I sailed my first Bermuda Race with Alan Gurney aboard George Moffett’s ” Guinevere”, and the 1968 transatlantic race, as well as other races. We corresponded some in the intervening years, not recently however. I am left with that feeling of one more thing I might had said or asked.<\/p>\n
I did hear from the individual who recently purchased “Guinevere” and is in the process of restoring her. The photos he sent she looked rather sad.
\nEIGHT BELLS ~ ALAN P. GURNEY
\nBy Ted Jones
\nAlan Gurney designed boats the old fashioned way with drafting pencil on
\nvelum, using splines and ducks (weights), a planimeter, and a seaman’s eye.
\nHe thought like the water through which he had sailed, in England,
\ntransatlantic, the USA, both polar regions and much of what lay in between.
\nAs a young lad, he would make boats out of toilet tissue (which at that
\ntime had characteristics of waxed paper) and float them in his bath. He
\nspurned a career in the army to pursue a career as a yacht designer, and
\nultimately moved on to an early passion, Antarctic exploration. He had
\namassed an impressive collection of hundreds of photographs of every known
\nAntarctic penguin species.<\/p>\n
I had the great good fortune — a privilege — to be his friend, and to
\nhave had lunch with him frequently as he was in the process of drawing the
\nmyriad details of what was to become “Windward Passage”, the world famous
\ndream boat of lumber tycoon, Robert F. Johnson. During each lunch-time
\nvisit, I would meet Alan in his basement studio on New York’s East 54th
\nStreet, and he would show me the most recent drawings.<\/p>\n
Johnson had selected Gurney for the new design having been impressed by the
\nperformance of George Moffett’s “Guinevere”, a 48 foot Jacobsen-built
\naluminum yawl which had won the SORC in 1966, the second of two ocean
\nracers Alan had designed for Moffett. The first was a wood-built boat, the
\nNantucket 38, aboard which I had the sailed in the 1964 Bermuda Race.
\nLater, I transferred to Humphrey Simson for whom Alan had designed a yawl
\nsimilar to “Guinevere”, the 47 foot Derecktor built “Kittiwake”, aboard
\nwhich I sailed in the 1966 SORC, Bermuda, and Transatlantic races.
\n“Kittiwake” did well in her class in the SORC series, overshadowed only by
\nTed Turner’s legendary Cal-40, “Vamp X” which won everything in her class
\nthat year including the Transatlantic race from Bermuda to Copenhagen.<\/p>\n
I had met Alan Gurney in 1960 following that year’s Bermuda Race. I was a
\nyacht broker in the office of Tripp & Campbell in New York City when
\nEnglishman Gurney was brought around by G. Colin Ratsey (of the English
\nsailmaking firm) to meet yacht designer Bill Tripp. Still only 24, Alan had
\nwon a prestigious competition for a modern “club racer” sponsored by the
\nBritish magazine, “Yachting World” which brought him to the attention of
\nChesapeake Bay yachtsman Jack Lacy for whom Alan had designed a 35 foot
\nsloop. While nothing came immediately of the meeting with Tripp, both
\npartners at Tripp & Campbell had been impressed, and when Tripp’s design
\nassistant resigned a short time later. The firm offered the job to Gurney
\nwho flew back to New York to accept it. — Read on:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I sailed my first Bermuda Race with Alan Gurney aboard George Moffett’s ” Guinevere”, and the 1968 transatlantic race, as well as other races. We corresponded some in the intervening years, not recently however. I am left with that feeling of one more thing I might had said or asked. I did hear from the … Continue reading ALAN GURNEY<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[1443,2387,1444],"class_list":["post-4279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1968-trans-atlantic-race","tag-1443","tag-bermuda-race","tag-trans-atlantic-race"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/stephenlirakis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/stephenlirakis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/stephenlirakis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stephenlirakis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stephenlirakis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4279"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/stephenlirakis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4279\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4280,"href":"http:\/\/stephenlirakis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4279\/revisions\/4280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/stephenlirakis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stephenlirakis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stephenlirakis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}