The story behind the 30 square design in South Africa

Its quite a story too, once the best boats in the country, they fell into disrepair but when they were
being raced as a Lipton Cup fleet they were some of the best in the world?

Click on the picture to view full size.

The event was the TBA Easter Regatta at the V&A Waterfront around 1998,
the long boat on the left just behind the smaller boat is the locally built version of the 30 square and named Sonnet.

Roy

This was an owners view of the 30 square class.

Hi Roy & Justin

This link will take you to just about the whole history of the 30-square class in SA.

 

http://www.sskf.se/news%20letter/the30sinsouthafrica.pdf

I have owned three of them at one time or another.

First was Sunmaid purchased from Colin Bowley in 1974 after the Lipton Cup was awarded to another more popular racing class so we would race among the remaining members who still owned a 30-Square.

I sold Sunmaid to Capt. Jacob Johansson who was the skipper of the dynamite ship that would become a floating bomb shipping dynamite from the AE&CI works in the Cape to be used in the mines in Zambia while Rhodesia was involved in its struggle to survive the winds of change. Jacob encased the whole of Sunmaid in GRP to prolong its sailing days but she was sadly broken up and sold for her lead content eventually.

Sonnet was designed by Uffa Fox and was double planked and far heavier built for Cape Town conditions while the imported boats almost all had to have extra steel frames inserted between the oak frames to stop them breaking up in the heavy seas around the Cape.

I understand that a 30-square was clocked at 17-knots on one race in Table Bay.

 I acquired Sonnet from Alan Duncan's widow after his death. He had owned and sailed Sonnet with Jock Gray for years in Table Bay from the RCYC and that's how I fitted into the chain by having sailed a lot on Sonnet with Jock as well as some of the other yachts he was minding. Mike Daily bought Sonnet from me in around 1988 I think when I needed the mooring for my new boat Jacana. Mike then set about rebuilding the boat to its present fine condition.

I was then presented with Tricksen by Dave Woolf on the understanding that I remove her from the RCYC boat yard as he had also sold her for scrap I understand, but I was never really the owner.

Notty.

Justin searched this link out:

Great bit in Wikipedia of all places on these see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skerry_Cruiser

With luck he will open a page on his SA Yacht blog


http://sayachts.blogspot.com/  this is the only place to start when you want to know the history about yachts built in South Africa.