A VERTUE EMERGENCY
Pre-loved yachts continued…
It has been a while (a good two and half years in fact) since I last put fingers to keyboard on the subject of pre-loved yachts – and promised another instalment to come. Today I can make good on that promise thanks to a story that weaves in most of the key strands of my life’s plot (at least insofar as they relate to boats, which obviously covers most of my existence).
Boats are what made the man I saw staring back at me from the mirror this morning (albeit he looked a little rougher around the edges than me), boats for my own enjoyment and boats as the focus of my business – although the two add up to essentially the same thing for someone like me who understands the sea, with all its imponderables, as a playground the long-distance sailor must always approach with the utmost respect. Which brings us seamlessly to a very important question: do we primarily prepare our vessels for maximum fun at sea or do we make it our priority to be ready for the bad things we know can happen out there? Complicated? On the contrary! The magic word is KISS: keep it simple, stupid, and watch the big issues come into sharp focus as the trivial fades away.
A total of 46 floating funhouses have passed through my hands so far, some of them no more than a brief fling, some profound affairs of the heart, some projects, some experiments, some flights of fancy and some just pure indulgence. Each had its own lessons to teach; lessons I have taken the time to absorb, process and write down against any subsequent lapse of memory.
I worked my way through the first 25 boats in just 24 years. And then it all changed, more or less overnight. Was it unnatural mind control or just run of the mill insanity that persuaded me to trade a very capable steel yawl for a heap of oily machinery in a far-flung stable block? Or was it, perhaps, the magic of the “Windpilot” brand that came with the deal? Making choices, I found, is a skill that can – indeed must – be honed: decisions come more readily (not just faster but also with less concern for irrelevances such as what other people might think) with practice until, eventually, the internal compass is reliably calibrated. Coming to understand the idiosyncrasies of my social echo sounder has helped too: it can exhibit perfidious tendencies, and learning how to recognise and outmanoeuvre them has been invaluable.
I agreed the purchase of many of my boats with no more than a handshake. If we are both happy with the deal, who needs a written agreement? That’s how I became the owner of the steel yawl Lilofee, the one I later bartered for the Windpilot business, without ever having laid eyes on it, and it’s how I gained a First 18 (in exchange for a 2CV) and a number of other boats whose owner was ready to see them go. Once I paid a single solitary symbolic Deutschmark to rescue a Tumlare that had come to grief on the groynes near the mouth of the Elbe one foggy day (an incident that tragically also cost the life of its owner). I have even “purchased” a boat with no more – or should I say no less, since the promise was given with absolute commitment to honouring it – than a promise to restore it to seaworthy condition. Life writes wonderful, unforgettable stories that could never be reduced to the clauses of some anaemic contract.
What does all of this have to do with the present? It provides context for the tale I have to tell today, which unfolded so suddenly and in such an unconventional way that it almost took even me by surprise. This is the story of my pursuit of a yacht that caused me to cast caution to the winds in a matter of seconds, a yacht I noticed for sale while browsing online from my sofa at four-thirty in the morning. I was inescapably hooked in an instant: this Vertue 25 pocket cruiser spoke to me on a very deep level; it felt almost a part of my DNA, a central strand of everything that has shaped and brought direction to my life. This was an emergency; there was no time to lose.
I have embellished countless Vertues with my transom ornaments over the decades, among them Mea, a venerable wooden example that has covered long distances on the Atlantic under Windpilot in the hands of Turin-born Matteo Richiardi (now a professor at the University of Essex in the UK)
At one time I had also been very keen to get my hands on one of the examples built by Cheoy Lee in Hong Kong. The stories I had heard of these boats fascinated me – and there were just so many of them!
So there I found myself, on the sofa early (early!) on a Sunday morning, head full of ideas and all chance of sleep gone. My wife, on asking what was wrong and discovering that I needed to buy a boat, and quickly, emphasised the wisdom of a different path (not buying another boat quickly). Clarity attained. I decided to be patient – and waited until 9 a.m. before calling the seller to find out if (he was out of his bunk yet and) the boat was still for sale.
- It is!
- Great, I’d like to buy it please.
- Right now? Over the phone?
- Yes please – but we can confirm it all in writing if you like.
- Without even having seen it?
- Yes please!
The deal was sealed.
The seller, I later discovered, had every reason to be cautious in the face of my urgent phone call. Since advertising the boat, he had been contacted by various interested parties from abroad, including one from Venice and another who promised to pay the asking price immediately along with an additional €9,000 to cover road transport to his home port in France. Offer made, the purported Frenchman swiftly supplied a copy of his passport for added credibility and backed that up shortly afterwards with a copy of a statement showing that the agreed bank transfer had been completed. All the seller needed to do, he explained, was pass the €9,000 in cash to the French truck driver tasked with delivering the boat, who would be arriving in Hamburg shortly. At this point the seller smelled a rat and, on consulting the local police, discovered that he had just avoided falling foul of a scam that has claimed any number of victims in recent times. No wonder he was somewhat guarded in his response when my voice burst breathlessly from his phone not long afterwards!
Mutual trust established, we wasted no time in settling the details. Conveniently, the boat was waiting for me barely ten minutes’ drive from Windpilot HQ in a lonely boatshed not far from the Schlei. I could have gone by bike! Surprisingly enough (said nobody who has been paying attention), the boat itself also turned out to have an unusual history: constructed 28 years ago as a one-off aluminium hull by Otto Künemund under licence from Laurent Giles Naval Architects Ltd., its Berlin-based owner had fitted it out himself and then suddenly shuffled off this mortal coil, after which it slept away 20 years in an unglamorous shed in Berlin before being gently awoken and transferred to Hamburg by my seller in 2016. And that, in turn, led to it falling into my hands.
I was contacted not long after acquiring LUANA by Stephan, an organ maker from the Far North: was I properly serious about the boat, he wondered, or might I be tempted to sell it on to him? He already had the necessary transom ornament, he told me, and would be pleased to have the chance to install it on LUANA. Unfortunately for Stephan, I could not give him the answer he wanted to hear even in those circumstances. The truth is, I am definitely properly serious about this Vertue and already have a few ideas for sympathetic modifications and improvements. Time will tell. As will I, here in my blog; I promise!
Anyway, there are now two Vertues on the Schlei Andrillot, built in 1935 and recognised as the original Vertue, sits discreetly tugging at its lines in Lindaunis. Thoroughly swaddled to protect it from the weather after a recent makeover, it wants for nothing but its owner to come and unwrap it.
Some four nautical miles closer to the Baltic (as the crow flies at least) in Arnis lies hull number 219, Vertue Luana, soon to be resplendent in a new coat of paint.
A visual treat awaits for lovers of this classic design!
Hamburg, 18 August 2024
Peter Foerthmann
