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Marked by many as one of the most beautiful boats made, and a part of sailing history, this is the Pen Duick I, and its design has origins over 100 years ago.
Pen Duick yachts are still sailed — and raced. They’re known as ocean racing yachts from the 1960s and 1970s. They were built for French yachtsman Éric Tabarly, and he had a hand in each design. There are six Pen Duicks, and they all race except the Pen Duick IV, rechristened as “Manureva”, which was lost when she and her owner sank in 1978.
The origins of the Pen Duick date back over a century. The 36ft linear rater Pen Duick (formerly Yum) was designed by William Fife III and built in Cork Harbour, Ireland for Cork yachtsman W. J. C. Cummins. The Yum was a successful racer in Ireland, England and France.
Tabarly’s father the bought Yum when Éric was seven, and Eric learned to sail on her. She was offered for sale after World War II, but no one took her, and Éric convinced his father to give him the boat.
Eric rebuilt the boat to preserve her. Years after taking ownership, he was told Pen Duick’s wooden hull was rotten, and being unable to hire a yard to salvage her, he undertook the work himself, making a mold to build her a new polyester hull: It was the largest of its kind at the time. Eric refitted the Pen Duick entirely, with a loftier rig for the southern climes. In the night of June 12 to 13 1998, Éric Tabarly, then aged 66, a spar threw the sailor overboard and he was lost in the Irish Sea, while sailing the hundred-year-old cutter en route to the Fife Regatta in Largs, Scotland. His body was recovered by the trawler An Yvidig.
While these boats all have beautiful boat design and unique looks, that full, rounded keel is only on the Pen Duick, the first one, which was before the Yum.
Pen Duick, former Yum
Architect: William Fife III
Manufacturer: N & J Cummins and Bros
Launching: 1898 Carrigaloe (Ireland)
Hull length: 15,10 m
Waterline: 10.04 m
Master beam: 2.93 m
Draft: 2.15 m
Displacement: 10 000 kg
Lest 6 000 kg
Near surface: 160 m²
