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Classic Yacht Brokers

Classic Yacht Brokerage was established in 1992 and has operated as a stand-out brokerage for traditional and classic yachts throughout the UK and Europe. Classic Yacht Brokerage was purchased by Wooden Ships Yacht Brokers in September 2023 and is now owned and operated by Richard Gregson, who is combining both very successful businesses to become the most significant brokerage for classic yachts within Europe.

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All types of wooden boats and luxury yachts are required to replace those recently sold.  Where-ever your boat is presently located, if you are contemplating selling, we should be pleased to hear from you.

Classic Yacht Brokerage offer competitive ‘no sale, no fee’ terms aimed at producing the best possible results, whether marketing a former Royal Yacht or clinker dinghy. Informative, fully illustrated details and specialist advertising on all vessels.

Marketing can be tailored to suit an owner’s individual requirements and timescale.

Occasionally, vessels are sold directly through our clients’ register, so contact us with your particular requirements. Often, we know of vessels which could be for sale to the right buyer or that are shortly coming onto the market.

Important Note: The particulars/images of the vessels listed on this website are believed to be accurate but are not guaranteed. Buyers should satisfy themselves regarding the same.  No warranty is given on the condition of the vessel’s hull, machinery and equipment/gear; an examination by a qualified marine surveyor is always recommended.

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Yachting World

• Digital Edition

Second hand boats: buying a classic yacht

• Nigel Sharp
• January 10, 2022

Nigel Sharp on everything you need to consider when it comes to buying a classic second hand boat built from wood

Over the last three decades there has been a spectacular classic boat revival, resulting in – and further encouraged by – numerous classic boat regattas and rallies all over the world. Countless dayboats and yachts have been beautifully restored, which inevitably means there are now fewer ‘project boats’ on the market. Nonetheless, second-hand boats built from wood in a wide variety of conditions are still available. So if you’re tempted to buy a fixer-upper, or an already restored beauty, what should you bear in mind?

When contemplating buying a classic wooden yacht the initial considerations are no different to buying any other type of boat: be realistic and honest with yourself about how (and how often) you’ll use it, and with how many crew (experienced or otherwise).

Don’t buy a boat that’s too big or too small, thoroughly research the options for mooring and laying up wherever you hope to keep it and, perhaps most importantly in the case of a classic yacht, make sure you have access to skilled tradespeople to help you look after it.

The Voiles de Saint-Tropez is a popular event for owners and crews of classic yachts. Photo: Gilles Martin-Raget

The condition of second-hand wooden boats can vary massively, from those described as ‘fully restored’ to ‘in need of restoration’ as the extremes. Richard Gregson of brokers Wooden Ships comments that: “Most people should buy the best boat they can afford in the first place,” adding that they are “much better off buying a boat into which someone else has put all the money. Although she might look quite expensive, it will work out cheaper.”

But for some people – who have the relevant combination of time, money, aptitude and skills – it is the challenge of a project that draws them to a classic or wooden design.

Fully restored second hand boat?

Buyers should always be cautious of a yacht described as ‘fully restored’. “So many times I have seen boats advertised as such,” said Duncan Walker, formerly of Fairlie Restorations and now building the Fairlie range of modern classic yachts, “but in reality it can often mean the boat has been cosmetically refitted, perhaps with a new deck but otherwise just new electronics, furnishings and a coat of varnish. Nobody looked at the structure because they were afraid of it.”

This emphasises the vital importance of a survey. “We try very hard to provide buyers with a boat’s refit history,” said Barney Sandeman of brokers Sandeman Yacht Company, “but it is up to them to get to the bottom of the actual condition and what might need doing. We can recommend some very good surveyors with particular expertise in wood, but it’s the buyers’ call who to use.”

One of the surveyors on Sandeman’s list is Will Stirling, who also runs his own boatyard in Plymouth. “People often ask for a ‘cheap walkthrough’,” he told me. “But I always say that there’s only one grade of survey, which is a full condition survey. It wouldn’t benefit either of us not to do it thoroughly.”

The cosy and beautifully crafted interior of the fully restored Bermudan cutter Farida.

A surveyor will essentially be looking out for structural issues, areas of decay and the condition of systems. Generally, structural defects are more likely to be found where repairs have been made rather than in the original build.

One common example of this, Stirling finds, is with the spacing of butt joints in hull planking. Most builders of wooden boats would have followed Lloyds rules with regard to this, but if repairs have been carried out good boatbuilding practices may well have been ignored.

Decay is most likely to result from poor ventilation and fresh water ingress. Typical areas where rainwater might get in include chainplates, bulwark stanchions, mast gates and deck seams, from which any amount of hull and deck damage might result.

Article continues below…

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Poorly sealed shower compartments are another area that often leads to problems. In the case of a boat with a laid deck over a plywood subdeck, water penetration through the seams can easily lead to rot in the plywood which might remain unnoticed for a significant length of time.

Problems can also arise where metal and wood are in contact with each other. The extent of this will vary according to timber species and metal type, but a particularly common issue is caused when the galvanising on a steel or iron bolt has slowly worn away, resulting in rust reacting badly with the tannic acid in oak frames.

These issues can be exaggerated when larger pieces of metal, such as frames in the case of composite construction, come into contact with timber.

The epoxy fix?

The use of epoxy on a wooden second hand boat can be contentious. “There is a place for epoxy and it’s often used in a way that is helpful to owners and boatbuilders,” said Sandeman, “but it can be the kiss of death if all you are doing is encapsulating a rotten old boat.”

Stirling believes problems often stem from the fact that modern owners expect an immaculate paint finish, which is usually achieved with epoxies and two pack paints. “But if you mix an organic material like timber with an inorganic material like epoxy, it’s going to cause you grief,” he said. “And it makes surveying really difficult because you cannot find out what’s going on underneath it.”

Informal Saturday Hamble Classics races take place on Southampton Water. Photo: Rick Tomlinson

Gregson agrees that “it’s generally a big alarm bell” when a boat has been sheathed in epoxy, but he does recall a rotten boat whose hull and deck were completely encased in epoxy 30 years ago when the only alternative was to break her up.

“We have sold her half a dozen times since,” he said. “Everyone knows she’s festering away inside under the epoxy but she’s had another 30 years of sailing which she wouldn’t have otherwise had.”

In more recent years, epoxy has often been used to great effect with new builds, whether the hull construction is strip planked, cold moulded or a combination of the two. Strip planked construction is often billed as being suitable for amateur builders, but Walker advises that “the process of building a strip planked boat should be carried out to the same level of skill as any other wooden boat.”

He is not alone in thinking that some hulls built this way are to a poor standard, in particular that they sometimes lack adequate framework on the inside or glass and/or veneers on the outside.

The 1939 35ft Laurent Giles Bermudan cutter Farida has undergone a full five-year rebuild and is currently on the market for £250,000.

But despite what might seem like a lot of negatives, it should be borne in mind that on a wooden boat, in particular a traditionally built plank-on-frame boat, everything can be repaired. And there are plenty of skilled craftsmen available to do the work.

“That’s the wonderful thing about wooden boats,” said Stirling. “It’s just a question of how deep you want to put your hand in your pocket. The important thing is for a potential buyer to have an idea what needs doing and what it might cost.”

In very broad terms when considering a hull, planking is relatively easy to repair and replace, frames less so (especially steel frames, in the case of composite construction), while centreline components cause the most difficulty because of the need to support the boat without distorting it in the process.

But perhaps the most important thing in the boat buying process, thinks Walker, “is that buyers should use their heads and not their hearts. So many people fall in love with a boat and then buy something entirely unsuitable for their pocket or their experience.”

Attitudes towards wooden boat ownership have changed over the years. “When my father started selling them 50 years ago the perception was: ‘Oh dear, those poor people have got a horrible wooden boat as they obviously can’t afford GRP’,” recalls Gregson. “But now it is more like: ‘They must be doing all right for themselves, they have a lovely wooden boat!’”

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Yacht Replica that Inspired Spirit of Tradition: Adela’s Steel Rebuild

The rebuild of the 1903 wooden gaff cutter Adela as a steel yacht was highly controversial two decades ago, but today, we revisit her legacy as arguably the yacht that kick-started the spirit of tradition. Under new ownership, she’s now back on the race course… 

The first of the big yacht replicas.

In April 1903, two almost identical new yachts were launched on consecutive days: Evelyn having been built by Ramage & Ferguson in Leith, and Adela by Fay & Co in Southampton. They had been designed by WC Storey; both were of composite construction with English elm keels, 3½in (89mm)- thick yellow pine decking, and most other major components – including the 3¼in-thick (82mm) hull planking, stem, sternpost, rudder, stanchions and bulwarks – in teak; and neither had an engine. 

Adela had been commissioned by Claud Cayley – who was rear commodore of the Royal London YC and would later become vice commodore and eventually commodore – and was named after his oldest daughter. Although Adela was built primarily for cruising, Cayley regularly raced her around the coast of British Isles as well as on the continent. In 1904 she came second in a race from Kiel to Eckernforde for which she was awarded a trophy which, it is thought, was presented to Cayley by Kaiser Wilhelm II on board the 117m (382ft) imperial royal yacht Hohenzollern . While it is known that Cayley cruised Adela as far afield as Sweden, it is also possible that she visited the Mediterranean and crossed the Atlantic to Canada where Cayley had spent some of his early years.

At the end of 1913, Adela was sold to AFB Cresswell, who had little chance to use her before war broke out the following year. In 1916 she was requisitioned by the Royal Navy who used her for mine-hunting off the south coast of England, then soon after the war she was bought by Sven Hansen, a Welsh ship owner and builder. It was Hansen who had Adela’s first engine installed in her, a Bergen petrol paraffin motor.

Her next owner, from 1924, was Sir Henry Seymour King MP who made a number of changes. He renamed her Heartsease ; he significantly modified her rig by reducing the sail plan from around 13,000sqft to about 9,000 for ease of handling, and converted her to a topsail schooner by adding a square sail to the foremast; he replaced her dark mahogany saloon joinery with the much lighter timber sycamore, combined with fabric panelling; a few years later he replaced the petrol paraffin engine with an 87hp Gardner diesel. He spent the remaining years of his life cruising on Heartsease , often with his niece as his companion, visiting the Mediterranean and also Norway several times.

After Seymour King died in 1933, Heartsease was bought by Viscount Eyres Monsell, the First Lord of the Admiralty. He frequently cruised between the naval ports of Plymouth and Portsmouth, and each time he departed from either port, a six-gun salute was fired from the shore; and he often arranged for a destroyer to escort Heartsease to allow messages to be relayed to and from the Admiralty. 

It was probably in 1936 that Heartsease sailed for the very last time because soon after then, Monsell sold her, and with her next four owners she was laid up in various east coast mud berths and mostly used as a houseboat, and at some point during that period her rig and ballast keel were removed. In 1971, by which time she was in Lowestoft, she was bought by Australians Wing Commander Waller and his wife. They moved on board and soon began the work which they hoped would allow them to get Heartsease back into commission, with a view to sailing her back to Australia. 

Adela Enters the Modern World

American couple George and Frayda Lindemann had owned the 92ft yawl Gitana IV – designed and built by Sangermani in Italy in 1962 – since 1987. It wasn’t long before the Lindemanns starting discussing with Gitana’s captain Steve Carson the possibility of acquiring a bigger boat. After considering various large classic yachts such as Lulworth , Mariette , Cambria and Candida , Steve heard that the Wallers had abandoned their plans for Heartsease and put her on the market, so he went to look at her. Two years later, the deal was done. Steve and the Lindemanns had formed a fruitful relationship with Pendennis Shipyard in Falmouth , where they had taken Gitana IV for a couple of refits, so in December 1992 Heartsease was towed there – with 27 air bags inside her to ensure she remained afloat – with a view to restoring her. 

However, as the dismantling of the hull progressed, it became increasingly apparent that not only was the steel framework in appalling condition and would pretty much all need replacing, very little of the teak planking would be reusable. So, amid no little controversy – much of it expressed in the pages of this magazine, perhaps in part by people who could not have been aware of the true condition of the hull – it was decided to build a new boat with an all-steel hull, incorporating as much as could be saved from the old boat. The Dutch naval architect Gerard Dykstra was asked to produce designs for the new boat which would be known as K2 during her construction.

An absolute priority for K2 was that she should have the same styling as the original boat, maintaining, in particular, the appearance of the profile, the sheer line and the deck furniture. Gerard was all too aware that he would have to allow for the weight and space of a great deal of machinery and equipment which would never have been fitted on an early-20 th -century yacht but which, in the modern era, was now considered essential. So, using the original lines plan as a starting point, he gave K2 rounder bilges, a metre more beam (primarily to provide buoyancy to compensate for the machinery weight, but also for additional stability) and replaced the long keel and keel-hung rudder with a more modern fin-and-skeg profile. 

Throughout the boat, the style of the original joinery – the panelling, deck beams, overheads, even down to the detail of the pin rails, dado rails and the curved bulkhead sections in the passageway at the bottom of the stairs, was replicated. While almost all of the interior was built with new Brazilian mahogany and utile, some of the original joinery from various parts of the old boat was reused in the port aft guest cabin, although memories vary as to just how much. Fittings such as door handles and door knobs, drawer pulls, hinges and overhead glass-domed lights were replicated from original or existing items and nickel silver-plated. The 5.5m (18ft) long trail-boards each side of the bow at the sheer, and the stanchions and capping rail around the fluted stern were all saved from the original boat and reused. Thirty-five new Lewmar winches – 17 of them hydraulically powered – were fitted, along with two Muir hydraulic windlasses, and much of the deck hardware was made by Ian Terry Engineering. A Lugger 640hp diesel engine was fitted, driving a Hundested variable pitch, four-blade propellor, while other mechanical equipment included two Northern Lights generators, an HEM watermaker, Marine Air Systems air-conditioning, and Hein & Hopman refrigeration.

While acknowledging that, in an ideal world, it would have been wonderful for the original rig to be replicated on K2, Steve felt that it just wasn’t practical, at least certainly not with the 10 permanent crew planned. So it was decided that K2 would have a bermudan rig, but with masts significantly higher than those of the original. The new spars were built by Carbospars in carbon fibre, and the main mast was, at the time, easily the longest spar yet to be built in that material. The sails were supplied by North Sails UK, the upwind sails from the company’s own Gatorback Spectra-785TX cloth which had a Spectra content significantly stronger than any previously produced by the company. The 471 m2 (5,070 sft) mainsail, according to North’s own newsletter, was “one of largest triangular mainsails ever built by North, if not the largest”.

Adela on Fire

In October 1994, about a month before K2 was due to be launched, a devastating fire swept through the shed in which she was being built. While two other boats – one aluminium, the other GRP composite – were destroyed, K2’s steel hull saved her. But she was catastrophically damaged, and an enormous amount of work lay ahead to put everything right. Among other things, all of the exterior hull paint and filler had to be removed and reapplied; virtually all of the exterior timber work had to be replaced (the timber work from the original boat which had been fitted around the stern was too badly damaged to be reused, but happily the original trail-boards survived); all of the interior joinery work had to be carefully removed so that it could be refinished and also to allow replacement of the hull insulation (not least for fear of a lingering smell); and the engine and generators were sent back to the manufacturers in the USA to be thoroughly inspected to ensure the warranty conditions would be honoured. Thanks to the extraordinary hard work and positive attitude of all the Pendennis staff, as well as the support and understanding of their contractors and suppliers, somehow they managed to launch the new boat the following April. She was christened Adela and a few weeks later she was on her way to the Mediterranean.   

Sailing Once Again

This marked the beginning of an ambitious programme of world-wide cruising and racing for the Lindemanns. During their ownership Adela cruised extensively in the Mediterranean and the Caribbean as well as the Baltic, Alaska and east coast of the USA. In October 1997 she began a circumnavigation which took her from the Mediterranean to the Caribbean, through the Panama Canal, to San Francisco and then via various islands across the Pacific, to Darwin, Singapore and then across the Indian Ocean and via the Suez Canal back into the Mediterranean. On the race course she had her share of success in regattas throughout the Caribbean and Mediterranean, in San Francisco, New England and Cowes , and she also won line honours in the 1997 Transatlantic race from New York to the Lizard. While she didn’t easily fit into the format of classic boat regattas initially, she was at the forefront of the creation of Spirit of Tradition classes which have been included in such regattas ever since. Although a relatively casual attitude was taken to racing in the early years (for instance the tenders were left on deck, and she was often raced by barely more than the permanent crew and using just “white sails”), as time went by it was taken more seriously with increasing numbers of professional race crew and with the acquisition of specialist North 3Di racing sails, including a square top mainsail and foresail. 

Adela has returned to Pendennis Shipyard many times for refits and modifications, the biggest of which was in 2000 when she was literally cut in half to allow her length to be extended by 3.6 metres, primarily to provide better crew quarters but that did, of course, improve her sailing performance by increasing the waterline length and by separating the rigs. Other significant modifications have included two keel modifications, the second of which also incorporated a daggerboard; a retractable bow thruster to replace the tunnel thruster, and the addition of a stern thruster; and a Caterpillar 873 HP C18 engine replacing the Lugger. 

Tony Blair and Eric Clapton Come Aboard Adela

During the Lindemanns’ ownership, a number of well-known people came aboard Adela at various times. These included Tony Blair when he visited Pendennis Shipyard as the UK’s Leader of The Opposition while K2 was being constructed, Prince Philip soon after she was launched, the King of Spain and the Aga Kahn in Porto Cervo, Gianni Agnelli in Corsica, Leonardo de Caprio and some of the production crew from the Hollywood film The Beach in Phuket, Eric Clapton at the Antigua Classic Yacht Regatta, and the America’s Cup sailor Dennis Connor who took Adela’s helm in several regattas. 

After 14 years as Adela’s captain, Steve retired in 2009, but his successor was an obvious choice. Greg Perkins had briefly been Gitana IV’s captain when Steve’s attention initially switched to Adela , and was then Adela’s mate for a couple of years. He took over when Steve retired and is still on board today. 

Aboard Adela in the Caribbean

In June 2018, George Lindemann died, and the following year Adela was sold to Brazilian Benjamin Steinbruch who had never previously owned a boat of any kind. Since then, he and his family and friends have spent about three months on board each year. They have continued the Lindemanns’ tradition of cruising in the Mediterranean and the Caribbean and have also spent time on the west coast of Scotland, in Northern Ireland and Norway.  

Benajmin’s first racing experience had to wait a bit longer, however. After covid scuppered plans to take part in the Antigua Superyacht Challenge in 2020, he and Adela at last did so in 2024 when I was lucky enough to be on board myself. Things didn’t initially go entirely to plan, however. On the first of two crew practice days, the racing mainsail showed signs of damage and had to be replaced by the cruising mainsail (all of the racing sails were ageing and had been spent the last five years in an inhospitably hot container in Antigua); the next day the 1,000m2 Code 4 asymmetric “big red” spinnaker was severely damage as a result of a less than perfect hoist (in fact, part of it was left in the sea and when we returned to it, a crew member had to take a swim to help retrieve it); and just before the start of the first race the No 1 jib, with no warning at all, ripped itself from leach to luff (any debate as to its repairability would have been futile). The race results weren’t too impressive either, with the might ketch Hetairos – the only other boat in our class – consistently getting the better of us. But none of that takes anything away from the fact that the whole crew – about 30 of us in total – got an enormous amount of pleasure out of the whole event; and most importantly, so did Benjamin.

For me, it was some of the most wonderful sailing of my life. And just for good measure, Adela was awarded the prestigious Gosnell Trophy which is presented to the yacht which competes “in the spirit of the regatta, both afloat and ashore”, as voted – unanimously in this case – by each competing boat and each member of the race committee.

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Classic Boat is the magazine for the world’s most beautiful boats. Packed with stunning images, we have the inside stories of the great classic yachts and motorboats afloat today, as well as fascinating tales from yesteryear and the latest from the wooden boat building scene around the world.

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