Lucky me to be roaring into the roads off Saint-Tropez at Les Voiles this year in a RIB with the famous marine photographer Kos. We can see Baruna, Tara Getty’s ‘new’ yacht tooling along as the crew are limbering down after the day’s race. And they are going to keep going for a little so I can get on deck to see first-hand how she sails. Kos is super-relaxed. She already has a lot of photos, having documented the restoration of this famous yacht over a number of years.
The 72ft, 1938 yawl with her 96ft-high mainmast looks powerful surging along in the eight-or-so knots of breeze. She must be doing seven or eight knots herself, on the wind. At Porto Cervo, I later learn, she averaged 9.6 knots over 38 miles in 9-ish knots of breeze.
This is not the first time the boat has been raced since coming out of the shed. She was launched in May and after a couple of shakedown weeks she went to the Antibes regatta in late May and also the Porquerolles Classic in June where she was pipped to the bullets by the 1930 Frank Paine/Starling Burgess Q Class Falcon. She was at Porto Cervo for the Maxi worlds in July.
First impressions are, she is quite a big boat. Certainly, when compared to Tara’s well campaigned Skylark, also an S&S yawl, 53ft (16.3m) LOA, built a year before, in 1937. Skylark was recently sold to Sir James Ratcliffe, of Ineos – behind the British America’s Cup bid.
But the 42-tonne is also more similar than different to the other S&S inboard yawls, of which and are (52ft), (62ft), (48ft 8in), (53ft 11in) and (60ft), which won.
