecture – before the advent of calculators and computational fluid dynamics – hulls were often drawn to the rule that if it looked right, it was right. It was a philosophy that seemed to pay dividends time and again, both for sail and motor yachts. For sure, classic yachts suffer when compared to modern yachts for volume or layout, but a classic will never be seen as just another white boat.

Christina O

Perhaps that’s why owners such as Sir Charles Dunstone are prepared to sink time and resource into restoring a classic. His 65m yacht Shemara – originally built in 1938 – was relaunched in 2014 after a three-year refit that took an estimated one million man-hours of work. Christina too underwent a refit at the end of the 1990s after being rescued from decay by Onassis family friend John Paul Papanicolaou, who spent $50 million restoring her to her former glory. Now called Christina O she retains several of her most famous interior features, and as an in-demand charter yacht her enduring appeal to a modern clientele is proven.

That enduring appeal of the classic is evident from moves that shipyards are making to restore early yachts of their own making. For some, it has become more than just a preservation of their yard history. The Feadship Heritage Fleet , for example, was inaugurated in 2013 as a members’ club for owners of Feadships more than 30 years old. Today the membership list extends to some 70 owners, with the oldest yacht in the Heritage fleet dating back to 1933.

Nero . Photo: Burgess

For others, however, the desire for a particular classic just cannot be realised through purchase and restoration. Entrepreneur Neil Taylor searched in vain for a motor yacht to restore from the era of JP Morgan, but when he turned up nothing he decided to build a replica, drawing inspiration from Morgan’s Corsair series. The result – which was built in a yard in China set up specifically for her construction – is the 90.1m Nero , launched to wide acclaim in 2007. She marks a perfect crossover between classic design and modern amenity – something that owners drawn to those original J Class yachts are also starting to enjoy thanks to the rebirth of J Class racing.

Following the three restored Js facing off during the 150 th anniversary of the America’s Cup in 2001, interest grew, and with it came demand from those who wanted their own piece of history. A replica of Ranger was built in 2004 to join the three originals, and the J Class Association – founded in 2000 – agreed to allow more modern construction materials which further fuelled interest. As a result, prospective owners and shipyards delved into the design archives either to construct replicas or use the plans of Js that were never built originally. The J fleet now numbers nine yachts separated by 87 years – from Shamrock V to Svea – but each one a classic in its own right. And that, perhaps, is what the magic of the classic is, in essence – not age, but beauty.

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From docker to dunstone.

Norah Docker’s yacht, Shemara, has found a saviour in Charles Dunstone

When spendaholics Sir Bernard and Lady Docker took ownership of a 65-metre yacht, the Shemara, in the 1950s, little did they know that it would ultimately become part of their nemesis. The very same boat – after languishing for many years – has now been fully restored and is now in the ownership of the telecommunications titan Sir Charles Dunstone .

Launched in Southampton in 1938, the Shemara was built by Thorneycroft and subsequently commandeered for us as an anti-submarine training ship by the Royal Navy during the Second World War.

After buying the Shemara, the “gracelessly gaudy” Dockers used it for many a lavish party and their guests ranged from King Farouk of Egypt to 45 miners from Yorkshire. During their visit Lady Docker danced for them and afterwards told the press: “We had a riotous day”.

The Shemara was indeed an extravagance and cost the couple an extraordinary £250 per week to maintain at a time when the average wage for men was just £2 per week. Sadly, though, for champagne loving Lady Docker, her days on the Shemara came to an end in 1965 when her husband – ousted from the board of Daimler because of his excessive overuse of company funds for his and his wife’s pleasure – was forced to put the vessel up for sale for £600,000 as his wealth subsided.

Ultimately the desperate Dockers sold the Shemara for just £290,000 to the reclusive property tycoon Harry Hyams . The Centre Point developer used the Shemara on a number of Mediterranean cruises but largely left it languishing in Lowestoft. His crew were said to prepare lunch everyday in case he arrived but he rarely did. Amongst those that subsequently chartered it were the crooked media proprietor Robert Maxwell and in 1970, Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor considered buying the boat .

Last refitted in 1992, the Shemara was sold to Sir Charles Dunstone circa 2011 and in 2013 a large-scale refurbishment and refit began on the vessel under the direction of Trimline Superyacht Interiors . Completed earlier this year, the Shemara has once again been returned to her former glory.

Now the pride of sailing aficionado Dunstone’s fleet , the Shemara is once again resplendent. Though Sir Bernard and Lady Docker would be proud of its new look, we somehow doubt the “Chipping Norton set” member and billionaire Dunstone will be following their lead and inviting any miners onboard.

34 COMMENTS

I hope he’s done it up slightly more tastefully than the Dockers, who were ghastly. I went aborad her in Jersey, where they lived for a time. Vulgarity personified …

Why not accept that the Dockers were FUN people, Michael. Unlike the likes of today’s “celebrities”, they added colour to society. Their cars were legendary, they entertained and they didn’t give a stuff about what anyone thought of them. If only we had people like that today. Cheer up man.

Well said Fiona ,I couldn’t agree more with you, why are stuffy people so quick to criticise people like the dockers who were obviously fun to be around ,good for them I say Richard

The Dockers were friends of my parents. Michael: It’s rude to speak ill of the dead and I can tell you they were fun and friendly. Why did you go aboard if you didn’t like them?

Harry if you see this could you contact me, with regards to the Dockers [email protected]

My old pal Rupert Deen was a contemporary at Harrow with Nora Docker’s son Lance Callingham; Rupert lived in a world of great privilege in Beaulieu in the ‘ heyday ‘ of Sir Bernard and Lady Docker; Shemara used to ‘ steam ‘ around from Monte Carlo to Beaulieu on a daily basis, with a uniformed crew of thirty eight, for lunch served at a vast table on the after deck. The Deen family pretty well owned.Beaulieu at that time. Just look at the scale of the deck and picture the scene!

I’m sure that the Dockers had their shortcomings; but they were an inspiration to many as Sir Bernard was a truly ‘ old fashioned ‘ Captain of Industry and my father and grandfather drove Daimler at that time; how much better the than the current crop of egomaniacs that run our vital companies……..what about the Pantone 281 colours that adorned the office flooring of the head office, and paintwork of the fleet of cars at the Royal Bank of Scotland not to mention the logos on their gear sticks….and the xissed the money away…….want me to go on?

Michael, they probably found you tiresome, but why don’t you enlarge on your encounter with the Dockers, as it might help to build a picture as to why you were there……….same for you Harry as you seem a champion of the Dockers

Martin Ellis Jones

Monte Carlo to Beaulieu on a daily basis. Seems a hell of a long cruise for lunch…..and back again…..??!!

I must agree that such a soujourn daily for lunch is somewhat fanciful, and in the realm of delusion. Has the writer not heard of the Bay of Biscay? Too silly….

Norah Docker was as common as muck and that’s hence why the phrase “a Lady Docker” refers to women who are pretentious. She got herself banned from Monaco and died in poverty as she squandered the wealth she acquired through her social climbing. Why would anyone look up to this ridiculous woman?

From the Café de Paris to the Great Western in Paddington. Having made a fascinating journey between the two. Enough said I think……!

Norah Royce Turner (Lady Docker) was definitely born on the wrong side of the ‘tracks’ as far as society was concerned. Therefore as a young girl her dreams of becoming part of the ‘Season’ were well and truly dreams. She used her looks and sexuality to help her on to the social ladder. So she got a job at the Café de Paris as a dance hostess. The rest as they say, is history. But she was not a Lady….!!

There is no accounting for taste.

An ex-boyfirend and life long friend, the late Bill (David) Brown once told me he visited the Dockers on a boat they had (probably The Shemara) and whilst waiting for them appear was given a tour by the butler. Having noticed a drum kit (base drum, snare, cymbals etc) on a raised plinth in the boat’s dining-room, he asked the butler whether there was a resident band. In tones reminiscent of the immortal Jeeves, the butler replied, ‘No, but, when her ladyship has had a few gins, she likes to give a performance’.

That must have been a remarkable sight.

As a member of Deen family we used to go to lunch on the Shemara . There was always the Eton College GP on board , always drunk . Yes we did own a good swathe of Beaulieu but sadly disbursed in the 70’s when Rupert father , mine the eldest and the whole of that generation had died .

I was privileged to have been Norah Dockers personal hairdresser for over ten years, often joining the family on Shemara for long stays in distant ports and enjoying the waterskiing which both Bernard and Nora were very competent at especially after a Bulls blood at 11am. My most memorable trip was after the sale to Harry Hyams the returning from the Pool of London to St Helier, at precisely 1830 the TOWER BRIDGE lifted her roadway as in a salute as the ship manoeuvred under control of a Thames pilot into mid stream her siren echoing through the vacant empty wharf storage buildings in that area at that time we passed under as if in salute to the owner and master and the end of the Docker era.It was a very moving experience up on the bridge for best part of the 24 hour to Jersey. I congratulate Sir Charles Dunstan on his wisdom to purchase and renovate Shemara it may well have been costly but in her previous heyday no expense was spared to keep Shemara in tip top condition, rebuilding a legend and with it the nostalgia will have been challenging i wish him and his family many happy hours of sailing and enjoyment , i have seen the promotional film of the renovation and the new fitted ship bringing back many personal memories of my stays on board .Congratulations to everyone involved.ddada

I worked for Lady Docker´s son Lance and his wife Lynn for 3 years (1977 – 1980) in Mallorca when Lady Docker also lived there. Lance taught me how to water ski and Lady Docker was at the house every weekend. Sadly none of them are no longer with us. Never a dull moment. I still live in Mallorca

I also stayed with Lynne and lance while I was working with friends of theres in 1969, they had 2 children Butch and Craig they would have been about 5 yrs and 1 yr at the time a lovely couple, I still have photos of the children on the little cove near there house

Worked for Lynn, looking after Butch and Craig for just over a year after Lynne worked for her and loved Lady Docker. She was a sweetie and adored her boys.

Hi Lynne, I am researching the life of Norah Docker it is good to read something from somebody who had a nice word to say about her. I’d like to talk to you about your memories, would you agree? Peter Harkness ( [email protected] )

Lance was living with a woman called Debbie,I can`t remember whether they were married or not,on a little yacht moored in the Club de Mar yacht club in Majorca last time I saw him which would have been in about 1994-95..He still had a beautiful little vintage Riva speedboat.We went over to Formentera and he taught me to waterski behind the Riva…..Deborah was like a younger version of Lady Docker,a mother substitute for Lance perhaps–the interior of their yacht was a riot of acrylic zebra and faux leopard fur…is Debbie still alive?……She would be about 70 now I think (2021).

When did Lance die?..And Debbie?

I worked with Lance in a couple of Bars he bought in Plaza Mediterráneo off Plaza Gomila Palma. Mallorca, from 1984 onwards ..

Lance moved to Formentera & Died there in November 1994. I believe his 2nd wife Debbie moved back to the Leeds area with her boyfriend Dennis .. Not heard anything since.

Fascinating. Apart from filling the “society pages” of the newspapers of the day, I wonder if Lady Docker ever did anything useful in her life.

I think the wally Rupert James above, is confusing Beaulieu in Hampshire with Beaulieu in Hampshire.

the idle rich showing the way!

I have a 12ft motor launch that was once a tender to Shamara. Cold moulded ply construction Has original air cooled ARONA single cylinder engine. Needs restoration but would sell for £3500.00

What was it called,did you sell it?

I am sure the new owner of the Shemara would be more than interested … !!

My grandfather, Leslie Charles Williams, was one of the Dockers’ chefs on the Shemara. My Gran told us the parties were always gaudy and extravagant on board.

My uncle Dave was a cook on the Shemara, when the Dockers owned it.

My grandmothers maiden name was Docker and was cousin to Sir Bernard but they never met, so i must be Sir Bernards last surviving relative albeit distant.

I would be interested to here from you [email protected] , i think there maybe a link

Is Lance Callingham still alive?…And Deborah too ?

We were holidaying on Formentera in 1992 and met Lance and Debbie. What fun we had Lance would swim from his boat in the morning berthed in the bay (unpaid mooring fees they say) to start the day with a refreshment. He would swim back to the boat after lunch for a siesta and return early evening for drinks with Debbie and Dennis. Georgina was on school hols and staying at a hotel at the harbour. We went to Ibiza for a day trip the boat Captained by Lance with a vodka in hand. Lunch lasted several hours and we returned to Formentera in the dark. Our children had the use of Lance’s windsurf board and there was a beautiful Italian motor boat (turquoise leather upholstery) in for repair. I recall Lance was missing from the bars one day and Debbie said he had flown to London for the day. He arrived back that night in denim shirt, shorts and sandals – he had been to meet the family banker to top up funds. We did have a few discussions about how best to rob the bank boat that arrived weekly. Then he would put his clothes in a plastic bag, tie it round his neck and jump off the harbour wall and swim out to his boat. This was a holiday I won’t ever forget.

The fabulous Lady Docker, you couldn’t make the story of her life up, the memory of the Dockers and the light they brought to a dull post war Britain. will never be out shone.

Comments are closed.

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Published on May 19th, 2021 | by Editor

King of the 600 mile offshore races

Published on May 19th, 2021 by Editor -->

With 450+ yachts entered in this year’s 49th edition of the Rolex Fastnet Race, the Royal Ocean Racing Club’s biennial flagship event has consolidated its position as the biggest offshore yacht race in the world.

The 2021 Rolex Fastnet Race sets sail from the Solent on August 8 following Cowes Week, with the course taking the boats down the south coast of England, between the Scilly Isles and Land’s End and across the Celtic Sea to the Fastnet Rock off southwest Ireland. The fleet then returns rounding Bishop Rock, to the west of the Scilly Isles.

However, from here the course is new for 2021 with the finish port having moved from Plymouth, its traditional destination since the race’s first edition in 1925, to Cherbourg in northern France. This change increases the length of the race from 608 to 695 miles. Tactically it will place fresh demands on crews with a final hurdle of tackling the fast-moving currents of the Alderney Race before reaching the finish.

The change of finish destination has allowed participation to increase while bringing the world’s largest offshore race to the world’s leading nation for this genre of racing.

France is home to events like the Vendée Globe, Route du Rhum, Solitaire du Figaro, and Mini Transat, and French skippers having won the last two Volvo Ocean Races. French success has also extended to the Rolex Fastnet Race where in 2019 French yachts won nine of the 10 classes. Although the race was won overall by the American VO70 Wizard, overall IRC honors went to French yachts in the three editions before.

“Cherbourg is the perfect venue for the finish of the race,” comments Race Director, Chris Stone. “It has amazing facilities for competitors, berthing that allows us to grow and expand the event, plus the city is right on the doorstep of the race village. Of course, coupled with that is the enormous love for offshore sailing in France. That popularity brings interest and visitors to the city and the race village – it’s going to be amazing.”

Most extraordinary about this year’s Rolex Fastnet Race is its huge fleet. Over the last two decades this has almost doubled in size, but the leap between the 2019 and 2021 has been the biggest ever, up to the present tally of 453 from 388 two years ago. And this is despite uncertainty brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic. None of the world’s ‘classic 600 mile’ offshore races come close to this level of participation. The bulk is the IRC fleet competing for individual class prizes as well as the overall winner’s trophy, the Fastnet Challenge Cup.

Over the last 20 years this has been won by yachts from all corner of the fleets, from the largest such as Charles Dunstone’s maxi NOKIA-Connecting People in 2003, to the very smallest and slowest, Jean-Yves Chateau’s 30-year-old Nicholson 33 Iromiguy in 2005, although over this period it has oddly never been won by a competitor in IRC Two.

In 2013 the race had its first, and to date only, overall winner sailing doublehanded in Pascal Loison and his Figaro sailor son Alexis aboard the JPK 10.10 Night and Day.

Perhaps due to the Loisons success, along with the prospect of the class going Olympic, doublehanded participation in the event has soared with 92 entered, up from 64 in 2019. The majority of these are competing alongside fully crewed teams within IRC Three and Four, classes in which today doublehanders dominate.

Doublehanders are also classified in their own IRC Two-Handed class which this year includes several aspirant Olympians and notables such as Britons, Shirley Robertson, already a two-time Olympic champion and Dee Caffari, the world’s most capped female round the world sailor.

Two-time Etchells world champion and Olympian, Stuart Childerley won the Two-Handed division in 2017 with Kelvin Rawlings, and Alexis Loison is back to defend his title in the class, sailing once again with Jean-Pierre Kelbert on the JPK 10.30 Léon, the latest model from Kelbert’s company.

Most spectacular is the sheer array of yachts competing. Within the IRC fleet this includes some of the largest and fastest maxi yachts, such as George David’s Rambler 88, the defending monohull line honours champion, which this year is due to enjoy stiff competition from the brand new, foil-assisted Swan 125 Skorpios. They will be trailed around the course by several VO70, 65 and 60 former Volvo Ocean Race entrants.

The hottest competition is typically within the five principal IRC classes, the winner of each receiving a trophy such as the Hong Kong Cup for IRC Zero, the West Mersea YC Trophy for IRC One and other longstanding historical silver cups. The larger classes, IRC One to Four are further subdivided.

Beyond this there are numerous ‘races within races’ between classes of boats such as the FAST40+ between RORC Commodore James Neville’s HH42 Ino XXX, Ed Fishwick’s Redshift, and Bastiaan Voogd’s Hitchhiker, all racing at the top end of IRC One.

Then there are the Performance 40s which straddle IRC One and Two between former RORC Admiral Andrew McIrvine’s Ker 39 La Réponse and Eric van Campenhout’s Corby 41.5 Independent Bear at the top, to the likes of Susan Glenny’s First 40 Olympia’s Tigress at the lower end.

There is especially stiff competition between the one design classes. The largest of these are the 17 J/109s and the 13 First 40s. Then there are several more modern French models, notably the JPKs and Jeanneau Sun Fasts, which are popular due to their contemporary designs which have proved competitive under IRC. At present there are 11 JPK 10.10 and nine 10.80s, 12 Sun Fast 3200s, 14 3300s, and 10 Sun Fast 3600, the latter covering a wide rating range from Nick Martin’s Diablo with an IRC TCC of 1.030, to Stephen Berrzćs quicker Marco Polo at 1.052.

Today these surpass in number old equivalents such as the Sigma 38 (five competing) or the three Contessa 32s racing for the Spangle Trophy.

Within the IRC fleet many past champions are returning – all of them French. These include Didier Gaudoux’s JND 39 Lann Ael 2 (2017 overall winner), Nicolas Loday and Jean Claude Nicoleau’s Grand Soleil 43 Codiam (IRC One 2009 and 2011), Nicolas Groleau’s Mach 45 Bretagne Telecom (IRC Canting Keel 2013 and 2015, second overall in 2019), Jacques Pelletier’s Milon 41 L’Ange de Milon (IRC One in 2019), Gilles Fournier and Corinne Migraine’s J/133 Pintia (IRC Two in 2017). As mentioned, Alex Loison is returning, while the 2015 winner Gery Trentesaux is racing in the Class40 aboard Antoine Carpentier’s Courrier Redman.

Compared to the world’s other ‘classic 600 mile’ offshore races, the Rolex Fastnet Race stands out in accommodating the impressive French grand prix classes, thanks to the races close proximity to Brittany where many are based.

These include the fastest offshore racing yachts in the world, the 30m long flying Ultime trimarans. Among them famous names such as Maxi Edmond de Rothschild, skippered by Volvo Ocean Race winners Franck Cammas and Charles Caudrelier and Yves le Blevec’s Actual Ultim 3 (formerly Francois Gabart’s MACIF, currently holder of the singlehanded non-stop around the world record).

Well represented are the 60ft IMOCAs, which are famous for competing in the Vendée Globe. Among those entered are this year’s ‘two’ Vendee Globe winners: Charlie Dalin’s Apivia, which was first home to Les Sables d’Olonne, ultimately beaten when Yannick Bestaven on Maître CoQ was awarded time compensation from earlier in the race. It will be interesting to see the two boats of 11th Hour Racing, including a newly launched example for Charlie Enright who skippered Wizard, the overall winner of the 2019 Rolex Fastnet Race. Britain’s Alex Thomson is back with a newly refitted Hugo Boss.

Of the classes not rated under IRC, the most impressive is the Class40 which has 41 entered, up from 19 in 2019. Among those entered are Olivier Magre’s Palanad 3, winner of last year’s RORC Transatlantic Race and Valentin Gautier’s Voodoo, winner of the 2020 Normandy Channel Race, as well as Luke Berry’s Lamotte -Module Creation, Class40 winner from the last Rolex Fastnet Race. Of the grand prix classes this is also the most international with entries from afar afield as Japan (Hiroshi Kitada’s Kiho).

Race information – Entry list – Facebook

Source: RORC

Tags: Fastnet Race

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1930s classic motor yacht Alicia launched by SMS

• Inspiration

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Popular news this week, popular news this month, latest news.

• Yacht Charter & Superyacht News >

Written by Rachael Steele

SMS Group has announced the launch of 50m/163ft classic superyacht ALICIA , originally built in America by Defoe at the East Coast yard in 1930 under the name M/Y JANIDORE.

Alicia hull

Arriving at the Southampton shipyard in 2015, M/Y ALICIA underwent an extensive three-year restoration project in her 60m/197ft covered dry dock to return her interiors to their former 1930s glory.

SMS has an established reputation within the UK maritime industries involving commercial, defence and luxury sectors for repairs, marine engineering and major fabrication projects. In recent years the company has cemented its reputation for restoration work, having completed M/Y SHEMARA for Sir Charles Dunstone and M/Y LADY A for Lord Sugar, working directly with the Owners throughout their time at the yard.

Chris Norman, the MD of SMS commented on the restoration:

“Having worked in the refit industry both here in the UK and in Holland, for many, many years I can safely say this project has been nothing short of huge. We practically rebuilt M/Y SHEMARA from the keel up, and we, as a project team, assumed that would be a one-off. Not so. M/Y ALICIA has proven to be an equally challenging program of works over a three year period. The Owners aspirations stem from the vessels true form as M/Y JANIDORE; his attention to detail and passion have helped not only lead an inspired team but also restore a truly unique and genuinely wonderful Classic to her former glory.”

Hull – close up

M/Y ALICIA has seen a new hull from the aft machinery bulkhead forward and a new aluminium superstructure. The equipment package more suited to a 1,000 GT yacht has been installed into a 400 GT one, working around existing machinery and tanks configuration.

Newly launched classic yacht Alicia

Her engines allow her to reach a top speed of 14 knots and a cruising speed of 10 knots with a range of 2,500 nautical miles.

Alicia – refit

Alicia refit

Luxury yacht ALICIA will now undergo sea trials in the Solent before attending the 20th edition of Les Voiles de Saint Tropez running from the 29th of September until the 8th of October, where over 300 modern and classic superyachts will be on show.

Please contact CharterWorld - the luxury yacht charter specialist - for more on superyacht news item "1930s classic motor yacht Alicia launched by SMS".

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Blitzen – the 1938 Olin Stephens design that was the grand prix boat of the day

• Helen Fretter
• July 6, 2017

How one owner resurrected an 80-year-old classic racing yacht.

Olin Stephens was just 30 years old when Blitzen was launched in 1938, following in the wake of the prodigiously talented designer’s yachts such as Dorade (1929) and Stormy Weather (1934).

Like Stormy Weather , Blitzen was constructed at the Henry Nevins yard in New York. Unlike those famous predecessors, however, design no 221, Blitzen , was sloop-rigged and designed as a pure racer from the outset.

She was built for RJ Reynolds, heir to a tobacco fortune of the same name. ‘Dick’ Reynolds Jnr had a colourful life that included four marriages – one to a Hollywood starlet. He also owned a series of yachts.

Legend has it, Reynolds named Blitzen after his first wife, Elizabeth ‘Blitz’ McCaw Dillard to persuade her to take up sailing.

‘Blitzen’ also means lightning in German, and lightning fast she proved, winning her class in the Newport-Bermuda Race in her first season. “It was the Grand Prix boat of the day,” explains Peter Morton, whose company Shemara Refit restored Blitzen for new owner, Sir Charles Dunstone.

“It is a little bit different to the other boats because they were built as cruiser-racers, this thing is the stripped-out boat of its time. And it was very successful.”

Naval architect Paul Spooner, who designed plans for the refit, comments that she is finer than many of Stephens’s designs of the same era (with the exception of Dorade ): “Her length-to-beam ratio is a little bit narrower than the yawls. She’s a powerful boat for sure.”

Blitzen and Reynolds powered to victory in the 2,000-mile San Francisco-Honolulu Race in 1939, also winning offshore between Florida and Havana, then heading to Europe where she finished 3rd in the Fastnet. She continued winning for subsequent owners for the next three decades.

Photo: Ingrid Abery

Photo Ingrid Abery

Pedigree heritage

A regular on the classic yacht racing circuit throughout the 1980s, Blitzen had fallen into disrepair by the time Morton found her. After Dunstone’s 1938 65m motoryacht Shemara was launched in 2014 following a three-year refit, the hunt had begun for a new project.

“Charles had sold his Wally yacht, and was looking to do less grand prix racing and a bit more fun racing,” Morton explains. “We talked about finding a boat of the same sort of vintage as Shemara and doing a bit of classic racing. It’s a growing fleet, so we looked for a boat that had some heritage.”

As a companion to Shemara , the pedigree of the 1938 Sparkman & Stephens design was impeccable, but Blitzen was discovered declining in a scrapyard in New England. “It was a massive restoration job,” recalls Morton.

“She was in a plastic tent in Massachusetts so she was in a pretty poor state, but the basic boat was there – the keel was good, a lot of the frames were good. But the planking and the decks were rotten.

“A lot of the structural woodwork inside is original – the carlings, the beam shelf, the main hog, the main keel of the boat – so the skeleton of the boat is pretty original. But the planking had gone because it was double diagonal planking and I think moisture had got between the two skins. We actually found woodworm.”

Oliver Ophaus of Shemara Refit, who managed the restoration, says her construction was typical S&S, in the form of double fore and aft planking, with Alaskan yellow cedar on the inner face and an outer skin of African mahogany.

“She had 50 pairs of steamed oak frames which were in a state of bad repair, so we replaced 80 per cent [of them] with laminated oak,” he adds.

Back to the original

Blitzen’s complete overhaul saw her restored to original wherever possible. “The CIM rule in the Med basically rewards authenticity and punishes changes, so we got a set of plans from Sparkman & Stephens office,” explains Morton.

“She had been modified during her life, but we restored back to exactly how she was in 1938. We put a wooden rig in – she’d had an aluminium rig – and went back to the original layout. So we’ve got a very good authenticity number in the rating.”

A few minor tweaks have adjusted Blitzen to her new life as a Mediterranean inshore racer, including a marginally increased mast section, and lower boom height. She was designed to be tiller steered, but had been changed to wheel early in her lifetime, and still has a large racing wheel. Orphaus describes her balance as ‘perfect’.

The original sailplan gave Blitzen a famously large overlapping genoa. “By then Olin Stephens had realised that sloop rigs were probably better for racing so therefore she has got a tall rig, she hasn’t got a mizzen, and she’s got a big genoa and a big spinnaker, but we rate higher,” says Morton.

To control her giant headsails, Blitzen was one of the earliest yachts to be fitted with a pedestal winch, placed abaft the wheel. The original is still on deck, with some new working parts from Lewmar.

The long-keeled Blitzen also had a bronze centreplate that can, in theory, be wound up and down, although the crew tend to leave it lowered.

The newly restored Blitzen took part in her first competitive regatta at Les Voiles de St Tropez last September, where she finished 2nd in class, taking two race wins ahead of a star-studded fleet of classic yachts that included German Frers’s Fjord III and Stormy Weather .

Stephens’s 221st design looks set to score more wins in the 21st century.

By SuperyachtNews 15 Jan 2014

Selling superyachts for a song

Both the kestrel 106 and the wallycento, 'hamilton' are to be offered by their owners to the highest bidder in two separate sales processes being staged at the end of february. kestrel superyachts md, peter cooke told superyachtnews.com he thought it was the first time such a mechanism had been used to sell a sailing yacht of 30m+.….

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SMS launches MY Alicia after a major three year restoration

Wednesday, August 15th, 2018

Written by: Marine Industry News

“The Southampton headquartered ship repairer and marine engineering services provider, SMS , has today launched the Classic Superyacht MY Alicia from its covered 60m dry dock in the heart of the City. The business, born, thanks to the inspired vision of the owner, from the scale of the MY Alicia restoration project, is now uniquely placed in the UK restoration, refit and repair market.”

SMS, has developed an enviable reputation as specialists in ship repair, marine engineering and major fabrication projects in the commercial marine, defence and Superyachts sectors. In addition the business has a proven pedigree for major yacht refits and classic yacht restorations. In recent years the co. has completed refits for Sir Charles Dunstone on MY Shemara, Lord Sugar on MY Lady A and now on MY Alicia for another distinguished British owner.

Peter Morton, the CEO of The SMS Group comments: “Today’s launch is a major positive milestone in another huge refit project for The SMS Group, all our colleagues and all our suppliers.  It’s big, big news. As a company we are genuinely thrilled to have had the inspiration and support of another truly exceptional British businessman; and whilst the project has been challenging the end result is simply outstanding. MY Alicia is unquestionably beautiful.”

Mr Morton goes on to say: “MY Alicia, MY Shemara and MY Lady A were all managed by SMS in a totally transparent and honest way – working directly with the owner. This ensures the very best value for money and complete control of the project; owners are therefore, masters of their own destiny, which is so very important to all those involved. In this case it was the owner’s vision that has inspired the growth and creation of a business as opposed to just another project; we’re extremely grateful and look forward to very many future successful projects.”

MY Alicia SMS Group

Peter concludes: “I’d like to take this opportunity to formally thank our supply chain here in Southampton and further afield. We wouldn’t be able to complete such significant and bespoke projects without the likes of Canark Marine , Design Unlimited , SEC Marine , WRS and others, to include our own sister companies Yacht Tec and Global Services. . It’s been a team effort from the outset and both myself and the owner are extremely grateful and very, very proud; the project has seen the best of British design, innovation and engineering and we now look forward to a successful period of trials pre-handover.”

With regards to working with the SMS team the owner of MY Alicia comments: “The team and management have been superb to work with from day one. They’ve demonstrated flexibility, focus and commitment – and a real eye for the detail. I’m humbled by the energy and enthusiasm from the guys on the tools. I couldn’t have asked for a better, more engaging, team. Refitting Alicia in the UK was the right call and it has been an absolute delight; the end result will be something that we can all be very proud of – she’s fantastic, she’s British – and she’s truly unique. For many years to come she’ll be a big part of our family.”

MY Alicia is a 50m Classic Motor Yacht; she was built in the United States of America by Defoe in 1930 and launched as MY Janidore (the ex RS Eden). She was one of eight yachts to be built by the East Coast yard. In 2015 she arrived in Southampton to begin an extensive period of restoration works intended to return her to the splendour of the 1930s.

Chris Norman, the MD of SMS comments: “Having worked in the refit industry both here in the UK and in Holland, for many, many years I can safely say this project has been nothing short of huge. We practically rebuilt MY Shemara from the keel up, and we, as a project team, assumed that would be a one off. Not so. MY Alicia has proven to be an equally challenging program of works over a three year period. The owners aspirations stem from the vessels true form as MY Janidore; his attention to detail and passion have helped not only lead an inspired team but also restore a truly unique and genuinely wonderful Classic to her former glory.”

In talking detail he goes on to say: “This particular project has seen major structural works and the complete rebuild of the yacht and its systems in support of the program of works. We built a new hull from the aft machinery bulkhead forward, some 34m, and a completely new aluminium superstructure in partnership with our sister company,  Wight Shipyard , coming in at circa 25T.  All the principle trades are in-house at SMS so this turn-key solution helped with the structural engineering, the mechanical design and install, the electrical and hydraulic design and install and the outfit. We’ve our own interior and exterior outfitters, our own painters and our own commissioning team. It’s a total service solution at SMS so having all the trades pulling together has been hugely beneficial.”

Chris concludes: “We’ve had to be very innovative in the installations too – we’ve managed to install an equipment package suited to a 1000T vessel into a 400T one; a tremendous amount of thought has gone into the machinery space, pipe verticals (due to limited headroom) and the ships tank configuration. It’s been a challenge that we’re proud to have overcome.

“Thankfully the owner has been passionately ‘hands on’ both operationally and commercially; he’s been a real big part of not only the project but also the business. By working in a genuinely transparent and honest fashion we’ve not only built a beautiful yacht we’ve also created a wonderful business. It’s been an honour to work with the owner, a real honour.”

MY Alicia will undertake her commissioning and sea trials in and around the Solent before leaving the Ocean Quay yard for the Mediterranean were she will then join over 300 of the world’s most beautiful modern and classic yachts for the 20 th Les Voiles de Saint Tropez in September.

  Vessel Particulars: Length Overall 49.86 m Length Waterline 47.74 m Rule Length 47.15 m Breadth (Moulded) 7.35 m Depth Overall (excl. masts) 11.16 m Depth Overall (inc. masts) 21.31 m Top Speed 14 knots Cruising Speed 10 knots Range @ Cruising Speed 2500 nm Class Lloyds Register 100 A1 SSC G2A MONO SRY MCH UMS Flag LY3, Cayman Islands Shipping Registry IMO Number 9092111 Official Number 80098 Gross Tonnage 397 GRT

Lendy Cowes Week – final report

Tuesday, August 14th, 2018

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One of Britain's richest men spotted on his 1930s superyacht in Devon

Alicia has been named for the daughter he lost in a car crash, aged 11 months old

• 13:57, 30 OCT 2018
• Updated 12:50, 14 NOV 2018

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One of Britain's richest men has been spotted in his newly refurbished 1930's super-yacht - named after his daughter who was tragically killed.

Ian Wace, 55, who has a net worth of £505m, was spotted on board the Alicia, previously known as the Janidore.

The multi-millionaire hedge-fund manager has recently taken back the vintage vessel after it underwent a three-year refurbishment.

It was released following a christening ceremony where it was re-named in honour of Mr Wace's daughter Alicia, who died in a car crash aged 11 months alongside his son Guy, four, and wife Joanna, 34.

Images showed him getting off the vessel after it docked in Dartmouth, Devon.

The 50-metre classic yacht emerged following a major refit at the Southampton Marine yard after work began in 2015.

The ship's systems were rebuilt and the yacht underwent "major structural works".

The yard said that Alicia, which was originally launched in the 1930s as one of the eight yachts to be built by US yard Defoe, had been restored to 'the splendour of her era'.

Alicia is the third iconic super-yacht refit for the yard following Sir Charles Dunstone’s Shemara and Lord Sugar’s Lady A.

Mr Wace's boat also bears more than a passing similarity to James Dyson's 250ft Nahlin. In 2010 it also emerged from a lengthy refit and was pictured pulling in to the same Devon port.

The Nahlin, once owned by newly succeeded King Edward VIII was built in 1930 and boasted six guest staterooms with en-suite bathrooms, a special ladies' sitting room, a gym and a library.

The ship found fame when the royal chose to take his married lover Wallis Simpson on an extended cruise around Eastern Europe.

Mr Wace has now followed in James Dyson's footsteps and has had his own 1930s motor yacht professionally restored and birthed in the same port.

Mr Wace is the chief executive officer, chief risk officer, and founding partner of London's Marshall Wace hedge fund.

He became a successful businessman after witnessing the haunting death of his first wife and their two young children.

Speaking in 2011 Wace said: "The motivating force of my life was the accident.

"It's no use avoiding it - it's the elephant in the room. Something terrible happened to people very dear to me.

"It is what it is, I can't undo it. But a positive force did emerge, in Ark, and I'm happy to be part of that."

Peter Morton, the CEO of The SMS Group, described the yacht as “unquestionably beautiful” and said the launch was “a major positive milestone in another huge refit project.

He said: “The project has seen the best of British design, innovation and engineering and we now look forward to a successful period of trials pre-handover."

“Today’s launch is a major positive milestone in another huge refit project for The SMS Group, all our colleagues and all our suppliers.

"It’s big, big news.

"As a company, we are genuinely thrilled to have had the inspiration and support of another truly exceptional British businessman; and whilst the project has been challenging the end result is simply outstanding.

"MY Alicia is unquestionably beautiful.

“MY Alicia, MY Shemara and MY Lady A were all managed by SMS in a totally transparent and honest way – working directly with the owner.

"This ensures the very best value for money and complete control of the project; owners are therefore, masters of their own destiny, which is so very important to all those involved.

"In this case, it was the owner’s vision that has inspired the growth and creation of a business as opposed to just another project; we’re extremely grateful and look forward to very many future successful projects.”

The christening of MY Alicia was caught on camera by Jacek Prawdzik, who also shared many pictures of the boat on social media.

On deck two other boats can be seen, one a motorboat and the other by sail, and a tender is located towards the front of the vessel.

As per tradition, a bottle of champagne was broken on the hull - although it took a few attempts for the bottle to its target. There was also a well-stocked bar at the event.

Alicia is now expected to head for the Mediterranean and join modern and classic yachts for the 20th Les Voiles de Saint Tropez in September.

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The Deportation of 1944 – How It Really Was? – Umalt Chadayev

February 23 this year marked the sixty-fourth anniversary of the mass deportation of Chechens and Ingush to Kazakhstan and Central Asia. In a matter of a few days almost half a million people, mostly women, children and the elderly, were loaded on to special trains and sent into the unknown.

To this day, in spite of two extremely brutal military campaigns which have recently claimed the lives of tens of thousands of civilians in the Chechen Republic, those who witnessed it at first hand remember “Stalin’s deportation” as one of the most terrible tragedies in their lives. Chechens consider that their thirteen long years of exile in the steppes of Kazakhstan and Central Asia caused a great many changes.

“Not only were the Chechens, like many other peoples of the North Caucasus, deported from their ancestral homeland – they were also subjected to a process that was intended to deprive them of their historical memory. I’m told that for several days after February 23, 1944, ancient Chechen manuscripts (teptary) were burned in Grozny. In the mountains, centuries-old historic towers were dynamited: in the Argun Gorge (southern Chechnya) alone, some 300 of them were destroyed. Our ancestral cemeteries were razed to the ground, and the gravestones (churty) were used for the construction of various buildings and roads,” says the Chechen State University professor Sharani Dzhambekov .

“February 23 is one of the most tragic dates in the history of the Chechen people. It will be remembered by our children and our children’s children because it affected every Chechen. More than half of our compatriots were left in unmarked graves on the way to Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Central Asia, and also when they got there,” he adds.

“About a month before the deportation Soviet soldiers came to the mountain villages. They said that the troops were getting ready for some sort of major exercises. But people were doubtful because there were already rumours that the Kalmyks and Karachays had been deported, ‘to Siberia ‘, as it was said at the time. But no one wanted to believe it, or that the same thing could be done to us,” says 78-year-old Grozny resident Salavdi Khadzhiyev . “At the time, we were living in the Vedensky district of the Chechen-Ingush Republic.”

“On the morning of February 23 all the adult men were called to some kind of meeting in the centre of the village. There they were surrounded by soldiers, and then a decree was read out to them. It said that the Chechens were being deported, and then they were ordered to immediately get their families ready for a journey. Soldiers went to each house and gave the families twenty minutes to make preparations. They were told to take warm clothes and food for three days, but no further explanation was given. I was just a teenager at the time, but I can still hear the crying and wailing of our women. It was horrible. No one knows exactly how many people died on the road of hunger and cold, or how many perished when they reached their destination. There were many thousands of such people.”

“Women, children, old folk, men from various families were herded into a single wagon. There were no toilets. The menfolk cut a hole in the corner and draped it with a blanket and a sheet. That was the toilet. But many people, especially young girls, were too embarrassed to use it, which damaged their urinary tract and even led to their death. In our wagon a 14-year-old girl died. There were also a lot of such cases in the other wagons. February 23 and the days that followed it were a road to nowhere – they were the most terrible shock of my life. Now, after the two wars that have been here, I realize that there are things worse and more terrible than the ones I experienced back then,” says 75-year-old Nepisat Akayeva , a female resident of the republic’s Itum-Kalinsky district.

“My father told me that when a trainload of Chechens arrived at one of the railway stations in the Aktyubinsk Oblast of Kazakhstan, they tried to find out where they had been taken. There were a lot of Kazakhs standing there. They’d been specially sent with horse-drawn sleighs to take the deportees to their places of accommodation. Well, one of the Chechens, who had previously worked as a teacher at a school, knew several languages and decided to talk to the Kazakhs. He began in Russian, but they were silent. He said a few words in Chechen, but they didn’t understand. He tried some other language as well, but again there was silence in response. Then he turned to his fellow countrymen and said: “We’ve probably been taken to Mongolia. They don’t know any language but their own,” another resident of Chechnya, 48-year-old Ayub Ishanov , relates.

“Of course, there were various different attitudes towards Chechens in those days. There was a lot of meanness and nastiness, but quite a lot of decency, too. For example, my grandfather who fought at the front in 1944, was forced to emigrate to Kazakhstan, as all frontline Chechen soldiers were. For several years he tried unsuccessfully to find out what had happened to his brothers and sisters, of whom before 1944 he’d had nine. In the end it became clear that only one sister had survived. She was living with her two small sons on a collective farm somewhere near Alma-Aty. And my grandfather was living in the Gurevsky district [of Western Kazakhstan] at that time,” 30-year-old Chechen resident Shamkhan told Prague Watchdog’s correspondent.

“He decided to go there and bring his sister and nephews back with him. He also learned that his sister was seriously ill with typhoid. At his own risk he went to Alma-Aty, hiding on the roofs of rail cars – at that time Chechens were forbidden to leave their places of settlement, a crime for which they could be sent to a labour camp for 15-25 years. Somewhere near Alma-Aty he was arrested and taken to the local commandant’s office. On learning that my grandfather was a Chechen, had fought in the Second World War and was going to fetch his sister, the commandant, a Ukrainian by nationality and himself a frontline officer, let him go. Moreover, he gave him some sort of pass which provided him with immunity from arrest. My grandfather always remembered that man with gratitude. He found my sister and his nephews, and took them home.”

“And in one of the other districts of Kazakhstan, I don’t remember now exactly where this happened, there was another commandant who was in charge of the ‘special contingent’. He would even let Chechens leave the auls [villages] where they lived. There were two villages next to each other, separated by a small river. Several dozen Chechen families lived in one of them. But the only cemetery was on the outskirts of the other aul, where only Kazakhs lived. When a Chechen died, the commandant would not allow the family to cross the river to bury the body in the cemetery. Chechens had to carry the deceased person on a stretcher to the middle of the river, and the Kazakhs would come out from the other side. They’d take away the corpse and bury it in their cemetery. Those are the sort of ‘customs’ there were then.”

“Though it has to be said that the things that happened during the deportation were as nothing compared to what happened here during the two recent military campaigns. In those days there were no mass bombings of villages, no large-scale abductions, there was no brutal torture of detainees, no selling of corpses and killing of hostages. Though in my opinion both the 1944 deportation and the two military campaigns (the 94-96 military actions and the ‘counter-terrorist operation that began in 1999) were acts of genocide,” Shamkhan is convinced.

Just 64 years ago, on February 23, the mass deportation of Chechens and Ingush to other regions of the Soviet Union, primarily Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, began on the orders of the Kremlin leadership. The large-scale operation, codenamed “ Chechevitsa ” [ Lentil ], was personally supervised by People’s Commissar Lavrenty Beria . Archive data from the Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (ChI ASSR) indicates that 478,479 people were deported, including 387,229 Chechens and 91,250 Ingush. According to various sources, in the early years of their exile about half of the Chechens and Ingush died from hunger, cold and disease.

In 2004 the European Parliament recognized the 1944 deportation of the Chechens as an act of genocide . The Kremlin leadership has so far taken no real steps aimed at the rehabilitation of these repressed peoples, despite the fact that in November 1989 a law to that effect was passed in the USSR. In “compensation” for their forced exile, Chechens (as victims of deportation, and their children born before 1957 – the first year in which Chechens were allowed to return to their historic motherland) are being offered payments of 10,000 roubles (about $400) per family. In Chechnya this is viewed as just more mockery of the Chechen people’s memory, and the vast majority of Chechens do not plan to take these miserable sums from the government.

Umalt Chadayev Prague Watchdog – 2008

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Owner's advice: Top tips for buying your first yacht

Buying your first yacht isn’t something anyone should enter into lightly. Without knowledge or experience, it is easy to find yourself led astray by the  inspiring yacht concepts  of boundary-pushing designers or talked into building a  super-fast yacht  with technical capabilities you’ll never use.

With this in mind, BOAT spoke to a number of experienced serial yacht owners who know a thing or two about the buying and building process. Here are their top tips on what to look out for, what to avoid and how to make sure you get the yacht you really want.

Consider all of your options

When Steve Sidwell , owner of 34 metre Ascente , began looking for his perfect yacht he had his dream vessel in mind - but couldn't find her anywhere. “I went to the Monaco Yacht Show and I came to the Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show maybe three years in a row. I looked at all the different boats and none of them fit,” he says. “It’s a million-dollar-a-year operating budget. I don’t want to spend that. It means one or two engineers on board as well and I don’t want that. A big crew, I don’t want that. I want my kids and me to be able to operate the boat."

Having done the rounds of all the turnkey yachts on the market it was time to consider a different route to life on the waves. “I wasn’t intent on doing a refit , but I never really found anything that was a good fit for me in my price range, and then I found this boat and within 20 minutes I thought, ‘That’s it.’” A lot of, admittedly, hard work and determination later, Sidwell now has the family-friendly yacht he'd always wanted and the memories of round-the-world adventures to go with it.

Aesthetics aren't everything

When a fire on their yacht Camarina Royale put Jack and Mary McClurg in the market for a new superyacht there were some big aesthetic obstacles Mary had to get past when Jack suggested Marcato (now Friendly Confines) . “We’d been running around looking at boats all day and our broker said we could get on Marcato that afternoon, but Mary refused to go,” Jack explains. And, while he immediately fell in love, Mary couldn't stand her but, as she explains, “I knew he loved it. If the price was right, then so be it. I couldn’t be the reason he didn’t have it.”

Don't be afraid of impulse buys

When Elizabeth and Rory Brooks came to make their first yacht purchase, it was an impulse buy that led them to classic Feadship Heavenly Daze . “We were in the South of France chartering a motor yacht, and it broke down,” says Elizabeth. “And so we were stuck in the marina at Port Cogolin. There was this boat moored next to us, which was a very pretty classic yacht, and my husband persuaded the captain to talk to their captain and we had a look around.” That yacht, of course, was Heavenly Daze and, as Elizabeth explains, "The first thing you fall in love with is very often the right thing.”

Buy the right yacht for the trip you plan to take

When Tara Getty bought the classic yacht Blue Bird it was with one thing in mind: an epic round-the-world adventure including a search for buried treasure on the remote Cocos Islands. And how better to get there than in a boat built by Sir Malcolm Campbell specifically for the journey - albeit 67 years earlier? "We did it – we finished the journey Campbell started,” Getty says. “The vision for the trip was my children. My eldest son finished school in South Africa in December 2014 and was starting in England the following September. So we had that December to September period. It was the most amazing opportunity to do something with the children.” Of course, Getty and his family did enjoy a few modern upgrades on board Blue Bird - including zero speed stabilisers for that often rocky Pacific crossing. “I wanted two of everything," Getty explains. "Watermakers, washing machines, dryers, so if something breaks we can continue. At one point our hydraulic pack broke but we had enough redundancies to carry on.”

Think about the purpose of your yacht before design begins

Serial sailing yacht owner Mike Slade faced the issue of creating regatta-ready charter yachts with every one of his new builds. His advice – know what you want before the design process has even begun. "The question is, how do you mix the chartering and the racing?,” he told Boat International of the build of Leopard 3 . “You are going to be heavy, so it's up to the designer to offset that heaviness and reduce the disadvantage - so upwind we'll pull out [distance on the opposition]."

Even if you have a distinct dream or vision for your yacht, chances are the designers and builders you employ may not quite understand it – as Patti Seery discovered when she set about building her traditional Indonesian phinisi Silolona . "I wanted to do a phinisi because I knew they could be better and safer if purpose-built for chartering; plus I love the element of history and the sheer joy of sailing on a wooden ship,” Seery explains. The only problem was finding a Western designer who could work the traditional Indonesian craftsmen – an issue which would take a lot of patience on Seery’s part.

"I went through four naval architects trying to find someone who understood my vision before meeting Michael Kasten . I [had also] befriended a group of traditional Konjo boat builders from the tiny village of Ara who build the majority of large wooden cargo boats in Indonesia. There was one small problem. They had never built a boat to plans before Silolona .” The answer, she says, was a hands-on approach, “I knew the only way I'd be successful was if I put the full-on Western approach aside. So I went out to the boat graveyard and saw the problems for myself."

Know your limits

When sailing yacht and charter business owner Barry Houghton ordered Salperton II – the biggest yacht ever built by Alloy Yachts at the time – for racing, he thought she was his dream vessel. The truth, however, was that she was just too much for him. “I sold her as she was too big for me,” he explains. “The flybridge was too far from the water and you don’t get the real feeling of sailing. I sold her well and decided to go for something in the 40 to 45 metre range.” The result was the 44 metre Dubois -designed Salperton III (now Mes Amis ), which was built at Fitzroy Yachts in New Zealand but she too proved to be a costly learning curve for Houghton. “Immediately before I took delivery, I ordered another as I could see things that I could improve,” he says. “Unfortunately I lost money but it was the right decision.”

Determination and passion are everything

When Sir Charles Dunstone chose to undertake the huge restoration project that was classic yacht Shemara , many of his fellow owners thought he was crazy. Shemara was in a state after languishing in a derelict dockyard for years but Dunstone's passion for the project kept him going.

“I see Shemara and I think how amazing it could be,” he explains. “My mind has a very bad habit of just disregarding everything that’s going to be awful and thinking, ‘Come on, we can do this, we’ll find a way, it’ll be OK.’ In a funny way, the bigger the project is, the more enthusiastic I am.”

“We rented the shed ourselves, we hired the naval architects and then tendered each job,” he says of his unique approach to the restoration. “You don’t know what you’re going to find with a project like Shemara - there’s no way anyone could give a quote for this boat. And once your boat is in pieces in their yard, you’re just going to be completely held to ransom.”

Charter first to find out what you like

When fashion designer Giorgio Armani set about building his first boat he was helped a great deal by previous yachting experiences. “Sometimes they’d belong to people I knew, sometimes they were just chartered. Invariably they were not my style – too white, too much lighting, too much marble, crystal and mahogany,” he explains.

Armani’s yacht, the 65 metre Codecasa Main , was far from your average gleaming white hull. “Painting Maìn green was a choice made to camouflage her at sea, so it doesn’t appear too flashy,” he says. “I designed Main entirely, taking inspiration from particular military vessels that looked very practical, and from the optimisation of space that is a characteristic of old ships. Notably, I set out to rid the decks of all superstructures that might break up the purity of line.”

Find a designer who understands your vision

Aside from the builder there is perhaps no other party that has quite such a large impact on your yacht than the designer. Whether you're building from scratch for the first time or the fifth, it's important you find a designer who understands your vision, lifestyle and what your hopes are for your new superyacht. Pier Luigi Loro Piana , a serial sailing yacht owner, explains this eloquently in his relationship with famed yacht designer Mario Pedol , “He is a boat designer who has an engineering company. He works with more specialist architects, like Bruce Farr, like Vrolijk. He is the number one in Italy in my opinion."

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Wrong-Way Troops Paint a Lost Cause in Chechnya

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Grozny without a map?

In a military snafu bizarre even by Soviet standards, six Russian prisoners of war said they were captured after being sent on missions inside the breakaway republic of Chechnya and losing their way because their commanders had neglected to give them a map.

“We took a wrong turn,” said Lt. Nikolai Novikov, who said he was captured on New Year’s Day while wandering near Grozny, the Chechen capital whose name means terrible in Russian.

Novikov said he and three of his soldiers were captured after they were ordered to drive from Grozny to the Russian base in Mozdok, 66 miles over poorly marked roads, to pick up food for their tank battalion.

“We didn’t know where to go,” Novikov said. “We just got lost.”

The soldiers were quickly spotted by Chechens. One was killed in the ensuing firefight, and two others were seriously injured and sent to Chechen hospitals. Novikov suffered minor wounds to the head and hand and was taken prisoner.

All told, six Russian POWs blamed map shortages for their capture. Their disastrous lack of preparation for what has become a full-scale guerrilla war may be endemic to the entire post-Soviet army.

Its image already tarnished, the Russian military suffered a further blow Saturday when the general in charge of the thousands of Interior Ministry troops in Chechnya was killed by a mortar shell.

Maj. Gen. Viktor Vorobyov, the highest-ranking Russian officer to die in the conflict, was overseeing the creation of a new military headquarters at Grozny’s Oil Institute when the shell exploded near him, a Russian Interior Ministry spokesman said. Two other officers were seriously wounded.

Russian troops continued to pound the Chechen capital Saturday with intense shelling, setting the presidential palace ablaze once again but failing to wrest control of the city center from Chechen fighters.

The Russian POWs, allowed by their Chechen captors to speak to journalists, are becoming perhaps the most eloquent spokesmen against Moscow’s war in Chechnya.

The Chechen fighters “are not armed gangs, as we were told,” said Sr. Lt. Yuri Galkin, speaking calmly into television cameras and showing no apparent signs of duress. “It’s a people’s war. It is very difficult to fight a people. They are fighting for their land, and we are the occupiers here. And I’m ashamed that I look like a fascist.”

Galkin and the other POWs were being held in an apartment building about a mile from the presidential palace.

Chechen fighters stayed in the room while the prisoners were speaking to journalists, raising the possibility that they might be saying what their captors want to hear. But the young Russians seemed more angry at their commanders and their predicament than afraid of the Chechens.

“Our task was to seize the presidential palace and force (Chechen President Dzhokar M.) Dudayev and his government to disarm, to liberate the Chechen people, the way they told it to us,” said another prisoner, Lt. Nikolai Kolombed. “We can only envy the way they defend their land.”

Kolombed said he had believed the Russian officers who told him that to be captured by Chechens meant death. Having resisted integration into the Russian empire for centuries, the Chechens have a reputation as a wild people who are born fighters.

Chechens are widely disliked and feared by Muscovites, who believe they run the cruelest organized crime group in Russia.

“They said the (Chechens) would cut off our heads and there would be brutality,” said Kolombed, who was unconscious when he was captured after a failed Russian attempt to storm Grozny on New Year’s Eve.

“They’re treating us very humanely,” he said. “They don’t humiliate us. We’re not afraid now, as we were in battle.”

Russian critics of the war have blasted the Kremlin for sending green draftees into an urban battlefield that would daunt even experienced soldiers. The POWs described the pure terror of heading into combat without knowing where they were going.

“They’re fighting in their own city,” Lt. Dmitri Bondarev told CNN. “We came here, I didn’t know where the city was, what the streets were. We didn’t have a map. We drove and we could barely see anything out of the armored personnel carrier, and there were explosions all around us.”

Novikov said he was told his unit would be sent to Chechnya as peacekeepers.

“We were not prepared for war,” he said, adding that Russian troops have no business in Chechnya and should be withdrawn immediately.

The failure to provide soldiers with maps of Chechnya could be a holdover from Soviet times, when a good map was considered a military secret.

Closed military-industrial towns and anything considered a strategic target were simply omitted from civilian maps, and some were deliberately drawn wrong to confound spies and would-be attackers.

Nobody in Grozny appeared to have a good city map either. Russian commanders may simply not have seen the need to share such sensitive information with rank-and-file soldiers.

“It happens quite frequently,” said Jr. Sgt. Oleg Slashchov, 23, part of a unit of about 100 riot police from Stavropol who were stationed with regular army troops on Chechnya’s eastern border. “In fact, we didn’t know where we were going either. We just picked up the basics--ammunition--and off we went.”

Slashchov’s unit of police officers in their 20s, all of whom had already done a stint in the Russian army, appeared more cheerful and more purposeful than the young recruits serving alongside them.

They articulately defended the Russian military intervention in Chechnya, saying that Chechen bandits, gangsters, carjackers and even farm equipment thieves have long been preying on neighboring Stavropol and then running back into Chechnya, where Dudayev’s police would refuse to hand them over to the Russians.

After spending a month on the border trying to intercept weapons shipments heading for Grozny, the Russians were frustrated by the way Chechen fighters could attack them and then melt back into the civilian population with impunity.

“When a sniper is shooting, he’s a militant, but whenever he drops his gun, he’s a peaceful citizen,” Slashchov said bitterly.

The riot police said morale is not high among the young soldiers living alongside them in primitive dugouts, in constant cold and thick mud. One soldier deserted, they said. But they insisted that the Russian army would not give up so easily and would eventually prevail in Chechnya.

But in a sign of continuing discontent in the Russian army over the wisdom of the Kremlin’s war in Chechnya, the vaunted Pskov paratrooper division, which has been ordered in to back Russian troops planning another storm of Grozny, has refused to come, the riot police said.

“It’s direct disobedience, a dereliction of duty,” Slashchov said in disgust.

Most Russian troops have almost no access to newspapers, radio or television reports that have become aggressively critical of Russia’s bombing and shelling of civilians. But if they tune in, they are liable to get an earful from their captured comrades.

“This is simply a massacre, where innocent people are being killed on both sides,” said Sergei Zhukov, an 18-year-old captive who was released to his unit by the Chechens and then deserted to the republic of Dagestan because he sees the Russian campaign in Chechnya as immoral.

“The victims,” he said, “are innocent civilians, innocent Chechens defending themselves and innocent soldiers who do not understand why they have been moved here like chess pawns.”

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