Ester is a revolutionary Swedish racing yacht that was built in 1901, sank in the 1930s, and raised in 2015. In 2019 she completed a four-year rebuild to race againThe phrase \u2018ahead of its time\u2019 is over-used, but in the case of Ester, a remarkable 50ft racing yacht built in 1901, it couldn\u2019t be more apt. For a yacht that was drawn 120 years ago by Swedish designer Gunmar Mellgren, Ester bears a striking resemblance to an IACC yacht, with that flying bow and full-length toerail, while below the water she had a modern fin keel and spade rudder.
\nThe similarities are not just aesthetic; Ester was built with the same obsessive focus on weight reduction as any modern America\u2019s Cup boat \u2013 albeit out of oak, mahogany and steel \u2013 and a similar disregard for cost. Her original build cost 15,000 Krona \u2013 over half a million pounds today.
\nEster was built to win the Tivoli Cup, a sailing competition between Sweden and Finland held at Sandhamn, in the Swedish archipelago. Bo Eriksson who, together with Per Hellgren, found and rescued the yacht, explains: \u201cCompetition between Finland and Sweden \u2013 nowadays it\u2019s in ice hockey \u2013 but it\u2019s always life or death! It was a big thing here. Ester was built to win one race, and they spent a lot of money \u2013 it was very, very expensive at that time.\u201d
\nThe rivets used are hollow and were manually drilled out. Some 17kg of metal was saved by drilling holes in rivets and screws
\nEster won the 1901 Tivoli Cup, as well as pretty much everything else she entered that decade. Even by the later 1930s, having been resold and modified several times, she was still highly competitive. But one day she sank, and a piece of yachting history was presumed lost forever.
\nBo Eriksson, a classic yacht aficionado, read about the legend of Ester and developed a fascination with the yacht, even hand-building a small model from drawings and photographs. \u201cWe were thinking of building a replica, but that was just a dream. The boat was for sure gone, it wasn\u2019t in my head that we would find it,\u201d he recalls.
\nHowever, in a bizarre twist of fate, a fisherman told him of a yacht which had caught fire and sunk outside \u00d6rnsk\u00f6ldsvik, in north-west Sweden, in the 1930s. Eriksson realised it could be Ester \u2013 and it was less than 2km from the front of his own house. After several years and diving explorations, the wreck was located. Ester had settled upright on the mud, rig in place, in nearly 50m of water.
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Raising the yacht was no small task; specialist divers were deployed, and the water was so murky that her exact location was only realised when one diver hit his head on her overhanging bow, having felt his way along the seabed in search of the yacht. Compressed air had to be blown into the mud to free the keel and hull.
\nPushing boundaries
\nEster\u2019s survival is remarkable, as she captures a moment in yachting history when the very best designs were reaching far ahead of the materials and technology available at the time. Ester featured radical build techniques. She was built two years before the Wright brothers made their first flight, but is constructed using hollow rivets on a metal frame for weight reduction, a technique adopted by the aeroplane industry. She displaces just 3.5 tonnes, of which 1.5 tonnes is in the keel.
\n\u201cShe is one of a kind,\u201d explains Eriksson. \u201cThere were other designers designing this kind of boat, but they existed for quite a short period, only up to about 1905. They were ruled out because they became so fragile, kind of like the America\u2019s Cup today, the yachts were going in the wrong direction so they changed the rules. And they were so lightly built so they didn\u2019t last.\u201d
\nHer gaff rig was restored to its original height after being shortened in the 1930s. The new mast was designed by Juliane Hempel with measurments taken from the original
\nThat Ester did survive is testament to what Eriksson describes as the \u2018genius\u2019 of her designer Gunmar Mellgren, and the craftsmanship and attention to detail applied during her build. \u201cEvery detail is on purpose,\u201d he explains. \u201cAnd all together small things, tiny deck details and reinforcements, if you take them out separately each part is not so strong but together as a composite it\u2019s very strong.\u201d
\nEster was raised in good shape. The late naval architect and yachting historian Theo Rye, who did some early design work on the project, measured her after she was lifted and was astonished to find that there was less than 7mm difference between port and starboard sides after nearly 75 years at the bottom of sea.
\nThis is even more extraordinary considering that when Ester was originally launched, a reporter who went to see her was surprised that her lines remained true just three weeks after launching, so lightly built were similar yachts of the time.
\nThe salinity of the Baltic Sea may have helped preserve the wood. Nevertheless, as she was raised and the wood began to dry, millimetres of planking began to peel away. Ester was going to need a complete rebuild.
\nCold hands
\nThe boat was carefully set up in Eriksson\u2019s yard. In order to prevent the timbers drying out too quickly, she was placed in a shed with a bare earth floor to maintain humidity levels that would suit the yacht \u2013 but in freezing Arctic temperatures that made the restoration project even tougher for the boatbuilders.
\nThe boat was rebuilt, piece-by-piece. The original steel keel fin was kept, but very little else. \u201cThe boat is composite built with a mild steel frame, but the frames were totally corroded away, so we made new templates and new frames and put them into the whole hull, bolted them in with the planking,\u201d Eriksson explains.
\nSteel frames, knees, and cross-bracing below decks combine with steamed oak framing
\n\u201cThen we made new deck beams and put them together with the new steel frames. We were cross-bracing the whole thing to stabilise the hull. Then we took the keel out, put a new keel plank in, and then we started to change the hull, plank by the plank.\u201d
\nMaterials were kept authentic wherever possible \u2013 stainless steel was used to upgrade the mild steel of the day, and the planking is glued together more effectively than she was. \u201cOtherwise it\u2019s exactly the same: mahogany and oak, and Swedish pine, and spruce or pine for the rigging,\u201d recalls Eriksson.
\n\u201cThe planking is all the same dimensions, she has only seven planks per side, the garboards are 600mm wide, and it\u2019s a single scarf joint between the planks each side. We had some fantastic 12m long mahogany planks, so that\u2019s made a small difference. We had a better source of materials, so there was more scarfing in the original hulls than there is today.\u201d
\nThe original bronze rudderpost was restored for the tiller fitting
\nOther elements have been kept as the original, but are strikingly modern. \u201cWhen I looked at the old rigging, I was surprised it was so simple, with wire loops around. It looked so old fashioned, almost like a fishing boat,\u201d says Eriksson.
\n\u201cBut on second thoughts I was thinking this is absolutely genius, it\u2019s like a modern racing boat \u2013 they have Kevlar loops or Dyneema loops on the rigging, and it\u2019s exactly what they were doing in 1901. If you have a metal fitting on the mast it\u2019s a breaking point on the mast. If you have a wire loop around it\u2019s much softer, safer and lighter.\u201d
\nRacing again
\nFour years after she was raised from the mud, Ester was relaunched in time for Monaco Classic Week in 2019, also competing at Les Voiles de St Tropez, where sailing her proved worth the two-decade wait for Eriksson.
\nEster racing once again at St Tropez, where she won on the opening day
\n\u201cThe boom is only 50cm above the deck, so sailing her is quite physical. You have to be on your [toes] the whole time, and diving under the boom when you\u2019re tacking and gybing. So after five or six hours you\u2019re quite exhausted. But at the moment it\u2019s like seeing a Ferrari in first gear. It will take years to find the full potential of the boat.
\n\u201cFor the first season we\u2019ve put on a minimum of sails because we didn\u2019t know how she would behave, so we were under-canvassed. But on a couple of days when we had wind that suited our set up we were really flying. She\u2019s very stiff. And as soon as you come off the wind, she\u2019s like a hot knife in butter: she\u2019s off.\u201d
\nSpecification
\nLOA: 15.38m (50ft 4in)Beam: 3.08m (10ft 1in)Draught: 1.75m (5ft 9in)Displacement: 3.8 tonnesSail area: 110m2 (1,184ft2)Built: 1901 (relaunched 2019)Design: Gunmar MellgrenRebuild: Bo Eriksson
\nFirst published in the February 2020 edition of Yachting World.
\nThe post Ester: The classic Swedish racing yacht that came back from the dead appeared first on Yachting World.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ester is a revolutionary Swedish racing yacht that was built in 1901, sank in the 1930s, and raised in 2015. In 2019 she completed a four-year rebuild to race againThe phrase \u2018ahead of its time\u2019 is over-used, but in the … <\/p>\n